Carl Piraneo works at the "bookBot" at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Photo: Allen Breed / APThe library is a changing and I trust it is going to look a lot like the new James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University.Designed by the Oslo-based firm Snohetta, the 5-story library includes little of what one would expect in a traditional library.Yes, there is an area within the library that houses about 40,000 books. The rest, all 1.5 million of them, are housed in 18,000 metal bins. Four robots navigate the bins to...
Pinterest meets Amazon at Scroll.Am
Scroll.Am homepageImagine taking a Pinterest-style scroll through the Amazon product database.Scroll.Am, was developed by Amsterdam-based designer and med student Jonathan Bouman. Bouman, who derives his motivation from his love of mashups, scrolling and Amazon, built a similar site last year which provided a nifty way to scroll Reddit.Every product leads with a visual and all the data and sharing opportunities you need is just a mouse-over away. Books category home page Clearly applicable to non-new books as well. With a little tweaking you could see it as a formidable online-catalog format for booksellers. The idea of wrapping the image with the necessary related content and delivering...
The Book as the Starting Point
Why not just turn publishing on its head and try to change the world right off the bat?Welcome to Sharp Stuff a new publisher born from the confines of one of the great ad agencies on the planet, Wieden+Kennedy. Their mission: to explore "the boundaries of story building" by being a "rapid release content shop that hacks current formats to create new forms.""The book as the starting point, not the end game" is our approach says Jake Dockter, Director of Communications and Content.Their first project wastes no time in pushing the boundaries. Created in three months, American Dreamers "mixes the fluidity and dynamism...
Amazon by the Numbers
At 80 million monthly visitors one "could fill 60 Disneylands." Just imagine if just half of those visitors went to an independent bookshop, either online or in store, and god knows what the trade can do with half of the $9 billion in book sales. They're not kidding when they pronounce Amazon the "undisputed giant of online retail," but of course, as we all now, bigger does not automatically equal better... via Mashable
Surprise! E-Books & Print Books Can Coexist
created by TeachingDegree.org via MobyLives