Short description:

This volume examines the social, cultural, & political implications of the shift from print-based libraries to digital libraries--how library as place and library as space may be both contradictory & complimentary.

Long description:

This volume is the first to examine the social, cultural, and political implications of the shift from the traditional forms and functions of print-based libraries to the delivery of online information in educational contexts. Libr@ries are conceptualized as physical places, virtual spaces, communities of literate practice, and discourses of information work.

Despite the centrality of libraries in literacy and learning, the study of libraries has remained isolated within the disciplinary boundaries of information and library science since its inception in the early twentieth century. The aim of this book is to problematize and thereby mainstream this field of intellectual endeavor and inquiry. Collectively the contributors interrogate the presuppositions of current library practice, seek to understand how library as place and library as space blend together in ways that may be both contradictory and complementary, and envision new modes of information access and new multimodal literacies enabled by online environments.

Libr@ries: Changing Information Space and Practice is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and educators in the fields of literacy and multiliteracies education, communication technologies in education, library sciences, information and communication studies, media and cultural studies, and the sociology of computer-mediated space.

"That information is the vital element in a 'new' politics and economy linking space, knowledge, and capital is the central theme and premise of this provocative and compelling [volume]....This is a vital collection to be read not only by teachers, libraries, and academics of all persuasions, but also, more broadly, by the general reading public."
&&&8212;Michael A. Peters
University of Glasgow, From the Foreword

Table of Contents:

Contents: M.A. Peters, Foreword. Introduction. C. Kapitzke, B.C. Bruce, Rewriting Libraries: Space, Knowledge, and Capital. Part I: Arobase Space. N.C. Burbules, Digital Libraries as Virtual Spaces. S. Boyce, Literacy Spaces--Library Design. M. Dressman, S. Tettegah, Ordered by Desire: School Libraries in Past and Present Times. J. Schmidt, From Library to Cybrary: Changing the Focus of Library Design and Service Delivery. A.A. Goodrum, Surrogation, Mediation, and Collaboration: Access to Digital Images in Cultural Heritage Institutions. Part II: Arobase Knowledge. J. Hunter, Next Generation Metadata Tools: Supporting Dynamic Knowledge Bases. D. Rooney, U. Schneider, Knowledge Management and Research in Cybraries. L. Barwick, N. Thieberger, Cybraries in Paradise: New Technologies and Ethnographic Repositories. C. Kapitzke, Redefining Libraries by Rethinking Research. Part III: Arobase Capital. J. Willinsky, The Scholarly Wing of the Public Cybrary and the Right to Know. T.W. Luke, The Politics and Philosophy of E-Text: Use Value, Sign Value, and Exchange Value in the Transition From Print to Digital Media. M.L. Kornbluh, M. Shell-Weiss, P. Turnbull, Alternatives to Pay-for-View: The Case for Open Access to Historical Research and Scholarship. B. Fabos, Search Engine Anatomy: The Industry and Its Commercial Structure. P. Graham, Monopoly, Monopsony, and the Value of Culture in a Digital Age: An Axiology of Two Multimedia Resource Repositories. B. Fitzgerald, Structuring Open Access to Knowledge: The Creative Commons Story. B.C. Bruce, C. Kapitzke, The Arobase in the Library--The Library in Society.