A Field Guide to the Information Commons

by Charles Forrest, Martin Halbert

Our sources of information, and the practices we use to find it, are in a period of rapid flux. Libraries must respond by selecting, acquiring, and making accessible a host of new information resources, developing innovative services, and building different types of spaces to support changing user behaviors and patterns of learning. A Field Guide to the Information Commons describes an emerging library service model that embodies all three spheres of new information resources, collaborative service programs, and redesigned staff and user spaces.Technology has enabled new forms of information-seeking behavior and scholarship, causing a renovation of libraries that revisits the idea of the "commons"--a public place that is free to be used by everyone. A Field Guide to the Information Commons describes the emergence, growth, and adoption of the concept of the information commons in libraries. This book includes a variety of contributed articles, and descriptive, structured entries for various information commons in libraries across the country and around the world.

214 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009