Public Libraries in the Era of the 4th Industrial Revolution from a Documentation Space to Digital Production and Creation Space

Abstract

The question that is frequently asked about the status and the role of public libraries within societies through events, which lead to change especially revolution. The latter is a cradle for new ideologies and end up to a crisis, basically all parts of society can not cope with in all industrial revolutions. Knowledge open spaces were used as places for formation of individuals and groups thus a continuous education process would be ensured. This is noticeable in literature, which conveys and transmits the libraries different shapes and forms and their distinctive names as it showed their contribution in industrial revolutions. This old link between libraries and revolutions lead to another question 'could it go beyond another level in the current fourth industrial revolution. In some industrial societies libraries are nowadays 'smart' and coping with evolution whereas some societies still struggle to move forwards due to the lack of the required infrastructures or the resources to use the current emerging digital technology. So that we present and introduce FabLab (Digital Fabrication Labs) as it is considered as a new resource which gathers and integrates libraries and revolutions.

Our study showed and proved  that the digital fabrication laboratories are closely suitable for Arabic model in comparison to the complexity of the smart libraries models, certain activities within these spaces which are now certified among the professional field allow to have more chances to accredit these knowledge and experimentation  laboratories, the entrepreneurship and micro-digital innovations as well.