Libraries have been important places for the sharing of text based materials for centuries. There are many famous libraries across the world holding some of the most amazing resources. Trouble is that many of these resources were only available to researchers or academics until the arrival of digital technologies.
In schools the library has also seen changes with the arrival of digital resources with many more school libraries now equipped with computers so that users can carry out research using the web as well as other resources held by the library. In some schools this combination of technology and traditional printed material has been merged to create the Resource Centre or the Media Lab.
The change in use of school libraries has been interesting. Schools now tend not to spend money on expensive resources such as encyclopedia when they can access up to date and low cost resources that do the same job online. The non-fiction resource has become the internet which has allowed some schools to report that they have been able to expand their range of fiction materials and stimulate an increase in reading for pleasure.
So are libraries of the future only places where the balance between the non-fiction and fiction materials will shift further to become more and more digital? If this is the case why bother with a physical space? If it has social aspects (not something I tend to see in libraries) then is not the social networking provided by digital technologies far more powerful than could be achieved simply by meeting in a physical space called a library? Maybe libraries are gradually going to shrink to become the repository for the rare original artifact that you can go and visit....... We need to think more about the function and role of libraries in schools - what sots of things should be available in these places and just what will they mean to the generation that is growing up as avid web users and who often report that they feel agitated when not connected!
This video clip explores some interesting ideas about the potential of the lib. Interesting that the library of the future is a physical space and that there are actually books there - also interesting that it does not look like any library that I have visited..... yet!
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Schools, colleges and university are just some of the places where learning takes place but school kids and students can spend a lot of their time in these spaces. There are other places where people learn, some through doing courses at work or online or even learning from others around them in all sorts of situations. The posts here are about learning spaces, writings about learning and technology and thoughts and ideas about all of these.
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