Toolkit for Creating Smart Spaces
Libraries have evolved over the past few years to augment their role in providing lifelong learning for their communities. They have shifted from passive to active engagement with community members. They are becoming hubs of collaborative learning, providing space and services where people of all ages can participate in hands-on activities, explore and solve problems together, and strengthen social bonds.
WebJunction offers this toolkit to help you re-envision your library’s place as a center of community learning. Get ideas to reconfigure your physical space and reimagine your services to promote active and participatory learning. These resources were developed to guide small and rural libraries through a transformation process in the Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces program, but they are valuable for libraries of any size.
The toolkit resources are “grab and go” –short articles or videos to increase your skills and knowledge in micro steps just when you need it. If you’d like a longer, guided investigation of these topics, we invite you take the three-course series Making Space for Active Learning in Your Library.
Toolkit for Creating Smart Spaces
What do you want to learn about designing inviting learning library spaces and delivering participatory services?
Do you want to…?
- Understand active learning and community-driven spaces
- Discover community needs and interests
- Find community collaborators and partners
- Translate community needs and expand possibilities
- Rethink use of physical space
- Test ideas with prototyping
- Create and implement a project plan
- Activate your space with programming
- Sustain your smart space efforts
- General resources on design thinking and transformation
Photo: Teen Smart Space at Cornwall Public Library, NY. Used with permission.
The Smart Libraries Create Smart Spaces project was made possible by support from OCLC and a National Leadership Grant (project number LG-80-16-0039-16) from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Association for Rural and Small Libraries was implementation partner for the project.
