This is a tough question, as I am in the process of becoming familiar with the library of "my" elementary school. It has been the library of my child's school, up until the start of this fall semester. My perception is that this library barely touches the vision on a learning commons. Classes and checkouts are scheduled as a general rule. Spontaneous use is ..... burdensome for the teacher-librarian, whose job is to be the primary manager of the space and resources. On the positive side, many laptops have been purchased by the school, I do not think they have been used in the library space itself much, but, they check out to classrooms for individual teachers to use with their students. Technology appears to be taught along the edges, as an extra to curricular learning, not as part of the process supporting it. I have seen my children produce various projects utilizing great software and other tech. tools, but I have not noticed it utilized much outside of specifically assigned projects. I have much to learn!!

Our school is trying to become client-based. We are offering a 1 to 1 laptop iniative for students. Now, that is forcing staff to keep up with the demands of the students. We are becoming more web 2.0 based with projects, online databases, and access to library materials from home. However, we have a long way to go before we meet the demands of our "clients," our students. It is a beginning and it has only been 6 months since students have had the laptops, but I am noticing improvement already.

I think this chapter was written to show just how far the majority, and darn-near all, libraries are from the vision discussed in Ch. 1. So I would say, and am willing to bet that most will say that their library is fairly far away from being predominantly client-side oriented. There are vestiges in the majority of libraries I'm sure, but most fall short of the author's vision.

Now if I were to look at this question prior to reading this chapter and be required to answer it I probably would have said different. The book sets a pretty lofty definition of Learning Commons, but it seems that most libraries (public school setting) would be set up for the clients express purposes. Libraries are always concerned with orienting themselves towards client interests, but there is a spectrum for how progressive it is towards the idea of Learning Commons.

At the library in my school, perhaps the best example of being client-side friendly would be the access to numerous online materials that very well replace their printed counterparts. Students are able to access these from any classroom in the school via computer, or any other location for that matter. The user-names and passwords are not kept secret as they are printed in the pages of the planner distributed to all students at the beginning of the year. This makes accessing materials for research (encycopedias, Opposing Viewpoints, etc...) at home very simple.

While we do have some, very basic aspects of a client-side environment in our library and computer lab, we are really woefully short from realizing the vision of a school learning commons. Our library is the focal point for meetings in the school, we do have flex access and furniture that is constantly re configured to meet the needs of the users, and in the past we have had student led video projects produced in both the library and the lab. We also offered an after school club in basic web design. Unfortunately I see the current climate in our school pulling away from any advances we have made toward the school learning commons. This year the new administration has introduced a very structured schedule, which makes any non direct instruction extremely difficult to offer.