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X-LIBRIS- SMART ICT 3.0 LIBRARIES SERVICES to address on Future Skills and Competences -Learning Spaces 2025
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

There is an ambiguity and a debate about the professional role of librarians and where the future lies for libraries in the new, increasingly competitive information environment. While the library is no longer the only place for information provision, wants and needs of the end users transform. As a result, libraries are facing with the challenge of designing and developing new services and re-designing the existing ones. Redefining what the library services and library building mean to users and restructuring the way information services are designed and delivered seem to be the only way for libraries to compete effectively. It has become clear that libraries cannot simply keep offering the same services and expect them to address emerging user needs. Libraries now seek to anticipate the needs of their users, building services that support transformations in the society. Librarianship is now based on participatory culture. The library of this century is not only a place to passively consume information but a place where knowledge is created, explored, shared and new social relationships are forged. Libraries today begin to redesign their services and even their physical space. Participatory librarians are expected to invite users to co-curate collections, physical as well as virtual workspace and to create new services (or new ways). There is a need for a new approach which brings users into the service design. Xlibris Project developes an approach (methodology) which enables any interested individual (locals, prosumers, visitors, librarians, library users, potential users) to contribute in new service design with his/her expectations, needs, likes and preferences. The main aims of Xlibris Project were involving users in the service design, uncovering users’ needs, desires, wants, likes as well as dislikes, developing a methodology for service co-design, experimenting with this methodology for new service creation and developing training and in-service training programs (within lifelong learning approach) based on the findings of the experimentation process. With this aims several activities were undertaken. A series of training and in-service training activities in order to develop user-centred new library services based on smart ICT was organized. Innovative methodologies were experimented to develop the Xlibris Methodology tool set as well as finding the best possible way to benefit from each methodology with the purpose of service co-design. Additional to a Study Analysis, a series of Open Educational Resources (OER), a methodology, and a multilingual MOOC defining how innovative new services can be co-created with the involvement of users were developed as the main intellectual outputs. An adult learners community (with more than 500 members) which includes librarians, future librarians (LIS students), library users, teachers, academics; 20 new SMART ICT 3.0 services (5 by each partner), a multilingual crowdsourcing platform, multilingual vimeo channels are among the tangible outcomes of the project. The project consortium consisted of 5 partners: a higher education instution (Hacettepe University from Turkey), a public library (Pencho Slaveykov Regional Library from Bulgaria), an educational center (Radviliškis District Municipality Educational and Sport Service Centre from Lithuania) a non-profit educational institute (Wisamar Bildungsgesellschaft from Germany), a municipality (Gemeinde Kabelsketal from Germany) and an NGO (ISES - Innovacion Social Emprendedores Sociales from Spain). X-Libris focused on the intensive use of smart ICT to sustain and manage relationships; blurred boundaries between production and consumption; collaboration and on repeated interactions, care and maintenance rather than one-off consumption; reform on training approaches and structures; and redefining the role of the users. X-Libris pioneered a new form of co-operation among multilevel actors to fully realize new library services based on actual needs of the final user. Xlibris experimented a shift from user centered design approach to co-design with users. The educational materials developed within the project Xlibris provide the opportunity to learn and replicate the same approach in different information settings with different stakeholders.
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