What is the purpose of the academic library building when it’s no longer filled with a physical collection of books and journals? I had the pleasure of presenting two different perspectives on the development of the physical academic library space at The Danish Research Library Association’s annual meeting in Aarhus on the 17th and 18th of September (slides can be seen at the bottom of this post). The two perspectives is what I call the traditional and the intelligent library space.
The traditional in ‘traditional library space’ is meant in every positive way and is framing the great work we have been doing on library space development for years; a diverse space with a variation of different kind of student environment, e.g. group rooms, lounge areas, small study hubs and large reading halls, along with an aestetic and nice atmosphere. And it works – we are great at it, it creates value and the academic libraries will continue to work on this. The intelligent library space is grounded in our work with Digital Social Science Lab at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences – a physical lab to connect academia with tools, skills and methods to handle data. The ‘intelligent’ part is the skills that is embedded in the lab.
http://christianlauersen.net/2015/10/07/are-we-making-libraries-for-people-or-libraries-for-books/
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