Karen Lauritsen is a rad librarian at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Check out her TedxUCLA talk called Libraries Can Be Loud.
Last month we had a little conversation and she posted it to her site Maths and Arts. If you like read this site you might like the post: An interview with Aaron Schmidt of Walking Paper about user centered design for libraries.
Thanks for the interview, Karen!
Found along U.S. Route 101 on the Olympic Peninsula.
This Spring I’ve been teaching a class on library UX for the San Jose State SLIS. In an assignment about analyzing library touchpoints one of my students, Stephanie Aurelio, included this nice sign from the Crocker Art Museum. I thought it was rather nice so she gave me permission to post it here. Thanks, Stephanie!
It serves as a detachable file cabinet, a stool, a rolling cart and, in multiples, even stackable shelves.
Pretty clever little thing. Though at $700 a pop your library will need deep pockets to outfit your department with these. More info at Better Living Through Design.
The Smith Storage Stool is neat, but given the choice, I’d take a classic Kik-Step® Stool.
Can’t you just hear the hollow thud of kicking one of these? Then the squeak of the wheels followed by a clanking when you stand on it? So good.
Typography themed maze? Yes!
I was assured that the kids’ section isn’t always dark and empty. Looked cool like this though. Note the kid sized self check machines.
Am I going soft or have I just been running into good library signs recently? This library had a unified system of good looking signs. One of the best I’ve seen.
Finally, some journey mapping that we did.
File this one under: from way back when, when people used to care.
Nate Hill was poking around the 4th Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library (it’s so hot right now!) and found an amazing pin mount letter system. He knew just the guy that would put this on the Web!
Replacing horrible paper signs on stack end caps with this stuff would probably be a big improvement.
– Be An Army Librarian – 1963
– Vintage Library Journal Wordmark
– Library Hall of Fame from 1951
The goal is to provide a fun, creative environment for teens to engage with audio recording technology and explore their own self-expression and presentation skills.
Another winner from Escondido Public Library.
Our most exciting news is that our Teen Librarian, Joanna Axelrod, has teamed up with LibraryYOU’s Viktor Sjoberg to start a Pop Up Podcast program for teens in two locations on the east side of Escondido that used to be served by our now-closed East Valley Branch.
Lots of stuff to like about the City of Stockholm Libraries’ website.
I’m super excited to announce a new project from Influx:
Prefab: the library website service.
Prefab is a ready to launch website designed for libraries. We’ve designed an amazing library website so you can concentrate on developing awesome content.
Sign up, fill in your content, launch. All in the same day, if you’re motivated!
Prefab is designed for libraries:
What you get with Prefab:
Libraries across the country are all working – with limited resources and skills – to solve the same, basic library website design problems. It makes no sense! So we did the design work and created a template that’s appropriate for many different libraries.
There’s a lot more information at the Prefab page on Influx’s site.
Many thanks to Running in the Halls for their assistance with the theme development.
Need an amazing library website fast? Check out Prefab now.
I’ve long thought that a site like this should exist, so I’m very exited someone built it: Librarian Design Share.
From their About page:
After one too many design-related exchanges on Gmail and Google Chat, we decided that people who work in libraries really need a space to share their design work and gain inspiration from the work of others. In the spirit of Stephen X. Flynn’s awesome Open Cover Letters project, we wanted to create an open online repository of interesting library-related design.
Take a poke around, there’s some solid stuff on the site. Nice work, April Becker and Veronica Douglas!
