The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

I was not available on the date of the live colloquy, but would like to add a couple of comments about that discussion here. I was delighted to see Deanna Marcum take note of those libraries experimenting with "Information Commons" en route to her concluding statement that "We must reconceptualize the library." As the author of an article in 1999 entitled "Conceptualizing an Information Commons," I obviously feel the two issues are closely related, and that IC's can and should become prototypes for adaptive institutional change. Ongoing reactions to that article from library managers around the world suggest that others are starting to share this view. I was also pleased to see Scott Carlson's comment that library instruction would be an excellent topic for the Chronicle to cover in the future. I'll soon be submitting a new article describing how IC's can be utilized as testbeds for library instruction, including online learning modalities and knowledge discovery systems. One crucial issue, however, seems to be whether this line of discussion and research can ever break out of the library literature into broader academic channels. Mr. Carlson's article was a promising and well-written step in that direction, but I fear that a presumptive focus on coffee bars threatens to follow and ultimately trivialize this very important issue. I love library coffee bars, but the types of realignments described in recent IC articles by myself and other authors may represent another order of organizational transformation.

: -- Donald Beagle, Director of Learning Resources; Belmont Abbey College (posted 1/11, 3:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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