2.1 The Interactive Library as a Virtual Working Space

The internet and the new digital media are challenging the traditional organization of academic libraries and enable new capabilities of information provisioning as well as new shapes of collaborations between the librarians and the users. To pick up the demands and the expectations of the many users, whose information behavior is heavily influenced by the internet, a new organization model for academic libraries should be created. The aim of the project “The interactive library as a virtual working space” is to analyze and to identify the organizational and technical requirements for the future model for libraries, which is based on the digital potential of the internet and the digital media. The result of the project, which we want to work out, will be a pilot study about the interactive, virtual library as the future organization for libraries from the following background. The logistic of printed books and journals is influencing all the processes and structures of libraries since the age of Gutenberg. These processes like acquisition, cataloging, circulation, short- and long term availability are based on linear, operational structures just concerning the library. However the logistic patterns of digital materials are collaborative, interactive, multimedia and networked globally. Even in so called digital libraries the organization and workflows of libraries are related to the traditional patterns still. Picking up the potential of the digitization we are in the situation, to shape the future library model as an interactive virtual working space. The Digital Public Library of America, the German Digital Library, the Europeana, the HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, and many other hubs and platforms like Google Scholar, Mendeley and Wikipedia are not interactive libraries in principle. But these information hubs and data platforms demonstrate collaborative and interactive approaches, components and procedures of virtual working spaces, which digital libraries are determined to be developed to. The working packages for the pilot study are: (1) Analyzing the organization models of selected data and information platforms (private/public) by defined criteria, (2) designing the organizational framework and (3) identifying the technical requirements. The talk will present some fundamental considerations about the model for the library of the future and the first steps of the project. The project approach is inspired by the following research results: Lorcan Dempsey et al (2014): Collection Directions. The Evolution of Library Collections and Collecting. In: Libraries and the Academy 2014 (3), 393-423. K. Jane Burpee et al (2015): Outside the Four Corners: Exploring Non-Traditional Scholarly Communication. In: Scholarly and Research Communication, Vol 6, No 2. John W. Moravec et al (2015): Designing the future of research libraries and special libraries in “knowmad society”. – Congreso Amigos, Mexico, 2015