Biographical SketchesSarah Dryden-Peterson is an Associate Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on education in armed conflict and the ways in which learning, pedagogies, and relationships may alter trajectories of conflict for nation-states and individuals.Negin Dahya is an Assistant Professor at the Information School at the University of Washington. Her research explores how social and cultural contexts shape digital media production, social media participation, and technology use for girls and women.Elizabeth Adelman is an advanced doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research explores the experiences of teachers working in conflict-affected settings and how they understand their educational, social, and emotional obligations towards their refugee students.
This paper explores librarians’ perception of virtual reality as well as opportunities and challenges associated with implementing VR in public libraries. We interviewed 36 librarians who developed and offered VR programs as part of the research project, before and after the programming. The findings show how VR may be used in the public library as a learning tool and technology that encourages social interactions. Librarians discuss how the unique qualities of VR such as immersion and interactivity of VR makes it different from other digital media and present a different set of potential challenges when offered in the library. Librarians observed that while VR has a lot of potential as a technology for learning and social engagement, the success also largely depends on the VR content as well as the librarian's strategy for recruitment and promotion. In addition, we found that librarians had different understandings of what constitutes learning as well as how marginalized communities might benefit from this technology. The librarians we interviewed faced many challenges, however, our analysis of their experiences offers insight into designing successful VR programming in public libraries.
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