A Field Guide to the Information Commons

By Charles Forrest, Forrest/Halbert, 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 response: 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810861003
• ISBN13: 9780810861008
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.9" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 22 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher