Last week, along with a remarkable group of partners, I submitted a Beta Sprint proposal for an architectural interface for a Digital Public Library of America.  I’m really proud of this work and I believe it could have a substantial impact on public libraries and other memory institutions like museums and archives.  The design concept was realized by the team at Noll & Tam Architects and Planners, including Chris Noll, Jason Barish, and Abraham Jayson as well as Matthew Williams Design, myself, and considerable conceptual development from Sam Klein and Katie Filbert of the Wikimedia Foundation and the DC Wiki Society.

The Library Lab, or ‘LibLab’, is a system of 11 modules, each of which is a scalable interface for creating and contributing a particular type of knowledge, and all of which are interoperable with one another.  Libraries do a great job of making books and other media available and accessible for their users, but they don’t do as good or consistent a job focusing their users on creating and contributing content.  Probably the best example of consistent content creation in public libraries is children’s craft programs, and even with these the results and products of the programs are rarely published to the web or shared widely.  Quite a few libraries have found corners in which to build public media labs, while others have more robust efforts underway to build information commons that include content creation in their program, and certainly the excellent YouMedia curriculum serves as a guide for the creation of teen and youth content creation spaces across the country.  Still, the big design problem that public libraries face remains in play: our audience is *everyone*, so we must design for *everyone*.  Focusing solely on content creation as a youth activity in libraries, museums, and archives is insufficient.  Our intention with the modular Library Lab system is to create a flexible framework that can be adapted, extended, and configured to support content creation in any public space for any audience.

The modules you see are built with a flexible system of components that can be designed digitally, transmitted to any location, and fabricated using simple tools and methodologies.  The size of the forms allows them to be fabricated from readily available standard materials such as plywood, MDF, plastics, metal, or composite materials as well as different colors or finishes.  All of the design and fabrication techniques are easily adaptable to individual needs, and the processes are also open source and part of the creative commons.  You don’t like something about the existing Library Lab plans, or want to tweak something for your use case?  No problem, this system invites versioning, customization and experimentation.

The Wiki Society of Washington DC is running the very first demonstration Library Lab at the Martin Luther King Jr. DC Public Library from September until the end of December.  This lab calls itself a “hackspace for knowledge”, inviting people to the space to collaborate on projects, run workshops, and involve students.  In the DC LibLab, you won’t yet find fully realized versions of the module designs described here, but you will find implementations of the activities the modules support.  Over the course of the months that the DC LibLab is operating, we’ll be doing hands-on work gathering data and testing the principles as described in the design concept.  This data will provide a feedback loop that informs the design iterations and provides hooks for individuals and institutions to extend and customize the modules and their components for their own use cases.  Please, visit the DC LibLab, volunteer, and participate in these formative moments!  We also invite your commentary on the Library Lab concept in general; librarylab.org will feature forums and opportunities for user feedback very soon.