Introduction

Learning has often been associated with particular physical spaces, whether formal classrooms or lecture theatres, or more informal spaces such as a workshop or studio. However, learning spaces have been changing, and moving either partly or fully online (Brown, 2005), leading to new and different learning and teaching experiences.

Emergent technologies – from the earliest electronic resources to virtual learning environments (VLEs), communications tools and social media – have enabled a radical shift in how educational space may be defined (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and an increasing blurring of the relationship between learning spaces and the other online spaces a learner may inhabit. Even the most traditional offline course should expect some or many participants to be engaged in the recreational use of social media. Nearly half of all respondents to the 2009 Oxford Internet Survey reported having created a profile on a social networking site (Dutton, Helsper and Gerber, 2009) and this looks likely to rise: the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 73% of American teenagers used social networking sites (Lenhart et al., 2010).

The modern learning experience takes place in a hybrid space that merges the physical and the digital, the formal with the informal, and increasingly shares responsibility between the educator and the empowered learner. Digital library (DL) providers can engage in new ways with users, changing the ways in which resources are used and valued. However, the rules and behaviours of elearning and online social spaces are still (and likely will remain) in flux, with privacy concerns and the potential for bullying both important as social media spaces are brought into the elearning process (Davis and Lee, 2008; Keashly and Neuman, 2010).