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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] Is there a future for the pubklic libraries?</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>Thanks Rolf for the introduction and the question:<BR>
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The question of the “future of public libraries” was central to a research project I conducted for the MacArthur Foundation in 2008. The project was called “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age.” My research team blogged our “literature review” in 18 posts on different topics that are archived at DML Central (the virtual hub for MacArthur’s digital media and learning efforts).<BR>
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<a href="http://dmlcentral.net/resources/3854">http://dmlcentral.net/resources/3854</a><BR>
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These posts might be useful for the sites/cites on this question.<BR>
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Also:<BR>
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I take up this question in my new book in a chapter called “Designing Learning.” I imagine a future of public libraries where they function as a mixed-reality community based “making space” (or tinkering space), where the mission is not only the stewardship and circulation of cultural infoartifacts of various forms (books, maps), but also the community’s “garage” where members hang out to mess around with tools (which could be loaned) and materials (which could be “harvested” from local basements and garages) in face-to-face cross-generational creative projects (references to Ito’s work is intentional). Shelf resources are considered evocative knowledge objects...not just “books” or concretized media forms. The library becomes a process space for the practice of culture making. Young ones learn how to sew, elders learn how to edit video. All would be supported by a back-end social networking interest-learning match-making application. Think Telic’s Public School mashed up with the Menlo Park Tech Shop supported by some sort of civic-minded Carnegie Foundation of the future interested in creating the brick and mortar infrastructure of an Open Participatory Learning Network.<BR>
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Book will be out in a week or so:<BR>
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Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work (Duke)<BR>
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Anne Balsamo<BR>
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On 6/29/11 12:40 AM, "Rolf Hapel" <<a href="hapel@aarhus.dk">hapel@aarhus.dk</a>> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>Hi everyone, <BR>
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I am so thrilled to be part of the Mobility Shift event in October. <BR>
Until then, I am busy with my job, being a practitioner working to transform an institution regarded as one of the most crucial societal icons of the modern, developed democratic societies. I am talking about the public library, an institution dear to many, if not most people. I sometimes get a little sweaty, though, thinking about the future. Some predictions tend to kill the public libraries – at least as a vehicle for distribution of knowledge – together with the printed book in a relatively short term, e.g. 2020. Others predict a more social role for the libraries as public open spaces characterized by values that makes it welcoming for all. Others again see the public library as a possible open center for informal learning. <BR>
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I wonder, if any of you guys have any thoughts on the subject of the public library. Can you see any functions for the public library as we know it in a future where e-books and digitization have changed the formats for knowledge and culture distribution and exchange totally?<BR>
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If so – to which problems in the knowledge based, networked society do you see the public library as a possible answer?<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'><FONT COLOR="#676767"><FONT FACE="Arial"><B>Rolf Hapel<BR>
</B>Director<BR>
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<IMG src="cid:3392190585_1052369" ></FONT><FONT COLOR="#676767"><FONT FACE="Arial"><B>CITIZENS' SERVICES AND LIBRARIES</B> <BR>
City of Aarhus <BR>
City Hall, 8000 Aarhus CDenmark<BR>
Phone +45 89 40 93 00<BR>
Mobile +45 29 20 83 56<BR>
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