Reconceptualizing Libraries

Perspectives from the Information and Learning Sciences

Victor R. Lee, Abigail L. Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351388719
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Reconceptualizing Libraries brings together cases and models developed by experts in the information and learning sciences to identify the potential for libraries to adapt and transform in the wake of new technologies for connected learning and discovery. Chapter authors explore the ways that the increased interest in the design research methods, digital media emphases, and technological infrastructure of the learning sciences can foster new collaborations and formats for education within physical library spaces. Models and case studies from a variety of library contexts demonstrate how library professionals can act as change agents and design partners and how patrons can engage with these evolving experiences. This is a timely and innovative volume for understanding how physical libraries can incorporate and thrive as educational resources using new developments in technology and in the learning sciences.

Part I

Reconceptualizing
Libraries and
Communities

1
Libraries Will Be Essential to the Smart and Connected Communities of the Future

Victor R. Lee

Unquestionably, the current state of computing with handheld devices, digitally enhanced household objects, distributed miniaturized sensors, massive-scale knowledge sharing, big data, and enhanced artificial intelligence algorithms is advancing a transformation across how we work, play, and live. We have seen how this transformation has radically altered how we seek entertainment, connect with friends, and access modes of transportation. The extension of these changes is a move toward “smart and connected communities,” a futuristic vision of the locales in which we live that leverages these technological advances to improve how collections of people in the same geographic area can exist in the designed and natural environment. For example, a smart community of the future may have an energy grid system that utilizes technology to identify ways that we can better harness sustainable energy sources and increase efficiencies by making suggestions for residents based on usage analytics. Or perhaps our food supply chain can be made more efficient and more responsible environmentally by forecasting food needs over time and agricultural recommendations that can be simultaneously nutritious for the end consumer and profitable for farmers and ranchers who are involved in food production. These are just some of the possibilities that we might imagine in which the means we have and are developing to obtain data, detect trends, and allocate resources could help make the large-scale sociotechnical system that constitutes a city or community more responsive and aligned to our concerns, needs, and values.

If the calls of funding agencies—both public and private—are any indication of this enthusiasm and optimism for smart and connected communities, then we should expect this to be a continuing emphasis for research, development, and public discourse for many years to come. I write this chapter as someone who has had the good fortune to be involved in some early conversations, as one of several participants in a multiday Innovation Lab in Menlo Park, California, with researchers and leaders from across the country to discuss the possibilities for designing and researching Smart and Connected Communities for Learning (Roschelle, 2016), and as someone whose work as a learning scientist has, in recent years, involved productive relationships with libraries as sites for learning. As a researcher, I am enthusiastic about the efforts underway to make investments in improving how communities and technology can jointly support learning. Some of these involve, for instance, tracking of utilization of STEM education programs in large urban spaces (Quigley et al., 2016) and providing youth with opportunities to develop their own countermaps of the cities in which they live (Taylor, 2017). These types of projects hold a great deal of promise for improving learning in cities and communities, and the findings of these projects over time are ones that will likely attract attention and interest for many in the learning sciences and community leadership.

However, at the same time, this budding area of research and development has yet to tap into the opportunities offered by our physical libraries. Libraries should play an essential role in the smart and connected communities of the future. Arguably, libraries already play an essential role in our current communities and are already instrumental in keeping us smart and connected thus far. The path forward toward a new sense of smart and connected will build upon and involve the resources and infrastructure that libraries offer today yet augment it with new sociotechnical arrangements and tools.

On the Extant Importance of Libraries

As a citizen and an academic, I have a robust appreciation of libraries. A fair amount of the work I do as a university professor that involves research, writing, and teaching involves trips to libraries. As a parent, the library represents a special trip for my family to see what is being newly displayed, examine various media, and run into friendly and familiar faces. When I have library fines, I personally have few qualms about paying them because I know that the cents or dollars that I owe for forgetting my agreement to return materials on time should ultimately go to maintaining collections and supporting my library in whatever form the hardworking people whom I encounter there see fit. This appreciation and respect for libraries does not make me an expert on libraries, though. I feel it is incumbent upon me to acknowledge that my formal training is not in the library and information sciences, and my professional experience—some educational research collaborations notwithstanding—does not come from partaking in the professional day-to-day work of a librarian, library director, or library technician. As such, this section will offer my position on the importance of libraries to communities. Yet to a veteran librarian or a scholar of libraries, I expect that what I have to say here may lack the nuance that is involved in current discourses about libraries.

However, my observations and engagements with libraries in recent years have elevated the following features that make libraries important to their communities along with some observations that point toward important negotiations for the future for libraries to be leveraged as a key locale for smart and connected communities.

Libraries Provide Democratic Access

By and large, libraries are accessible to anyone in the community. At a school, any teacher, student, staff person, or administrator is welcome to visit the library. In a community library, whether one is fluent in English, comes from a high or low socioeconomic status, is young or aged, is textually or computationally literate, is neurotypical or represents some aspect of neurodiversity, or whether someone even has a permanent home address are all of little concern. All can come to the library so long as they are willing to abide by the rules of the space respectfully. There are not many places of learning that can boast such status. Many museums require admission (as their funds are limited and pieced together from various sources), K–12 schools are largely populated by students and staff, community colleges and universities require admission and tuition for courses, and courses that can help with professional advancement often require some payment in order to obtain the certification that is ultimately sought. As we look at the digital age as enabling truly lifelong learning (e.g., Collins & Halverson, 2009), libraries are one of the best spaces for anyone to have access to information. While the internet has made more information available than at any other time in human history, it still requires access to a device that can render web content and connectivity that often requires payment for service. Libraries provide internet access, whether through their Wi-Fi networks or through workstations that people can use. Public librarians spend hours helping those who do not know how to use the internet or operate a computer access the information that they need online. People of all ages use the library, whether it’s parents with young children, other adults, teens, or seniors.

That diversity of patronage represents a broad range of local expertise. At the same time, that diversity raises considerations of how different population segments can be best served. Different populations gravitate to the library for different reasons, and the desires each has can be in conflict. Those seeking a warm place to be may have different interests then those who are looking for a quiet place to study, who may yet have different interests from those who want to gather and play games. A challenge continually exists with respect to serving the various interests and keeping the library open and available for all interested parties who deserve access.

Libraries Provide Space

Not to be overlooked is the physical space that libraries provide. Libraries are warm indoor spaces when for some individuals there may be no other options. By design, many libraries offer study rooms or meeting rooms available by reservation or the library can be arranged to serve as a meeting space in its entirety after hours. In my experience across the various cities I have lived or visited, it is not uncommon to find community organizations gathering in the library for a meeting. Some libraries have auditoriums to support guest lectures and presentations for larger volumes of attendees. The space between shelves offers small private spaces, sometimes with their own separate seating or study carrels. Long tables and chairs are common in libraries and can be used as a surface upon which to read, set up a laptop, study for school, fill out paperwork, or play a tabletop game. Some libraries are providing media viewing and production spaces, and versions of those may emphasize digital maker activities, while others exist as a teen space for young people to gather and hang out. Such space is a valuable resource that is not always recognized as part of the value libraries provide.

Similar to the democratic access that libraries offer, however, a challenge exists around how the norms guiding the usage of such space will be negotiated. For example, a teen hang-out space that may involve chatter and gameplay may not be conducive to quiet reading. Similarly, a room that has expensive media creation equipment may be available with the best of intentions, but if it is kept out of view or under lock and key, its potential may not be realized. Also, libraries offer space to the public, which limits the ability for any individual party or group to make strong claims to any set of resources.

Libraries House Information Experts

Librarians are professionals in the area of information search, retrieval, and storage and thus are one of the primary resources for those seeking information about particular topics or current issues. As things stand now, American society is recognizing just how important it is to be able to discriminate between accurate and trustworthy information on the one hand and information that is intentionally designed to mislead on the other. Librarians have long been and should continue to be some of our most important allies in this ongoing work. A large part of their work involves promoting information literacy and helping interested patrons in navigating the reams of information that are available within print archives. This work has extended into digital information realms, with digital librarians and cybrarians becoming prominent figures who will lead the way (Johnson, 2011).

Granted, this is a lot to ask of already busy professionals. Much of the work within a library ultimately extends beyond information expertise. However, my contention is that those who utilize these services profit greatly from it, and the more awareness and the more actively we use and ask for these services, the more we will acknowledge how important they are for our own individual learning and for our societal benefit. What I see as a challenge for the future is how the expertise in information management can be leveraged and mobilized while so many other demands are being made of library professionals. Librarians are experts on the information around many things, but we must be careful not to expect them to be experts about the information around all things.

Libraries and Their Communities Are Mutually Constitutive

Whether the community being served is a large metropolis, a small neighborhood, a university campus, or an elementary school, the community is reflected in its library, and the library is reflected in its community. Libraries develop the unique portions of their collections based on what is produced in the community that they serve, making a trip to any library an opportunity to learn about the tastes of the local population and the history and priorities of its immediate community. This is also reflected in exhibition space, which libraries provide. The work of local artisans and community organizations appears in display cases and on walls. The work of students appears at school libraries, and as discussed elsewhere in this book, the distinctive character of a city and a neighborhood—complete with artistic styles and local concerns—appears at the library (Kafai et al., this volume). The local events and activities are hanging on bulletin boards and are expressed in the suggestions and recommendations of the personnel employed at the library. City council minutes, maps, local historical documents, and collections of local benefactors reside in the walls of the library. These collections also mean that the library is a place for the community to know what is happening and what issues are of local concern. The library is a public space for a civic debate or a local elected candidate forum. They are an investment in shared knowledge for people who will enter, and they represent the embodiment of what a community wanted or thought was worth preserving for others to discover in the future.

It itself, the library community dynamic is impressive. There are not many organizations or institutions that we can consistently rely upon that will both preserve and create the history of the people who use it. In this era of big box stores and chains, it can be hard to see the distinct character of a community. Yet the library is deeply rooted in its community and vice versa. It contains knowledge and connects information to people and people to people. If one asks how communities have already been smart and connected, libraries would have to be part of the answer. Cultivating those connections within a community is arguably one of the main reasons why we have and value libraries to this day.

Looking Forward Toward Future Smartness and Connectedness That Involves Libraries

If libraries have already served as vehicles for enriching our understandings and connecting us to information and other people, but the pervasiveness and advances of digital technology are radically altering the sociotechnical landscape, then what role, if any, should physical libraries play? That is the underlying question driving this chapter. Here, I share a few imaginings of potential futures for libraries in the next generation of smart and connected communities. At a minimum, my expectation is that libraries will continue to preserve the valuable collections that they have and expand their digital presence further—not so that people no longer need to go to the library but so that people have a means to access some of what the library offers when they are not already physically there. Yet beyond that, there is much that we can do.

One potential is to leverage the access to costly resources and the ability to add to existing collections along with the information expertise possessed by librarians to enhance opportunities for individual and collective learning of patrons. Jennifer Kahn, a professor at the University of Miami, has demonstrated how this could be possible by way of her dissertation research conducted at Vanderbilt University (Kahn, 2017). In her work, she partnered with a major urban public library that had license access to expensive software and provided both space and laptops for high school–aged youth to explore migration patterns and their own families’ “geobiographies.” These youth met repeatedly at the library and were supported by Kahn, her colleagues, and the public librarians in the creation of digital narrative records that were made into permanent parts of their special collection as archives of what had been learned. It was a research and design project that involved using special collections migration data, visualization software, and after-hours meeting groups that later involved not just the youth but also their family members. These youth and families together reconstructed how and why their families and the groups with which they affiliated converged in the locales where they lived, adding to their individual understandings of their placement in their communities and also adding to a knowledge repository about the community for others.

Another option is to further the efforts of libraries to diversify the kinds of information materials that they make available to patrons. For example, many libraries offer “backpack programs” whereby individuals can check out full kits with supportive guide materials so that they and others in their household can jointly explore and learn a new topic given a set of curated resources (Tzou et al., this volume). Some of the efforts underway for smart and connected communities rely upon sensors obtaining large pools of data from different places in order to enable new kinds of discoveries to get made. In some endeavors, this would involve individuals, homes, and families providing sensor data. However, the ability for any individual or household to have the immediate resources to equip such sensors is dependent on many factors. Libraries, however, could become sensor lending hubs where families can borrow and return various sensors and equipment that can help collect data that enables a community to be smarter and more responsive to the needs of the many. Mobile air quality sensors or wearable fitness trackers that can accompany an individual regardless of their financial means have the potential of better capturing an accurate image of what life is like within a community and what regions and populations could be better served.

Perhaps libraries can become a sort of “home base” for those who are mobile and pursuing activities such as place-based learning or augmented reality gameplay (e.g., Bonsignore, this volume). A vision that was described and that I am now seeing explored from my time at the Smart and Connected Communities for Learning Innovation Lab that I had mentioned in the introduction was place-based lear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Reconceptualizing Libraries and Communities
• Part II Reconceptualizing Library Experiences
• Part III Reconceptualizing Librarianship
• Part IV Reconceptualizing Library Research
• Index