“What if you thought seriously about the library as a laboratory, as a place where people do things, where they make things?”says Jeffrey Schnapp.
The class is called “The Library Test Kitchen.” It is taught by Schnapp and offered through the Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University.
During the class “ideas flew like cream pies at a food fight” and before the semester was out some of the ideas were developed into student projects. Pictured above is the Neo-Carrel, a “study chair with a raised platform in front that doubles as a laptop stand and a comfortable place to rest one’s head for a nap.”
Then there is Biblio, “a “library friend” that scans books, tracks and shares research, and even makes bibliographic recommendations for further study'”
and finally, the Wi-Fi Cold Spot “a radically designed room for reflection or refuge from an increasingly connected world”
“Because we’re not librarians, but instead a community of artists, scholars, engineers—people interested in knowledge—we come at the questions a little bit differently. So we think we can be innovative and breathe some fresh air into a conversation that often is about how many jobs are going to be cut, or what will happen to all the space that is freed up once the stacks move out” says Schnapp.
It takes a village…
More at Harvard magazine