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  Chaos as Creativity

  Catherine E. Wilkins

  Chaos and planning is integral to the creative process when planning for the future. The initial impetus for the writing was the author’s dissertation that provided a framework for planning future libraries. Chaos theory and chaos is reviewed broadly from a generalist perspective across multiple disciplines and over time from ancient times to the present. An abstract planning process is presented along with a diagram that facilitates mapping the current environment. Identifying intrinsic and extrinsic influences present in the environment provides a process to map a probable future environment. To illustrate how the planning process works music is used as an analogy. Future oriented writing is used to encourage discussion, inspire thinking, explore imagination, and challenge the status quo to consider various views of chaos in relation to strategic planning. Library planning using the chaos strategics process is a proposed planning methodology that integrates chaos as creativity.