The Library as Place at the Digital Age / Laurence Favier

LIBRARY AS PLACE
Laurence Favier
Laurence.favier@univ-lille3.fr
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WarsawConference16/04/2013-L.Favier

THE PROBLEM
New paradigm in libraries’ history?
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LIBRARY AT THE DIGITAL AGE
 “today’s information-seekers get much of
what they need electronically, often far from
the physical library.(…)
 As discussions of library as place have made
clear, focusing on libraries solely as providers
of information ignores much of the value that
they bring to higher education today”. Nancy
Davenport (2006)
3

LIBQUAL
 Libqual http://www.libqual.org/home
 International method for charting library service
quality according 3 dimensions:
- Affect of services
- Information control
- Library as place
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NEW MISSION FOR LIBRARIES
 The libraries should be designed as places for
learning rather than primarily as storehouses of
information. This thinking has given rise to
much discussion—and to many publications—
about the “library as place.”
 Libraries as learning centers
 Reshaping library’s space to achieve this new mission
 Is it a shift in libraries’ history?
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HOW LIBRARIES REINVENT
SPATIALITY AT THE
DIGITAL AGE:
From the reading paradigm to the learning
commons model
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LIBRARIES SPACE FOR READING?
 libraries are not a place for reading anymore;
 or that they are not mainly a place for reading
 The National Library of France (BNF) organized
an exhibition about reading in 2009. entitled
“Things read, things seen” (“Choses lues, choses
vues”), was an image exploration of reading
practices. Reading supposes an object (a mobile
object like a book) and a place, which can be any
place
 « Choses lues, choses vues » :
http://expositions.bnf.fr/lecture/videos/video101.htm
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THE READING PARADIGM
 Born in the in the XIIIth
century, the mendicant
orders transformed libraries’ missions:
 they were devoted to cultural heritage accumulation
and preserving;
 they became a place for reading
 Bibliotheconomy was born also at this period
supported by catalogs designed to be instruments
for locating books and tables to note books
borrowing
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LIBRARY’S SPACE AND PLACE IN
THE READING PARADIGM
 a long room with desks rows at each side, where
books, chained at each desk, were offered for
reading
 library came out of the monastery’s solitude and
got out of the narrow space attributed to reading
activity at this period
 Libraries became a large and urban place
 This new kind of library, born in this XIIIth
century, is defined both by the availability of
books, (exhibited on desks) and by silence.
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SPACE DESIGN FOR READING
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http://images.bnf.fr/jsp/index.jsp

FITTED TO THE SIGHT
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http://images.bnf.fr/jsp/index.jsp
-Exhibition of
books
-Near
windows for
the sake of
light

THE INVENTION OF READING
PLACE
 Lone individuals
 Gathered in a same place
 In silence
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EVOLUTION OF THE READING
PARADIGM
 For Bennett (2009) the reader-centered paradigm
is over.
 It was the first of three paradigms driven by the
transformation of information from a scarce to a
super abundant commodity.
 These are “the reader-centered”, “the book-
centered” and the “learning-centered” paradigms
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THE 3 PARADIGMS ACCORDING
BENNETT
1. Reader-centered: « (…) books were few and
precious, the space was designed primarily for
readers: typically a reading lectern or carrel for
the monk, placed perpendicular to a window for
the sake of light”
2. Book-centered:“Book space, not readers space
came to dominate”, especially in academic
libraries “which saw over time an apparently
unavoidable displacement of readers by books”.
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THE LEARNING CENTERD
PARADIGM
3. The last: the learning centered:
come back to the “reader-centered” one
“with the critical differences that information is
now superabundant rather than scarce and (…)
increasingly resident in virtual rather than in
physical space
The challenge becomes to the connection between
space and learning, instead of interaction
between the reader and the books
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A UNIQUE LEARNING HUB
 Library becomes “a unique learning hub
integrating technology, information, and expertise
in order to best strengthen the teaching, research
and learning opportunities that occur within the
university community”, as Geoff Harder said
about the service Knowledge Common of the
University of Alberta Libraries
 It is based on the information and
communication technologies’ development which
is supposed to lead to autonomous learning
 the learning perspective lies in a new degree of
collaboration between librarians and information
technologists.
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AUTONOMOUS LEARNING
 Autonomous learning or intentional learning,
claimed by many authors including Bennett, is
very similar to information literacy: the goal is
learn to learn.
 We can compare the information literate people
described in theses texts with the autonomous
learner according to Bennett who “seeks further
instructions and services as another way of
learning” while schoolwork prepares a “life-long
learner who remains in some measure dependant
on instructions/services”
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“STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING”
OR “ACTIVE LEARNING”
 Libraries are not a mere support to educational
institutions.
 Library’s staff claims to become educators,
serving the new pedagogical requirements of the
digital society.
 More precisely, this conception of libraries’ role is
supported by “student-centered learning” or
“active learning” theories based on the idea that
students must have choice in what to study and
how to study
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COMMONS MODEL
 Physical Commons, the Virtual Commons and
the Cultural Commons (Beagle 2006)
 The first one “consists of the computer hardware,
furnishings, designated space and traditional
collections of libraries”.
 The second “contains the digital library collections,
online tools, electronic learning tools and Web
presence (portal, website, etc.) of the library.
 The third element, the Cultural Commons, is made up
of the workshops, tutoring programs, research
collaborations, and so forth, which takes place as a
result of the environment created through the
Commons”. 19

A RESTRICTIVE MODEL
 Autonomous learning is focused on the individual
learner
 while the studies about community of practice
(Wenger 1999) have shown that learning does not
happen within an individual’s mind alone but is
situated in a social context in which social
interactions among colearners play a key role.
 Now this is just what libraries space planners
want to avoid today: to come back to the “reader-
centered paradigm” and remain a silent place
which gathers lone individuals like, long ago, the
monasteries. 20

TENSION
 There is some tension between the two purposes
of space design: to be suited for autonomous
learning in a technological intensive
environment,
 and to be a social place contributing to successful
interactions between students.
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BEYOND HYBRID
LIBRARIES :
from digital social networks to real place for
social learning
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SPACES FOR SOCIAL LEARNING
 The new challenge in creating the library of the
future is not a library 2.0 response to Web 2.0 but
a twenty-first Century Library in response to a
twenty-first Century learning”.(Watson 2010).
 Many scientific studies showed the impact of
location to maintain and sustain learning
communities.
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EXAMPLES
 http://catheylearningcenter.uchicago.edu/
 Stanford University libraries propose both
“Academic technology” which “provide computer
and multimedia resources, student and faculty
consulting, teaching and learning spaces, online
learning environments, and digital media literacy
education” and “Places to study” classified
according their function “ group study, individual
study, large tables, conversation allowed etc.
http://library.stanford.edu/
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LEARNING SPACES
http://www.educause.edu/research-and-
publications/books/learning-spaces/chapter-4-
community-hidden-context-learning
Georgia Tech Information
Commons Practice Presentation
Room
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GROUP SPACES
Group Space in Information Commons at (a)
University of Massachusetts Amherst and (b)
University of Binghamton
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“MODEL FOR MORE THAN THE
LIBRARY”
http://www.educause.edu/research-and-
publications/books/learning-spaces/chapter-
7-linking-information-commons-learning
Comfortable seating, current print and
electronic newspapers, Web access to many
electronic news resources, and a large
display screen featuring news from around
the world. Other organizations might
develop group study rooms for graduate
students, incorporating electronic thesis
and dissertation (ETD) software, guidelines,
and other resources. I
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TRADITIONAL « HYBRID LIBRARY »
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WITH USEFUL LINKS AND TAGS
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BEYOND LIBRARIES 2.0:
LINKING VIRTUAL AND PHYSICAL
SPACES
The Varied Nature of Blended Learning
Environments
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« A THIRD PLACE »
 ,The learning paradigm leads to a redefinition to
library as public sphere.
 According Oldenburg (1999), “third places” are
venues like coffee shops, bookstores, cafés where
a community’s social vitality based on
conversations, debates and controversies can be
developed. This kind of informal meeting places,
outside work and home (the two others places)
are essential to community and public life
 The “learning model” adopted by contemporary
libraries tries to reinvent a public sphere
allowing formal and informal interactions
between learners
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WHICH LIBRARY’S SPECIFICITY?
 Elmborg (2011) ”A library is a fundamentally
different place than a bookstore or the cloud, and
one profound difference is the presence of
librarians”.
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FIRST DIFFERENCE: LIBRARIES’
MISSIONS
 Freedom of information
 library must embrace all opinions and ideas through
document accession
 Preservation of cultural continuity
 it is the unique place where you find books and
journals out of print, archives and other documents
that can’t be found on the market
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SECOND DIFFERENCE:
LIBRARIANS’ EXPERTISE
 Librarians expertise to produce metadata that
enable everyone at anytime to use documents
appropriately
 Thus, their role becomes to organize knowledge
access and not only document access. This new
mission leads librarians to claim they are
educators and not only information providers
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LIRARIES AS A « THIRD PLACE » FOR
« DIGITAL ENLIGHTENMENT »
 To ensure cultural continuity, from an historical
point of view (passing on old and rare documents)
and from a social point of view, bridging real and
virtual education places, learned social practices
grounded in face to face communication with
digital practices
 To remain an actor of knowledge dissemination
against belief and obscurantism expansion.
 Finally, to be a “Third place” serving “digital
Enlightenment”
 Digital Enlightenment Forum:
http://www.digitalenlightenment.org/ 35

CONCLUSION
 The librarians’ debate about “Library as a place”
is interesting because it reveals much more
than an identity problem that would answer
to the question “do we need library space at the
digital age?”
 It highlights how real places still structure social
and intellectual links between people
 It underlines the importance of libraries’
missions issues at the digital age
36

The Library as Place at the Digital Age / Laurence Favier

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