Lib Lab

A look at the library in the 21st century and beyond.

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Digita - Table of the Present Time

Digita is a snapshot of the way we digitize information today, freezing the speed of digital technology into the physical reality of wood.

Created for the Library Test Kitchen at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design

[librarylab]

Digita - Table of the Present Time

The library is no longer about the accumulation of static knowledge, but rather a collection of formats of information in a state of continuous expansion. The transfer of tangible materials to digital format is both a necessary cataloging process of the library today, as well as an increasingly commonplace research tool. At the intersection of the past and the future tense of the library is the collision of nearly instantaneous digitization technology with the phenomenological atmosphere that affirms the legitimacy of the institution. Digita responds to the current state of flux in the medium of libraries and addresses the tension present between the fast digital world of information and the stoic historicity of the library. The hyper-specificity of Digita memorializes the particular moment in time and space of digital technology by integrating it very specifically into the physical world.

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Inflatable reading room - Ben and I spent the day making this shiny reading cube that you can get cozy inside of. 

Young Tony is testing it out. Pretty stable ey.

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The coolest thing ever.

Some amazing Japanese people have developed a 3D scanner that you get inside of with your clothes on, and it will 3D print a scale figure of you! Scanning and printing on a whole new level. Amazing. I want it.

(via Fashion and the 3D photobooth | Dazed Digital)

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Opening

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LABRARY! vinyl facade design by Bri and I for the Library Test Kitchen space at 92 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, MA.

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Subway Library!

(via A Free Library In The Tokyo Subway — The Pop-Up City)

[designthinkingpsu]

The Phone Booth Book Share project is just that: an informal library located in old phone booths. Whether the phones are active or useful in today’s mobile-phone-dominated society, the structures are largely still there. The Department of Urban Betterment took it upon themselves to spearhead this effort, popping up in New York City and beyond.

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Facade Studies - LABRARY

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Live Pinboard

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The Yard House

In thinking about the obsolescence of the library card, I began to wonder about the latent networks that exist between books and how digitization has further obfuscated the connections between us and the links to our past. The Yard House is a way to make visibile the networks that exist between people, books, libraries, keywords, authors, history and time. Inside of the tree house, people can scan their books to see what digital connections it has. They can zoom in or out in different directions, making more evident certain threads or learning from the overall. Through these visualizations, people have access beyond the book itself, but to a range of possibilities that exist between the tangible book and the library at large.

[librarylab]

BOOK IT

A Library App that lets users check into libraries, share with friends which books they check out, leave tips about books and libraries, save friends' checkouts on their 'lists' of books to read, and chat with librarians. In the same vein as the library checkout card, the BOOK IT app allows people to connect with peers who may have similar interests or broaden a user's spectrum while interacting with others. Content scanned in the library can be uploaded to a cloud that is linked to users' accounts, thereby creating an online database of scanned and tracked content that is crowd managed and tagged. Comments and marks can be both tied to users' accounts and globally linked to the content itself. 

[librarylab]

The Trace of the Card

The Library Card was a tangible link to the history and use of any given book in the library. Not only did it contain information about the popularity of a book with frequency of checkout dates, but it also lent personalized clues to a collective shared interest. With the digitization of the checkout system, the book as bridge between humans is lost. We cannot access the embedded information that the card, or the marks left behind by each subsequent user gives us. 

A way to capture this lost trace is through a visualization of the network that exists behind each book and each user. Without compromising privacy rights, this visual network can link people, interests, keywords, authors, genres, and history. Users can start to uncover information about the books they check out that may lead them to new discoveries, just as one might have done by seeing a signature on the library card. The latent digital network becomes opaque, and in so doing, reveals the power of the library.

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The Yard House

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Rethinking Reference

Using my brand new Makey Makey (!) I made a little interactive diorama that shows a way to engage with your local library in a non-intimidating accessible way - chat! Beyond chatting, librarians fielding questions by Twitter would allow for the accumulation of Q&A into a kind of knowledge base that other students could therefore refer to when searching themselves. Additionally, it would allow for interaction between librarians from different institutional libraries. eg) @GsdLibrarian asks @HbsLibrarian about periodicals on real estate financing.

[industrialist]

Balance Scale Bookshelf by Cush Design Studio

[librarylab]

An intervention for the Fine Arts Library at Harvard University.

Scanning is a large part of the library these days. Most people at the library were sitting at the work tables with books and their laptops. What if the table had an integrated scanner that also allowed you to digitally mark up the books, zoom in to see more detail, and save valuable information without causing damage. The workflow would become more seamless and eliminate the need for people to get up and scan each time.

The memory of which book is being scanned could be retained and eventually, data that looks at the marks over time for each book could be analyzed and compiled to generate new information about the value of the books being studied. As well, a digital database of scanned books will be compiled based on use by individuals.