Jackie’s Weblog

[转]Part of all Three Places

Have you familiar with the concept of Third Place? As far as I can tell, the concept came from the book, The Great Good Place, written by Ray Oldenburg. His concept is this: most people have about three places in their life that in some way define them – usually home, work/school, and one other place (ie., the Third Place). Third Place can be many things, including church,
a bar or coffee shop, etc.

A Third Place can even be digital – here’s a cool article discussing MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) as a third place, and even mentions a paper (currently under review) written by Constance Steinkuehler called “The New Third Space: Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming in American Youth Culture.” Wow.

Ok, so there’s a very brief Third Place background. Obviously, the physical library space can act as a Third Place for patrons – and that’s all well and good. But did you know that libraries can also infiltrate other Third Places, and possibly even people’s First and Second Places? Think about it – home and work/school. If you tweak your thinking about libraries, websites, and virtual services just a little, you can then start thinking about how a library can offer library services in people’s homes, at their workplaces, and at their schools – in essence, being available in people’s First and Second Places.

One way to get in those places, short of a physical Outreach Services type of thing where we physically take books to people, is to focus on our digital services. What digital services do you have now? Do you offer services like virtual reference, IM reference, phone reference, useful and usable web content, RSS feeds, etc? All those digital services get our digital foot in the digital doors of First and Second Places.

Just a braindump/thought process of going where your patrons already are – at their first, second and third places… libraries can be there, too!

图书馆是不是Ray Oldenburg理论中那个“第三个场所”？对于一些读者来说，答案是肯定的。那么这部分读者到底有多少呢？年龄分布是怎样的呢？在多元化的“第三个场所”中，图书馆所占的百分比是多少呢？这些问题都值得思考，图书馆到底扮演怎样的角色，人们是怎么看它怎么用它等等。不过我觉得King后面所说的更有战略眼光。图书馆可以将自己的影响渗透到其他的“第三个场所”,甚至还可以拓展至第一、第二个场所。

互联网已经逐渐成为这样的角色。它的迅速壮大它的普及已经将势力范围慢慢地渗透作用到我们生活各方面，娱乐、交友、学习…..。图书馆与互联网并不矛盾，它们并不是对手。互联网之于图书馆，其实是一个平台一个工具，通过提供虚拟咨询服务等可以用来更进一步发挥影响力。真正的对手应该是Google等信息服务商，它们的势力壮大已经成为大部分人的“第三个场所”。可以说，搜索引擎或者其他一些信息服务作为假想敌已经战胜了我们。

公共图书馆留给人的印象似乎还是那令我们为傲的雄伟的标志性建筑。 社区图书馆已经喊了很多年可似乎不觉得身边有什么变化。倒是每次路过静安区图书馆发现越来越破旧落魄了。Web2.0给互联网和相关公司一次新生。对于我们，也许Libray2.0是一次契机，可以利用这么一面旗帜这么一句口号激发图书馆人热情。图书馆在这样的环境下应该动起来加快脚步。不然就要落败出局。