I’m really curious, if ESC offers shared collaborative workspace for its students in any way? I struggle with whether what i want to do is fill a library need, or if I’m carving out a space for the library in a campus issue? As a distance campus, I’m wondering if you all have already made inroads on that question?

Great post! As I see it, there isn’t (and may never be) a single platform solution to this kind of need (what that usually ends up as is an unwieldy giant tool that tries to do too much and succeeds at none of it usability wise). Instead, what I’d like us (by that I mean my own school) to do, for example (and I have nothing substantial to share except my own small-scale LibGuide: http://subjectguides.esc.edu/toolbox) is provide various options for digital commons and collaborative efforts.

We are in the process, for example, of getting unlimited Elluminate access, which means we could theoretically provide rooms for students to use and collaborate with themselves. A concrete step we are taking soon is to offer online librarian office hours for students, and brown-bag meetings for faculty via this platform. It’s just one example, one tool, but I think that kind of usage, as you point out, will become more widespread over time.

I love the idea of a collaborative workspace, but for that to succeed you have to have people who want to work together. When we were working on the NSM for ACES/CPLA it was a mess to try and get everything coordinated because we were using email (or at least I was) and keeping things on the G://drive…but it didn’t feel like collaboration and sharing.

Keep up the good work.