Digital Libraries as Virtual Spaces

In this essay I reflect on some things that other educators can learn from librarians, from the emergence of digital libraries, and from the transformation of traditional libraries into technology centers that provide access to a universe of information resources and opportunities for online communication and interaction within a virtual space. Librarians have long considered themselves to be educators, of course, and libraries have long been learning spaces for young people and adults; yet the form that these technological developments are taking in libraries provides a set of conceptual resources and ways of thinking about education that teachers, I will argue, have been slower to pick up as relevant to their institutional context.