Learning beyond books—strategies for ambient media to improve libraries and collaboration spaces as interfaces for social learning

Abstract

With the advent of digital media and online information resources, public libraries as physical destinations for information access are being increasingly challenged. As a response, many libraries follow the trend of removing bookshelves in order to provide more floorspace for social interaction and collaboration. Such spaces follow a Commons 2.0 model: they are designed to support collaborative work and social learning. The acquisition of skills and knowledge is facilitated as a result of being surrounded by and interacting with a community of likeminded others.Based on the results of a case study on a Commons 2.0 library space, this paper describes several issues of collaboration and social learning in public library settings. Acknowledging the significance of the architectural characteristics of the physical space, we discuss opportunities for ambient media to better reflect the social attributes of the library as a place; i.e. amplify the sense of other co-present library visitors and provide opportunities for shared encounters and conversations, which would remain invisible otherwise. We present the design of a user check-in system for improving the library as a physical destination for social learning, sharing, and inspiration for and by the community.

Hybrid placemaking in the library: designing digital technology to enhance users' on-site experience

“…Based on these findings, Gelatine was designed to increase mutual awareness among co-present users and help facilitate ice-breaking conversations. Elsewhere, we describe the detailed design rationale and system architecture behind Gelatine as a system to support hybrid placemaking (Bilandzic and Foth 2013a), as well as more specific ideas and principles of ambient media architecture for the design of hybrid personal learning environments (Caldwell, Bilandzic, and Foth 2012).…”

ARspace: Augmented Reality and Visual Analytics for Improving and Monitoring the Quality of Public Space - Case: Las Nieves Neighborhood in Bogota, Colombia

“…1. Urban informatics (Foth, Choi, & Satchell, 2011): Based on this approach, we addressed two main roles: citizens and their empowerment through information and communication technologies (Unsworth, Forte, & Dilworth, 2014) (Hemmersam, Martin, Westvang, Aspen, & Morrison, 2016), and visual analytics support [16] to foster meaningful understanding and communication between citizens and decision makers [17] (Hemmersam, Martin, Westvang, Aspen, & Morrison, 2016).…”

“…Regarding visual analytics techniques, it is very important to reference the works related to visualization of space and time data. Andrienko et al, in their work "Space, Time and Visual Analytics" [16], emphasize that analyzing spatial data is no longer a unique task of professional analysts but that most citizens constantly perform it in their daily lives; therefore, it is necessary to create accessible and usable tools in order to facilitate their personal analysis. The different ways of measuring time -as a specific moment or as an interval-, the effects of spatial and temporal dependencies and the management of different scales to be able to analyze and make decisions, were fundamental issues that were considered in ARSpace.…”

Critical making with a raspberry pi ‐ towards a conceptualization of librarians as makers

“…However, there are questions about how to integrate makerspaces into existing library practices and spaces and in ways that encourage the intended collaboration, shared knowledge, and peer‐to‐peer learning. Bilandzic and Foth argued that “the physical environment of future library and collaboration spaces must provide perceived affordances that enable users to retrieve and access information from the community of other library users” (Bilandzic and Foth, , p. 81). In other words, the library must provide physical manifestations of the collaborative knowledge practices afforded by the integration of makerspaces into libraries.…”