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| =Discussion= | | URL = http://commonlibraries.cc/ [http://commonlibraries.cc/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Common-Libraries-WEB-Exec-Sum.pdf] |
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| Annemarie Naylor:
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| "We believe there is an urgent and pressing need to evolve libraries in England so that they may serve as bastions of a 21st century knowledge commons, functioning as trusted and impartial platforms for the production, exchange and consumption of knowledge and know-how. We are therefore using our expertise in design, technology, community engagement and social enterprise to work closely with library service users and providers to that end. Our ultimate aim is to empower people to co-design and deliver new library services in our increasingly open source society, such that they are responsive to technological advancement and fast-changing local needs, as well as positioned to make the most of emergent socio-economic opportunities. The intention, then, is to revitalise the public library ethos and render library services more relevant, useful and sustainable in their appeal to (and involvement of) broad-ranging audiences in our digital age.
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| The Common Libraries initiative flows from the drivers of change in UK library services, attempts in the United States to reconfigure libraries as spaces to facilitate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills development, together with wider developments in the digital landscape. It is coloured by the endeavours of the Open Source and Creative Commons movements, as well as the enthusiasm for hacking and making of the communities upon whose activities our first project is based. In the course of launching the initiative to engage a wider community of interest in Spring 2014, we were encouraged to explore the potential for Common Libraries to draw upon the peer-to-peer and sharing economy movement in future – culminating in receipt of an international OuiShare Award. Helpfully, this reads across to the efforts of those who are re-imagining libraries as contemporary platforms or, else, seeking to enhance or evolve them through automated book share services and personal portable library networks (PPLNs) – such that we have already begun to iterate our starting point.
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| We are, perhaps uniquely, persuaded that there could also be merit in exploring the potential for elements of libraries (specifically, library staff and users) to form Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) in future – reflecting, in particular, upon the pioneering work of the Ethereum Project and, related to that, Eris, by Project Douglas. Early thinking, in this regard, concerns the potential to safeguard our social knowledge economy through the evolution of DAOs for the purposes of what we’ve begun to term #humansearch – an ethical and empathic stand, if you will, in the face of corporate search dominance and big data proponents; both of which are, increasingly, parasitic and de-humanising phenomena in our contemporary knowledge landscape, and fast re-engineering themselves in relation to advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality as well as the Internet of Things. But, they could well be designed in such a way as to also integrate with PPLN nodes and ‘user-librarians’ in future.
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| Finally, we have sought from the outset to enable income generation by common ‘library enterprises’ through, for example, the introduction of value add membership schemes, joint venturing and ‘micro enterprise’ development with creative users. In this important respect, we recognise the challenges facing others who might wish to experiment with elements of Common Libraries, and acknowledge the place of cooperativism and community enterprise in facilitating (even, augmenting) our otherwise open-by-default approach. As such, Common Libraries are liable to remain deeply rooted in the notion and actuality of dynamic and aspirational communities - exploring, engaging and growing with the unfolding 21st century in a playful and creative manner to contribute to the Open Knowledge project. They are, then, more akin to the iterative configuration processes of community development - a hopeful and, at times, speculative journey - than to a definitive route map to a known or sought-after destination. However, they are also grounded in the recognition that we now urgently need to reappraise our approach to financing library service transformation and, indeed, continual iteration if libraries are to endure through and beyond the 21st century in relation to our digital operating environment.
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| Unsurprisingly, we’re eager to help prototype most things in keeping with what we regard as a contemporary public library ethos - from community publishing platforms to open data access and re-mixing points. The learning amassed from this first project will, nonetheless, be of particular interest if you’re a library service provider interested in forging links with hackers and makers in your local area; considering the introduction of a hack and/or makerspace in your library building; or want to explore how to develop an integrated library-hack-makerspace - and, all the more, if you share our belief that libraries re-imagined as community publishing platforms might go some way towards nurturing a more relevant, vibrant and sustainable model for library services in future.
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| The first research and prototyping project undertaken to establish Common Libraries, then, built upon the learning amassed by Chattanooga Public Library in the course of establishing the 4th Floor and, in particular, the work of the community responsible for the Waiting Room in St Botolph’s, Colchester. It was designed to inform and work with enterprising organisations to put in place measures to begin prototyping the library of the future, today – where the library of the future is taken to mean an institution that places equal emphasis upon knowledge production, exchange and consumption in the service of rendering libraries more relevant, viable and resilient. Specifically, the Waiting Room is founded upon an innovative ‘borrow/barter/buy/bespoke’ approach to business integration for library-hack-makerspaces. This is intended to help maintain the ethos of a public library, where its function to ‘facilitate access to all’ is concerned, at the same time as introducing an income generation or common ‘library enterprise’ dimension to operations. Simply stated, we sought to research and take steps to replicate / iterate elements of the Waiting Room initiative elsewhere over a period of three months and, with that, begin to explore the potential to establish an income generating library-hack-makerspace network with a grant from Arts Council England."
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| (email, June 2014)
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| =Status=
| | ""We believe there is an urgent and pressing need to evolve libraries so that they may serve as bastions of a 21st century knowledge commons, functioning as trusted and impartial platforms for the production, exchange and consumption of knowledge and know-how. We are therefore using our expertise in design, technology, community engagement and social enterprise to work closely with library service users and providers to that end. Our ultimate aim is to empower people to co-design and deliver new library services in our increasingly open source society, such that they are responsive to technological advancement and fast-changing local needs, as well as positioned to make the most of emergent socio-economic opportunities. The intention, then, is to revitalise the public library ethos and render library services more relevant, useful and sustainable in their appeal to (and involvement of) broad-ranging audiences in our digital age." |
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| Annemarie Naylor, June 2014:
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| "our project resulted in the following key findings:
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| - There is demonstrable interest in Common Libraries as a vehicle for exploring the evolution of public library services - both at home and overseas - as a result of our having communicated the initiative to engage a wider community of interest. Already, we have entered into encouraging discussions with academics, innovation agencies, library leaders and sharing economy proponents in the UK, US, EU, South Africa and Australia.
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| | " however, libraries are fast evolving to become what some have termed ‘read/write’ platforms that provide access to broad-ranging media as well as multi-media manipulation tools. The information with which they’re concerned increasingly includes data that is stored electronically, and library services themselves straddle the offline/online world. |
| - Proactive engagement of project partners and those library authorities with whom they work resulted in improved understanding of the hacking and making landscape. It also engendered an ability and willingness to co-produce practical plans to progress prototyping efforts. Without this, the combination of challenges facing public sector library service commissioners, as well as constraints affecting community-led library providers, is liable to introduce a significant barrier to engagement and innovation elsewhere in future.
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| | The emergence of ‘library-hack-makerspaces’ is, then, very welcome – not least, insofar as they harbour the potential for STEAM skills development at the very heart of our communities, in keeping with libraries’ educational remit. And, yet, we’ve still to witness a thoroughgoing disruption of libraries’ twentieth century institutional boundaries – ideally, to establish knowledge production on an equal footing with knowledge consumption, reflecting the democratisation of the means of reproduction in the Western world. That is, we’ve still to see twenty-first century libraries established as bona fide peer-to-peer platforms for the purposes of facilitating knowledge exchange founded upon Commons principles. |
| - We encountered a greater degree of comfort amongst library authorities and more immediate community interest in relation to making as compared with hacking. This is considered important where the co-location of off-the-shelf hack/makerspace models with libraries might more readily appeal to public sector providers of larger, urban libraries. It might also point towards what could better suit rural and/or smaller community-led libraries. There are, nonetheless, two open days still to be held in respect of our three prototypes at the time of writing. Moreover, the success of efforts on the part of Burnage Library renders the extent to which this finding may be deemed representative uncertain. NB: we are also conscious that we’ve as yet to explore the potential for mobile library-hack-makerspaces in any depth, which could read across to recommendations in the forthcoming report from OPM concerning the rural impacts of changes to library services. | |
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| | We believe that library services should provide access to and enable development of a multimedia commons." |
| - We encountered a greater degree of interest amongst our project partners in hacking as compared with making. This underlines the value of the process outlined in those how-to resources developed integral to the project, because they point towards a series of steps that less confident library service commissioners/providers might look to implement in ‘making a start’, as well as to the importance of co-producing services with communities themselves – in particular, where the aim is, in part, for library-hack-makerspaces to facilitate income generation for libraries in future (in other words, ‘library enterprises’ are predicated upon harnessing demand for particular platforms/activities).
| | (http://commonlibraries.cc/about/) |
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| | =More Information= |
| - Our project partners expressed interest in deploying the hackspace membership model to which we introduced them, as well as MakerKit development and sale, from the point of view of engaging with the Waiting Room’s income generation efforts. Whilst they proved less inclined to engage in Joint Venturing with users, we believe this is, in part, due to the real/perceived physical constraints of the buildings from which they (aim to) operate as compared with the Waiting Room. Further work to assess the income generation potential of those other peer-to-peer and micro-payment services identified in the course of our research is needed before their development can be explored with prototypes in earnest.
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| | * report: http://commonlibraries.cc/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Common-Libraries-WEB-Exec-Sum.pdf |
| - It remains too early to tell whether there is real and/or significant enterprise potential harboured in the development and sale of MakerKits across a network of library-hack-makerspaces, following an initial project lasting three months, such that further work with our prototypes and/or an alternative approach to practical market testing is recommended here. It would also be worthwhile assessing the potential for those other peer-to-peer and micro-payment services identified in the course of our research to generate an income. However, early indications point towards the merits of combining value add membership schemes, joint venturing and ‘micro enterprise’ development working closely with creative users, as in the case of the Waiting Room, albeit to generate only a relatively modest income for smaller branch libraries. | |
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| - There are opportunities and challenges surrounding the knowledge, skills, capacity and entrepreneurship inherent in organisations that might wish to establish Common Libraries. We also concluded that innovation cannot flow or be followed-through in the current climate without (a) encouragement and investment in the capacity to innovate and (b) efforts to secure the requisite finance, if this is to become a more mainstream endeavour in future. Helpfully, we were in a position to offer direct support and a modest incentive to engage in knowledge and skills exchange visits as well as to innovate integral to this project. We have, therefore, made recommendations to grow interest and involvement in Common Libraries with this borne in mind in looking ahead to the future.
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| - We are persuaded that there could be merit in exploring the potential for elements of libraries (specifically, library staff and users) to form Distributed Autonomous Organisations in future – reflecting, in particular, upon the pioneering work of the Ethereum Project and, related to that, Eris, by Project Douglas. Some technical aspects of the work needed to take this forward are already underway elsewhere, partly, as a result of our engaging a wider community of interest, but will need to be supported if they are to be rendered of direct relevance and interest to library staff and users in future."
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| [[Category:Intelligence]] | | [[Category:Intelligence]] |
= "prototyping the future of libraries", by Common Futures
URL = http://commonlibraries.cc/ [1]
Description
1.
""We believe there is an urgent and pressing need to evolve libraries so that they may serve as bastions of a 21st century knowledge commons, functioning as trusted and impartial platforms for the production, exchange and consumption of knowledge and know-how. We are therefore using our expertise in design, technology, community engagement and social enterprise to work closely with library service users and providers to that end. Our ultimate aim is to empower people to co-design and deliver new library services in our increasingly open source society, such that they are responsive to technological advancement and fast-changing local needs, as well as positioned to make the most of emergent socio-economic opportunities. The intention, then, is to revitalise the public library ethos and render library services more relevant, useful and sustainable in their appeal to (and involvement of) broad-ranging audiences in our digital age."
2.
" however, libraries are fast evolving to become what some have termed ‘read/write’ platforms that provide access to broad-ranging media as well as multi-media manipulation tools. The information with which they’re concerned increasingly includes data that is stored electronically, and library services themselves straddle the offline/online world.
The emergence of ‘library-hack-makerspaces’ is, then, very welcome – not least, insofar as they harbour the potential for STEAM skills development at the very heart of our communities, in keeping with libraries’ educational remit. And, yet, we’ve still to witness a thoroughgoing disruption of libraries’ twentieth century institutional boundaries – ideally, to establish knowledge production on an equal footing with knowledge consumption, reflecting the democratisation of the means of reproduction in the Western world. That is, we’ve still to see twenty-first century libraries established as bona fide peer-to-peer platforms for the purposes of facilitating knowledge exchange founded upon Commons principles.
We believe that library services should provide access to and enable development of a multimedia commons."
(http://commonlibraries.cc/about/)
More Information