I’m a long time fan of the comprehensive and well-researched annotated bibliographies/research overviews that come out of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These occasional research reports are cumulatively referred to as the UI Current LIS Clips series. Well they’ve just issued a new “clip” on “library as place.” This is an excellent report that covers a great selection of significant articles and research papers about the library as place issue (excepting perhaps Bill Miller’s fine essay for Library Issues from the January 2002 issue) from the last few years. What I really like about these reports is that they go beyond giving a mere abstract and instead really summarize the key findings of each document that is included. This is actually a two-part report of which part one is about public libraries and part two is about academic libraries. If LIS Clips is new to you take some time to check out their past reports. I’m sure everyone will find something there of value – and while you’re there sign up for their e-mail alert service to be notified when new reports are published.
This is an excellent topic and resource. A wiki project at IUPUI University Library invites additions to the new “Library as Space/Library as Place” wiki: http://libraryasspace.ulib.iupui.edu