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Smart space technology innovations
Edited by Mu-Yen Chen and Edwin David Lughofer
Introduction
Literacy in the twenty-first century requires a different set of knowledge and skills compared to literacy in the previous century. In today's knowledge economy, core skills include creativity, interdisciplinary thinking, problem solving, and the ability to collaborate with others - skills that cannot be learned easily from books, but rather through learning-by-doing and social interaction. Libraries, as facilitators of education and learning, have been challenged to reshape their approaches to meeting these changing needs. Scholars have outlined the significance of libraries as places that accommodate social activity ([15] Gaus and Weech, 2008; [22] Leckie and Hopkins, 2002; [28] Pomerantz and Marchionini, 2007; [34] Shill and Tonner, 2004; [35] Sinclair, 2007; [38] Weise, 2004), community gatherings and meetings ([1] Aabo and Audunson, 2012; [2] Aabo et al. , 2010; [3] Audunson, 2005; [4] Audunson et al. , 2011), and social learning and collaboration ([35] Sinclair, 2007). In practice, we see more and more libraries removing bookshelves to make way for infrastructure and interior design elements that invite such activities ([21] LaPointe, 2006, [25] Martin and Kenney, 2004; [26] McDonald, 2006; [33] Shill and Tonner, 2003), such as lounge areas, couches, meeting rooms, whiteboards, projectors, video consoles, and cafés and food bars.
However, libraries mostly do not cater for a social or collaborative learning experience per se . Rather, their curation efforts focus on the aforementioned spatial and infrastructural elements that visitors might or might not end up utilising as part of a collaborative learning journey;, e.g. student study groups in a library.
The focus of this paper is on the library as a place when there is no agenda or programmed activities (e.g. workshops, presentations, exhibition events). In particular, it aims to shed light on the following two sets of questions:
How do library users make use of collaborative library spaces? How do they experience social learning as a result of working in the library? What are the perceived challenges for social learning?
What are adequate design strategies for smart space technology innovation, such as ubiquitous computing and ambient media, to overcome the identified challenges and facilitate social learning among library users?
This paper presents results from a case study at The...