Hutton

By Jenny Shank

Public libraries are a major hub for Americans to gain access to e-books and other digital resources. But the nation’s recent economic troubles and the transition to digital books are creating major difficulties for these public institutions.

Last month, the American Library Association released its annual State of America’s Libraries Report, and many of its findings were grim. “Public libraries continue to be battered by a national economy whose recovery from the Great Recession is proving to be sluggish at best,” the report concluded. Twenty-three of the 49 chief officers of state libraries surveyed indicated that their library systems faced budget cuts over the past two years. “For three years in a row, more than 40 percent of participating states have reported decreased public library funding,” the report states.

While library budget cuts continue, demand for library services has soared. Lower income and unemployed patrons often turn to local libraries as their only source of Internet access.

At the same time, libraries have sought to accommodate Americans’ ever-increasing demand for access to digital materials, a mission that has put them at odds with the publishing industry, which is struggling to retain its viability as many American readers shift toward reading books electronically and purchasing those titles from online retailers rather than traditional bookstores.

“In the end, it will be a matter of leadership and vision that will guide libraries through the current conditions,” said Jorge Martinez, director of Information Systems for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which supports libraries through grants.

SPARRING OVER E-BOOKS

One of the biggest challenges libraries face in this new digital age is the friction in their relationship with publishers, caused largely by the advent of e-books.

Publishers argue that borrowing a printed book from a library requires a patron to physically visit the building and then return a few weeks later to bring it back, which is more difficult than purchasing it from an online retailer. When libraries allow patrons to download e-books through one click on a website, the convenience factor that might drive a reader to purchase a book is eliminated. Penguin Group recently blocked Kindle owners from the ability to download library e-books directly from their devices — now they must transfer the e-book from the library site to a computer, and then to a Kindle.

Just as printed books wear out after a lot of use, some publishers require libraries to re-purchase the electronic version of popular books after a certain number of patrons view it. HarperCollins allows each copy of its e-books to be loaned up to 26 times, which a recent press release from the American Library Association described as “arbitrary.” The libraries then must buy the book again at a lower price.

Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin do not sell e-book versions of their titles to libraries, while Hachette refuses to sell its newest e-books to libraries. Although many small presses allow unlimited e-book access to libraries, Random House is the only one of the “Big Six” publishers to do so — and it recently increased its prices significantly, “by 100-200% in March 2012,” according to the ALA’s new report.

Most e-books come with embedded software that creates restrictions on how they can be used, such as allowing only one library patron to borrow each copy at a time. However, on April 25, Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of Macmillan that specializes in science fiction and other genres, announced that its entire catalog of books will be offered without DRM (digital rights management) software by July.

“Library organizations are intimately involved in the ongoing discussions about digital rights management systems and some of the copyright issues associated with e-books,” said Michael Crandall, senior lecturer and chair of the Master of Science in Information Management Program at the University of Washington’s Information School. “This is an area that will continue to evolve as the market becomes more widespread, since it impacts the way people use and share their books with each other and the way libraries are able to purchase and lend e-books.”

Knight’s Martinez said, “It will take a few years for the dust to settle. Laws and contracts always seem to lag behind new technological innovations. But, it will get settled. Librarians, library service organizations, and others are engaged in trying to make sure the eventual terms and conditions for the use of digital books are ones that are fair to all involved.”

For the moment, however, nothing is settled, as two industries with their backs against the wall struggle to reach a compromise.

E-READER PETTING ZOOS, DIGITAL BOOKMOBILES

Despite libraries’ impasse with publishers over restricted e-book use, many are forging ahead in the digital realm, offering patrons new services.

According to the ALA’s recent report, “The proportion of U.S. libraries that made e-books available almost doubled over the past five years, climbing from 38.3 percent in 2007 to 67.2 percent in 2011.”

Samantha Becker, the research project manager of the U.S. IMPACT Study at the University of Washington’s Information School, noted, “The technology environment in libraries has provided a wonderful opportunity to preserve collections and enhance access to them through digitization, which many libraries are doing with out-of-print and local collections or digital artifacts. The Washington Rural Heritage project is a wonderful example.”

That project allows users to search and access digital versions of material from libraries, heritage organizations, and private collections throughout the state of Washington. The Denver Public Library’s Western History Department offers a similar resource for photographs, documents, and other materials related to the American West.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

A recent Pew Research Center report uncovered a digital divide in the use of e-books. People less likely to use e-books include Hispanics, those without a high school diploma, the unemployed, rural Americans, and those with household incomes of less than $30,000.

“Without libraries, the division would be even greater, since for many people they serve as the only access point for digital information and services,” Crandall said. “Our study of library computer use found that for 22 percent of library computer users (age 14 and older), the library was their only source for access to computers and the Internet. This would suggest that similar restricted access would apply to e-books without libraries in the mix.”

Martinez noted that libraries are finding creative ways to meet demand despite budget challenges. “In Philadelphia they are placing equipment and trainers in community organizations to make these valuable services available to their patrons at these sites, even when their regular locations are closed due to budget cutbacks,” he said. “In other places, they have recreated the old bookmobile as mobile digital centers that take training, computers and Internet access to parts of their communities where there are no [library] buildings.”

A recent Op-Ed put out by the Knight, Gates, and MacArthur foundations cited several other innovative uses of library resources:

“Bookmobiles have been supplemented by mobile computer labs — visiting minority communities in St. Paul to teach digital literacy classes in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, for example. In Dover, Mass., the library has installed QR codes around town that link signs at the market and playground to community information and services. Seattle Public Library offers live chats with librarians 24 hours a day getting answers to reference questions and live homework help.”

It also mentioned an initiative at the main Chicago library called YOUmedia that “lets any teen with a city library card have in-house access to computers plus video and audio recording equipment to create their own content with the help of a mentor. At another YOUmedia space in Miami, workshops help teens think critically and creatively about their lives, by teaching them to publish an autobiographical digital story, or to visualize their favorite books.”

Becker said that libraries are working hard to provide access to e-reading materials, as well as helping patrons enter into the e-reading marketplace by exposing them to e-reading devices through lending and device “petting zoos,” and by helping them learn to use new devices in classes and one-on-one sessions with librarians.

Crandall said his study found that two-thirds of the library computer users asked a librarian for help in using the technology. “The ability to use the new technology may seem intuitive to many,” he said, “but clearly for many others it is not, and having a community resource that is able to help people understand how to use digital technology and information, and why they might want to use it to improve the quality of their lives is something that libraries have taken on as a transformation of their traditional mission.”

Martinez said the Knight Foundation’s library funding will focus on “innovative projects and leaders that help to show what the library of tomorrow should be.”

The mission and responsibilities of libraries may be in flux due to Americans’ ever-increasing use of digital information sources, but Becker points out that it’s the same as it ever was: “Libraries have long been at the front lines of providing people with access to new formats for reading and new technology, whether when switching from scrolls to the familiar book format, to newer trends in e-reading.”

Jenny Shank is the author of the novel “The Ringer” (The Permanent Press, 2011), a finalist for the Reading the West Book Awards. Her fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Poets & Writers Magazine, Bust, Dallas Morning News, High Country News and The Onion.

The article was originally published by PBS MediaShift, covering the intersection of media and technology. Follow @PBSMediaShift for Twitter updates, or join us on Facebook.

Irene Romsa

Poudre River Public Library District's Community Mural

Arguably, those who believe a public library is simply a repository of print books haven’t been to a public library lately. Here at MindShift, we’ve been covering the ways in which the library is evolving to change the demands of digital technologies and of its patrons: libraries are becoming learning labs, innovation centers, and makerspaces.

Of course, the public library has always been a community center as much as a place to go to check out books to read, so the new extensions of the library’s service may not be so far afield from the institution’s mission to provide access to information. Even so, much of the emphasis has been on literacy — reading and writing, digital and analog — and not on other forms of creativity.

But three graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies have launched a project that points to another important way in which libraries play a key role in their communities. The Library as Incubator Project highlights some of the ways in which libraries and local artists can work together.

I spoke with Erinn Batykefer, Laura Damon-Moore, and Christina Endres about the project.

Q. What was the inspiration for the Library as Incubator Project?

Laura Damon-Moore: The inspiration for the project came from several places. One was an article in the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries’ magazine, written by Madison artist and curator Martha Glowacki. Martha uses library research and spaces frequently in the development of her

creative work. We wanted to learn more about how other artists use libraries in their work, and how the “library experience” might be enhanced for artists. Another important piece of the inspiration for the project came up at the end of our first semester of library school. Professor (now Emerita) Louise Robbins spoke about the need for advocacy to infuse everything that we do as library students and future librarians. Lastly, the three of us have an interest in the arts anhelp engage the communities we all will be serving some day. These pieces came together over the course of about a semester to form the basis for the project as it exists today.

Q. How does the project work?

Laura Damon-Moore: A good place to start answering this question is to talk about the website, which serves as our “hub” for the Library as Incubator Project. The three of us all work to find and manage the content for the website. With the website, the goals are:

• To highlight artists and writers who currently use libraries as “incubators” for their creative work. This ranges from using a book or other library item as a source of inspiration (like book artist Carol Chase Bjerke, or poet Rita Mae Reese) to artists who use library spaces to show/perform their work (like the Dark Carols Cycle, which premiered at the LA Public Library, or Brandon Monokian, a theater artist who works with teens on the Page to Stage project).
• To highlight libraries and librarians who are promoting the arts – and the use of their libraries for artistic endeavors – in innovative ways. So, offering artists a space to create or install artwork, like the BOOKLESS project here at Madison Public Library’s (now empty) central branch. Or the series of workshops at the Washington, DC Public Library called The Creative Class, which uses library materials as inspiration for craft projects.
• To provide resources for librarians and artists. These range from art education resources, like a link to the Kennedy Center’s ArtsEdge network or our program kit library, to tips on how to use resources like Freegal, a music checkout program, or the British Library’s Newspaper Archive.

We are also quite active on the social media scene, with Twitter (@IArtLibraries) and Facebook. Social media allows us to interact and connect with people all over the world, and is how we’ve been finding a lot of the people/libraries we highlight.

Q. What would your response be to those who’d say that this project falls outside the mission of the library?

Laura Damon-Moore: Few would argue the fact that one mission of “the library” is to provide its community with information. I would argue against the idea that information can only be found in books, or journal articles. Arts programming in libraries is just a different way of presenting information. For example, if a library has an art gallery or even some free wall space, a local watercolor artist may want to display their work. The library can not only provide the space for a professional or non-professional artist to show their work, but can also create a book display on watercolor techniques and perhaps famous examples of watercolor artwork. Furthermore, a lot of arts programming allows community members to not only consume but create as well. So, with our watercolor example, perhaps the artist is invited to host a workshop or class on watercolor painting. Community members become active, not passive, participants in the information cycle.

Christina Endres: The goals of many public libraries include statements about community enrichment and providing support for lifelong learning. I would say that providing support for the arts and a place for the public to create and enjoy art directly serves those missions. By promoting and supporting the arts, a library can help create a more creative and expressive community, and allow those without access to art education or art museums to participate and learn in this creative community.

Erinn Batykefer: I would say, “Get thee to a library!,” because it’s pretty clear you don’t understand the mission! The reductive view a lot of people– and lawmakers– have about libraries is that they are about books. Libraries’ mission isn’t about books. It never has been. Libraries collect and loan books in response to their mission, which is much broader. Read the Library Bill of Rights, and you’ll see that libraries are concerned with free access to information of all types for all people– no matter who they are or what they are interested in learning. In fact, Article VI specifically states that “VI. Libraries that make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the

public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.” In this article, it’s not only implicit that libraries are likely to have both exhibit and meeting spaces, it’s also understood that the broad goal of free access to information for all– which is the basis of library service as a public good– translates to lifelong learning and community building. No one would question the validity of children’s art programming at a library as an important component of early literacy education. Yet somehow, once you’re an adult, libraries are just about books.

That attitude is so limiting!

And I think it’s the crux of the argument you hear a lot these days, which is “Everything’s online; libraries are dead.” That’s only true if you think libraries are only about books and other physical materials. But they’re not. They’re about digital materials, and free access to the Internet–especially important in places where not everyone is so fortunate to have a connection in their home– and they’re about self-directed, life-long learning. That includes the arts! And at a time when arts budgets–from local schools all the way up to the NEA– are being gutted for the same myopic reasons that library budgets are slashed, arts education is suffering; We’re shortchanging an entire generation of Americans who may never spend an hour painting or writing or acting, or doing any creative endeavor as part of a formal education.

We believe the library can and does have the capacity to fill that educational gap. Even in places where the arts are supported, the library is a place where you can learn what you want to learn, not what you have to learn. There is a wonderful video circulating the internet right now: Chrystie Hill’s TedxRanier talk about the future of libraries. It’s a worthwhile view, in my opinion, because in it, she addresses a lot of the concerns that come up with these kinds of library mission / future of libraries questions. She asks “When everything is online, why go to the library at all?” And her answer is one that points to community building more than anything: “The library of the future… is not about storing books. Well what is it? We get to decide. We get to do what we want. And everything is allowed.”

Q. What’s next for the project?

Laura Damon-Moore: Probably the biggest thing we are working on is setting up some type of funding system, so that we can sustain the project once the three of us have graduated. We are hoping to expand the project and right now we are working many, many hours/week on a volunteer basis. We are submitting grant proposals, talking about a donation system for the website, and are in the discussion stages of moving toward non-profit status. We want to keep the website ad-free, but also be able to continue our work – and so we’re working hard to make this possible.

We are also working from an organizational standpoint to make sure that the project will be sustainable after we graduate and (likely) move away from the same city. Luckily we have a lot of people happy to talk with us about getting ourselves organized, setting up a manageable workflow, etc. We seriously hope that we’ll have some internships available in the coming year!

The co-founders of the project don’t just want to be talking about what other libraries are doing, but actively engaging in and assisting with programs and events ourselves. We have several exciting projects on the horizon, including an art exhibition of works based on materials from the University Archives here at UW; what we’re calling “incubaTOURs” of campus libraries specifically geared toward student and community artists; and, of course, our involvement with BOOKLESS, an awesome library fundraiser for the Madison Public Library. We only hope to add to our personal involvement in these and other creative projects, particularly as we set off on our own adventures as library professionals!

A major goal of ours is to continue to develop program kits for libraries to use. We would love to expand some of our kits to be in line with what arts educators in schools and after-school programs are doing – particularly as many arts programs are under attack budget-wise. We hope to work with some arts educators to help libraries fill in where there are gaps in the arts education system, especially in under-resourced communities.

Flickr:Paul Lowry

By Laurie Putnam

The public library hums. Readers peruse e-books and job seekers attend workshops. Teens organize poetry slams, and students work together on school assignments. Librarians plan programs, help researchers online, and digitize collections of all shapes and sizes. All around the world, today’s libraries are serving their communities in new and different ways.

But is that enough for tomorrow’s library?

We do need to promote modern, relevant services in our current libraries, says Rob Bruijnzeels, founder and rector of the Dutch LibrarySchool. For the long term, however, Bruijnzeels believes that libraries need more than modernizing: They need rethinking, and they need librarians who think differently.

“We can’t just refresh the library of the twentieth century anymore. There is so much more going on now,” says Bruijnzeels. “We think we need a new kind of public library, a new process for public libraries. We need something completely different. What it is, we don’t know for sure, but let’s have a try.”

To give us a collective try, Bruijnzeels started the LibrarySchool, a new university program designed to educate a new wave of librarians. It’s both an academic program and an incubator of ideas.

While no one knows quite what the library of the 21st century will be, the faculty and students at the LibrarySchool aren’t afraid to experiment. In times of radical change, they believe, old paradigms no longer apply. Rapid cultural, technological, and societal shifts are changing how people consume information and use libraries.

In the Netherlands, dramatic budget cuts have threatened the closure of one-third of the nation’s public libraries. And with a large percentage of librarians nearing retirement, a significant shift in the makeup of library staff is imminent. Many in the library community are looking for new ideas.

The LibrarySchool aims to cultivate those ideas. Several years in the making, shaped by an intensive pilot program that helped define the curriculum, the LibrarySchool opened in September 2011. A collaborative program of the Netherlands Open University and major Dutch public libraries, the LibrarySchool is supported by corporate sponsorships.

Dutch librarians are typically trained in undergraduate programs, and until now, no Dutch university offered a master’s degree that focused on public libraries. Offering a new opportunity for advanced study, the LibrarySchool is designed as a training ground for innovators. It’s a place where people who currently work in libraries can look at the broader context of culture, technology, and society, and see new roles for the library. A place where they can create and share ideas, try them out in their libraries, and encourage others to do the same.

Librarianship “used to be about building your collection, cataloging it, and making it accessible to people,” says Bruijnzeels. “Today those three things are completely different from when most library schools were designed. In our school we want to look for a new process, which is about imagination, technology, and participation. These days the public library might start with the books on the shelves and the e-books, but it’s really about content and context and meaning and sharing information, which are completely different processes from what we learned 25 to 30 years ago.”

RESHUFFLING OUR BRAINS

The LibrarySchool merges learning, working, and innovating in a new kind of university program. Coursework moves into the library, where experiments are tested, and the library infiltrates the classroom, as colleagues join discussions and ideas are debated. Guest speakers from other disciplines bring alternative perspectives. “School” becomes an open learning network.

Students bring assorted cultural and professional backgrounds, focusing a powerful mix of qualities, experiences, and skills on the future of libraries. The inaugural class is made up of nine students, young librarians entering the profession with fresh energy mingling with dedicated librarians, midcareer, who say, “We want to learn more and reshuffle our brains,” according to Bruijnzeels. They come from public libraries small and large across the Netherlands and Belgium, where they continue to work in professional positions while they participate in the LibrarySchool program part-time.

All begin with a required one-year certificate that addresses core themes:

• The library and culture, which examines the role of the public library as a cultural institution in an era of changing cultural values.
• The library and technology, which looks at opportunities to add value to learning, knowledge, and libraries through new technologies.
• The library and society, which explores the past, present, and future role of the library in a participatory society.
• The library and organization, which focuses on management and operational aspects of dynamic environments.

Courses are taught in Dutch, by Open University professors, through a distance learning system. After completing the certificate program, students may continue for two more years and earn their choice of several master’s degrees, depending on their specializations. Student research interests have led to the possibility of adding a PhD program as well.

Every two months, students, faculty, and guest speakers come together in Amsterdam to discuss the future of libraries. The sessions create a “free space” that gives students an opportunity to share what they’re learning and enhances coursework with guest lectures, workshops, and discussions.

“We always ask the big ‘Why?’ questions,” says Bruijnzeels. “Why is this important? What do you want to do with it in your professional life?” Students and faculty learn from one another. Both learn from guest experts from arts and other cultural institutions who share their own experience of adapting to societal change.

The biggest challenge, says Bruijnzeels, is to transfer knowledge and inspiration back into the working libraries rather than letting them rest within the student or the school. To this end, each student takes on an innovation project that can be explored at the LibrarySchool and developed in his or her own library. By working with two or three “study buddies” at their libraries, students are able to share their thinking and learning in the workplace. Study buddies, like LibrarySchool alumni, are also welcome to participate in free-space activities.

CREATING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION

The ultimate goal is to infuse today’s libraries with new ways of thinking. “We hope this library school will create real true core innovators for public libraries,” says Bert Mulder, curator of the LibrarySchool’s free space, in a recent appearance on the Dutch program This Week in Libraries. These are “people who are able to be change agents, people who are able to see long-term developments, and then take those and translate them into valid library solutions.” People who can help libraries create a culture of innovation. Sustainable innovation.

Bruijnzeels plans to enroll 15 students a year, and eventually to engage each of the 140 Dutch public libraries in some form of LibrarySchool activity. Within the next three years, he hopes to have a clear view of “the role of public libraries in this century based on what’s happening now, the impact that will have on the profile of the librarian, and what that means for the education of librarians.”

As the school models the qualities in aims to instill in its students—collaborative partnering, continuous learning and innovation, and active participation—that view will be a dynamic one. The learning will continue as libraries continue to evolve. “Once you are a student of the LibrarySchool,” says Bruijnzeels, “you are always a student of the LibrarySchool.”

Laurie L. Putnam is a California-based teacher, librarian, and communications consultant. She blogs at Next Libraries.

Flickr:Toolstop

By Jon Kalish, NPR

As information becomes more digital, public libraries are striving to redefine their roles. A small number are working to create “hackerspaces,” where do-it-yourselfers share sophisticated tools and their expertise.

The Allen County Public Library, which serves the city of Fort Wayne, Ind., has a modest hackerspace inside a trailer in its parking lot. Library director Jeff Krull says hosting it is consistent with the library’s mission.

“We see the library as not being in the book business, but being in the learning business and the exploration business and the expand-your-mind business,” he says. “We feel this is really in that spirit, that we provide a resource to the community that individuals would not be able to have access to on their own.”

The 50-foot trailer is known as the Maker Station and belongs to TekVenture, an educational nonprofit that had struggled to find a building it could afford before it was approached by the library. TekVenture signed an agreement with the library to operate in its parking lot for a year. TekVenture President Greg Jacobs says this partnership made sense.

“The library is a well-established, respectable institution in the area. The library is used by everybody,” he says. “Regardless of your stripe in society, you’re going to use library facilities.”

The Allen County facility includes a CNC router, a computer-controlled power tool that cuts wood, plastic and some metals. The Maker Station also has a lathe, scroll and band saws, an electronics bench and an injection molding machine, which makes objects by heating up recycled plastic chips.

Like any hackerspace worth its salt, it has a 3-D printer, which can produce plastic objects based on a computer file. In recent years, there’s been some chatter on the librarian blogs about the rise of 3-D printing. Meg Backus has a blog about “interventionist librarianship” and teaches a course at Syracuse University called “Innovations in Public Libraries.”

“People in the library world have noticed that 3-D printers would be a fit for libraries or that libraries should be paying attention to this technology and how it develops, because this could be a really big deal,” Backus says. “I’d be completely surprised if we don’t all have 3-D printers in 20 years.”

There’s already a 3-D printer, donated by a local computer store, in the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York. Not only that, the library was recently awarded $10,000 for the creation of a hackerspace. Lauren Smedley, 29, is the librarian responsible for winning the grant and raising $3,500 in pledges for the hackerspace on the website IndieGoGo.

Smedley walks a visitor into an unoccupied wing of her library with 10-foot-high ceilings. She explains that this was once the home of the Stickley furniture factory.

“People used to make things in this very room, and we’re going to offer this community the opportunity to once again make things here,” she says. “And it’s just a thrill. It’s really exciting.”

Smedley is calling the Fayetteville hackerspace the “Fabulous Laboratory.” It will have about 8,000 square feet and be equipped with a number of sophisticated, computer-controlled power tools. This Fabulous Laboratory may not seem out of place in a library that has a cafe, video-gaming stations and iPads available for checkout, and regular author appearances via Skype.

“I really envision this space being a place for people to come and tinker and explore,” she says. “We’re really looking to have a peer-to-peer training that has proven effective in maker spaces, really, across the world, with some facilitation from the library staff. It’s really whatever the community wants to use it for is how we’ll support it.”

The library is expecting a grant from the state of New York to renovate the wing for the hackerspace and a business incubation center.

Meg Backus teaches a course on “Innovation in Public Libraries” with colleague Thomas Gokey. They put together this video to explain more about 3-D printing and hackerspaces.

http://youtu.be/HCXlJ36x-q0

This story originally appeared on NPR.org. Read a related story about the reimagined public library in Fayetville.

Flickr: Nathan Lewis

By Nick Pandolfo

Buffy Hamilton, who calls herself “The Unquiet Librarian,” holds the phone receiver away from her ear at Creekview High School library in Canton, Ga., revealing a cacophony of noise in the background.

“It sounds like that a lot of the time,” says Hamilton, who welcomes what she calls “the hum of learning”—students talking about projects, watching videos and even singing “Happy Birthday.”

In 2009, Hamilton began re-imagining her role as a librarian at this new high public high school of 1,800 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In her new role, Hamilton focuses on enhancing lessons and class projects with tools of the digital world to access, organize and evaluate information.

Her job “is really about helping teachers and students explore new mediums for learning,” Hamilton says. “So that’s been a big shift.”

Creekview High School’s media center looks and sounds nothing like the silent libraries of the past. The new emphasis on collaborative learning and the use of digital tools to produce dynamic research projects lead to a louder, more hands-on environment that can prove beneficial to students later on in college. Hamilton says graduates have returned to thank her because their digital skills are more advanced than those of their classmates.

Hamilton’s transformation of the library’s role in this middle-class suburb evolved from her exposure to research and thinking by R. David Lankes, director of the master’s program in library and information science at Syracuse University, and Henry Jenkins, head of the comparative media studies program at MIT, among others, regarding the ways that digital natives learn through communication and collaboration. Her model challenges students to think more independently and go beyond a Google search to use digital media tools to deepen their researching, understanding and presentation of a topic.

The shift to a noisier and more interactive library model is relatively new in U.S. public school systems. Some examples are evident at universities and private schools in Georgia, New York and California, all of which have taken a lead in transforming their libraries. In Massachusetts, the Cushing Academy, a private boarding school for high-school students, gave away its collection of over 20,000 books two years ago and transformed its library into a digital center with e-books and searchable databases.

“I don’t think it’s a commonplace kind of model,” Hamilton says. “There are certainly pockets, but right now it’s piecemeal at best.”

Nick Pandolfo / Hechinger Report

At Creekview, one class worked on a class-based project called Media 21, co-taught by Hamilton and  tenth-grade English teacher Susan Lester. In a yearlong digital project, they were encouraged to do everything from create a multimedia report on troops in Afghanistan to compile a reference list using free information-organizing web services like Evernote and Netvibes.

Students also frequently use LibGuides, a web-based, knowledge-sharing system that allows them to contribute their research to a web document that is shared with others at the school. Students create YouTube videos, podcasts and original content from the research they conduct.

While veteran teachers have embraced the more interactive and project-based approach to learning, Hamilton has met with some resistance, most of it from unexpected sources like newer teachers or honors and Advanced Placement students who may be used to a more traditional, test-driven style of learning.

Hamilton seems to be redefining what it means to be a librarian. She’s active on Twitter, maintains a blog about being a “modern school librarian” and frequently travels around the country and world to speak about her model. Creekview’s was the only school-based library that won a 2011 American Library Association award for having a cutting-edge technology service, Media 21, that could be replicated by other school libraries around the country.

Hamilton thinks more school systems could adopt Creekview’s library model, as many of the Web 2.0 technologies she employs, such as Evernote and Netvibes, are free. Schools must have the necessary hardware of networked computers and laptops, though, along with someone like Hamilton to train teachers and students on how to use the new tools.

The noisy library model is nothing new for the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, a progressive private institution in New York City for K-12 students where tuition costs more than $30,000 a year.

Little Red’s middle school librarian Jennifer Hubert Swan says the school’s curriculum is based on group-project learning, and as a result she’s had a library full of noise for her entire 12-year tenure.

Swan believes the louder, more digitally centered model—in which collaboration and conversation are encouraged, and kids use iPad apps, LibGuides and other tools to complete multimedia assignments—will soon be the norm.

“People are uncomfortable because it’s a ‘big C’ change, but I don’t think there’s any stopping it,” Swan said. “I think it’s progress. Not accepting it is just going to make teachers, librarians and the kids that they teach less relevant in the workplace.”

This post originally appeared on The Hechinger Report.

Fayetteville Free Library, by Lauren Smedley

You’ll hear a lot of talk about the “death of the public library” these days. It isn’t simply the perpetual budget crises that many face either. It’s the move to digital literature, and the idea that once there are no more print books (or rather if there are no more print books), the library as an institution will cease to exist.

Librarians will remind you, of course, that a library is much more than a book repository. It’s an information center (free and open information, I should add). It’s an educational center. It’s a digital access center. It’s a community center. It’s fairly clear when you describe the library like this that none of these roles are going away (nor should they), no matter what format our reading habits may move to.

But these new formats will indeed change libraries — how they operate as well as how they look. As our books become digitized, there may be less need for row upon of bookshelves. And as such, that’s a great opportunity for libraries to re-think how to use that space.

Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine’s Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking “Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make ‘techshops’?” In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created (such as General Assembly which we covered yesterday) and become “hackerspaces” or “makerspaces”?

“Yes!”, says librarian Lauren Smedley, who is in the process of creating what might just be the first maker-space within a U.S. public library. The Fayetteville Free Library where Smedley works is building a Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — that will provide free public access to machines and software for manufacturing and making things.

Lauren Smedley, assembling the MakerBot

So far, the Fab Lab is equipped with a MakerBot, a 3D printer that lets you “print” plastic pieces of your own design. The potential for 3D printers to revolutionize manufacturing as we know it is huge: imagine being able to design and then manufacture — or “print” — whatever you want. Moreoever, imagine the tools of manufacturing being in the hands of everyone, not just giant factories (and remember, since this is a public library, this is really putting the technology in the hands of everyone, not just those that can afford a membership at a traditional hackerspace).

Smedley says she plans on adding other equipment as well, including a CNC Router and a laser cutter. Smedley helped her library win a $10,000 innovation grant at the recent Contact Summit in New York and is also raising money via an Indiegogo campaign. She’s reaching out to local science teachers, as well as encouraging those already active in area hackerspaces and makerspaces to get involved. Her plans also include offering free classes and programs for the community, including Introduction to 3D Printing, 3D design software training, computer programming, and Geek Girl Camps.

Lauren Smedley

The Fayetteville Free Library is actually housed in part in an old furniture factory, so the site already has a “history of making,” says Smedley. But as a new-to-the-profession librarian herself, Smedley has been thinking a lot about “innovation in public libraries”: what belongs in a 21st century library? What should a 21st century library look like? What resources should it offer?

Smedley says she wants to prove that libraries aren’t just about books. They are about free access to information and to technology — and not just to reading books or using computers, but actually building and making things.