Editorial Board Thoughts: Rise of the Innovation Commons

That the practice of libraries and librarianship is changing is an understatement. Throughout their history, libraries have adapted and evolved to better meet the needs of the communities served. From content collected and/or archived, to facilities and services provided, a constant throughout has been the adoption, incorporation, and eventual transition away from technologies along the way: clay tablets and papyrus scrolls giving way to the codex; the printing press and eventual mass production and collection of books yielding to Information Communication Technology such as computer workstations and the Internet. Indeed, the rapid and widespread adoption of the Internet has enabled entire topologies of information to change--morphing from ponderous print tomes into digital databases, effectively escaping the walls of libraries and archives altogether. (1) In reflection of end-users' growing preference for easily accessible digital materials, libraries have responded with the creation of new spaces and services. Repositioning physical, digital, human, and social resources to better meet the needs of the communities supported, the information commons (2) that is the library begins to acquire a more technological edge. The concept of a library service or area referred to specifically as an information commons can be traced to as early as 1992 with the opening of the Information Arcade at the University of Iowa--specifically designed to provide end-users technology tools, with a stated mission "to facilitate the integration of new technology into teaching, learning, and research, by promoting the discovery of new ways to access, gather, organize, analyze, manage, create, record, and transmit information." (3) First mentioned in the literature in 1994, discussion of the idea itself waited another five years, with Donald Beagle writing about the theoretical underpinnings of "the new service delivery model" in 1999. Defined as "a cluster of network access points and associated IT tools situated in the context of physical, digital, human, and social resources organized in support of learning." A flurry of articles followed, with the idea seeming to have caught the collective imagination of libraries generally by 2004. Information commons as named spaces within libraries made " ... sudden, dramatic, and widespread appearance in academic and research libraries across the country and around the world." (4) Scott Bennett went further, in 2008 asking flatly: "who would today build or renovate an academic library without including an information commons?" (5) This proliferation and transition has not been limited to academic libraries; for decades, libraries of all type, shape, and size, have been similarly provisioning resources and technology in the context of end-user access and learning. By 2006, a new variation of the information commons had entered the vernacular: the learning commons. Defined by Beagle as the result of information commons resources "organized in collaboration with learning initiatives sponsored by other academic units, or aligned with learning outcomes defined through a cooperative process." (6) A subset of the broader concept, when the library collaborates with stakeholders external to the library to collaboratively achieve academic learning outcomes, it becomes operationally a learning commons. One can easily conceive of the learning commons more broadly by considering learning outcomes desirable within the context of particular library types: school libraries with offerings and programs in alignment with broader K-12 curricula; public libraries in support of lifelong learning and participatory citizenship; special libraries in alignment with other niche-specific learning outcomes. Note that not all information commons are learning commons. As defined, the learning commons depends on the actions and involvement of other units that establish the mission, and associated learning goals, of the institution. …