Eli’s Twitter account will probably have updates.
But like I said before, libraries might not provide content in the future & it’s okay. So come on everybody. Create some meaning for your library beyond shuffling books around.
Let’s get to it.
The five library parks in Medellín, Colombia are amazing and not just because of their architecture.
Included in the network are five library parks, known as “hearts of knowledge.” Located throughout the city in some of Medellin’s most marginalized communities, the library parks have become cultural centers, providing broad, community access to information and educational resources. The network’s libraries offer a range of training programs, including how to use the computer and access information online, and English for the Internet.
“Libraries have become spaces to not only access knowledge and learning, but also areas of community action and pride,” said Clara Patricia Restrepo, executive director of the EPM Foundation. “By continuing to bring new information and resources to our users, libraries are now perceived as dynamic centers that offer accessible, relevant learning opportunities.”
The organization behind them, the Fundación Empresas Públicas de Medellín was recently awarded the 2009 Access to Learning Award by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
NPL has shifted people’s perceptions of libraries from traditional “bookshelves” to dynamic centers—places that offer tools for personal development and economic improvement, places that create a sense of local community and provide a connection to the global community.
By bringing citizens together in a communal setting, libraries are encouraging unity and learning. Historian and library coordinator Gabriel Jaime Vanegas said, “We believe that you can learn better if you’re part of a community.” Now, according to Gabriel, the young people of his district have a place where they can interact with the rest of the world, and that place is their library.
I highly recommend looking at more photos of the libraries at Parque Biblioteca León de Grieff / Giancarlo Mazzanti
[thanks, Erica!]
On Wednesday afternoons during the Summer outside of the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC you will find a table full of friendly librarians talking to the passersby. The librarians also bring out an assortment of library materials to illustrate what’s available in the library. It is a great program and I’d like to see it go even further.
A compelling picture of comprehensive outreach forms when you combine this physical space effort with digital space efforts:
Last week a very interesting building opened up in Seoul.
The temporary structure, a project from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas (famous/infamous in the library world as the force behind Seattle Public Library), can be lifted with three cranes and rearranged to rest on different sides for different purposes. Events planned include a fashion show, movie screenings, and art exhibition.
I have been interested in libraries using slightly alternative form factors for a little while (more thoughts on a cafe branch, also see Nate Hill’s library outpost) and I’m increasingly interested in library buildings being as flexible as possible. Clearly the Prada Transformer is more of a thought experiment than the solution to a real problem but I admire the extremes to which this project explores the idea of adaptable space.
Previously, Koolhaas built a transformable house for a wheelchair bound man. Check out some footage from a documentary about the house.
The Roku digitial video player, an AppleTV-like device that allows for easy streaming of NetFlix content to a TV, now supports streaming from Amazon’s Video on Demand. It costs $100.
…
Some people passionately disagreed with me in the comments on last week’s “libraries might not provide content in the future & it’s okay.” I remain unconvinced that it won’t be okay. An ideal future? Maybe not. The way we’d like to envision our future? No way. We’d love to be delivering content to people in convenient ways. A nevertheless viable and perhaps more meaningful future? Could be.
Of the comments questioning a future without digital library content there was only one real articulation of why such a future wouldn’t work.
Why would I want to go to a library to exchange thoughts and ideas about materials that I have found and (using the examples you have cited in the first six paragraphs) paid for outside of the library?… I don’t need a library to do this this kind of thing.
It simply does not make sense to think that people who use the web for materials provision will then travel to the library to “share their experiences about those materials.”
My experiences with the hundreds of people I’ve hosted film discussion groups, book discussions, gaming events and tech training classes for tell a different story. Hearing about playing miniature golf and ninja tag in their library tells a different story. The restaurant on the top of OBA tells a different story.
While it is certainly true that people don’t *need* a library to do the above things, they still chose the library. So it makes perfect sense to me that people will congregate at the library even if there isn’t an eBook to check out. Even increasingly so if libraries concentrate on becoming excellent public spaces that help people navigate their personal content consumption and create stories. (And let’s be a bit real here. Like Nate Hill said in his comment, this isn’t likely going to be an all or nothing situation.)
There’s another take on why people might increasingly use public spaces instead of private ones. They might not have a choice. In a Kunstler-esque future everyone will be forced to go back to using local public spaces because there won’t be a Starbucks on the corner in which to gather. Libraries are sustainable in this sense.
One more thing. In a comment Tony Tallent wrote:
Libraries–in all formats including electronic, can be a place where we ‘do’ not simply talk about what we did from home.
I agree and if it’s okay with him I think one of my new mottos will be: Libraries are places of doing.
