The agenda for libraries back in the final decade of the last century was focused on technology and how it was affecting their key resource of information. The debate was concerned primarily with digitization and the format of materials – but also with the early signs of the potential disappearance of library space (Crawford and Gorman, 1995). Almost 20 years later, following significant progress with digital and virtual libraries, the emphasis has shifted from the potential disappearance of physical libraries to a real threat as technology has permeated not just the resources and materials that we use but has become essential to our lives as readers and learners. The threat now to library space is not that the digital resources will replace physical collections but that universal access from personal devices will remove the appetite and necessity of users to visit. Add to this the eagerness of politicians and educational managers to save money and the library as place is under more pressure to prove its worth than ever before. The argument in this book is that the library as a place of learning is its most fundamental attribute and if developed as such libraries as places will have an assured future.

That libraries and their spaces have an essential role in personal, societal and community learning is illustrated by the worldwide case studies described in the first part of this book. Part 1 has examples of many learning spaces in education and elsewhere that closely fit their community's needs. That many of these case studies describe the ‘look and feel’ of the libraries and their spaces indicates that the most important aspects of an effective library learning space are intangible ‘soft’ factors, which have emotional and psychological effects defying categorization. The hope of a systematic scientific recipe for the design of successful library learning spaces is currently elusive – as I mentioned in the introduction to this book the process of space development is more art than science. But this does not mean that we cannot shift the balance to remove some of the uncertainty about the potential success of a new space. Part of this activity has to be based on the experiments of small-scale trials preceding large-scale projects where feasible, experiments with pop-up spaces and furniture, and mashups of activities that create new ideas for space.