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What is the impact of technology on the various operations of an information center and its practice? What is the role of an information professional(librarian) in the digital age?"

As many libraries rethink how they use their spaces and redesign accordingly, they are also having to rename these spaces in order to signal to the user that new distribution systems, user services, and patterns of patron engagement are undergoing cultural shifts. Halbert (2010) discusses how the labels that libraries use to define their updated or new spaces, can often signal that changes are happening or will happen, but are not always indexical of large-scale institutional paradigm shifts.

As he writes, "Yes, Information Commons routinely incorporate new computing technologies and new recombinations of existing service programs. But in a remarkable percentage of instances, the resulting facility or program is not dramatically more innovative or fundamentally different from what predated it. Libraries have a great store of inertia in their institutional traditions and practices, an inertia that resists dramatic breaks with the past."(Halbert, 2010, p. 2).

So what is in a name? Well, it strikes me that even if changes seem to be largely aesthetic and semantic, there is still value in the move towards re-imagining and re-defining. As Halbert continues: "Pairing the two words “Information” and “Commons” is a potent and intuitive way of building on the traditional cultural capital of the library while simultaneously bringing a new appellation forward to distinguish a new program from what has gone before."(Ibid. p. 4).

In similar ways, Jantz (2017) speaks to the importance of having a solid mission statement or vision as a key component of innovation of libraries and the services they provide. As he argues, vision and leadership are essential and inseparable. In a successful library, mission and vision are communicated with all the workers in the library and their input and collaboration is essential if they are to feel involved and willing to carry out that mission with a sense of collective participation.

One of the key technological innovations in library services has come from the integration of catalogues and library assets into online databases, storage and retrieval systems. This has led to much reflection on how these internet services can encroach upon the privacy of library patrons in a number of ways. With the incorporation of Web 2.0 into library websites and services, there is a risk of further intrusions into the privacy of patrons that threatens the ALA code of ethics and the mission of libraries and librarians. As Cyrus (2012) writes, "Librarians are poised to play a pivotal role in the current and ongoing discussion of privacy in the 21st century."(292)

As he writes, "Perhaps the best and most logical place to start is by teaching librarians how to promote privacy from within their traditional setting. Inside the physical library, there are several ways in which librarians interact with users, from signage to formal instruction sessions." (293) In light of current legal arguments that pit free speech against privacy and vice versa, it is critical that librarians not only stay current as to how new technologies impinge upon users' privacy and find ways to inform their patrons, but it's also important that we stay current as to legislation and changes in a legal framework. "