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9/08/2006

School libraries of the future ?

Thanks to a colleague here at PLCMC, this interesting post about schools of the future and libraries crossed my path ...
"..what makes this school so different from the rest?

For one, each student has been given a smart-card-accessible locker, a Gateway-branded tablet PC, free access to wireless Internet at school, and broadband access at home. Instead of having a library, the school has the Interactive Learning Center. Stored in a database, books can be updated and modified to stay in sync with the latest information. This also means that information can easily be imported into the classroom, giving students an abundance of different viewpoints on specific topics. Every classroom has an interactive whiteboard that can communicate directly with students' laptops, making group-wide activities much easier."

Wow! How's that for fast-forward?

BTW: This article was posted on an internal blog that we are using here at PLCMC for a planning project on the furture of Information Services. And since I can't reference the blog here (it's behind a firewall), I can share my comments that I posted ...

I think this concept may be something that we see more and more of. The idea that a library is a "physical space" is a perception that people seem to have a hard idea getting beyond. And as more and more content becomes portable -- obviously this is how the furture school project sees it -- libraries will need to reinvent themselves more as virtual services that can be accessible anywhere.

What are your thoughts? Are libraries positioned well enough to move beyond any current perceptions of being only a "physical space" that our users may have?

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