Lessons from the information commons frontier

The spontaneous appearance of facilities and services termed “Information Commons” in many major academic libraries across North America represents a significant new trend which is likely to grow in coming years. Don Beagle has correctly identified the key features of this multifaceted concept in his article “Designing an Information Commons,” and has posed very relevant questions in his section on service patterns for institutions considering these kind of new designs. In this brief commentary, it may be helpful to provide some perspectives on these questions resulting from an implementation of the Information Commons concept at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. These perspectives may clarify some issues, but also raise new problematic challenges for libraries adopting this new paradigm. Emory University recently designe