Multitouch Microsoft Surface: Cultural Heritage Browser from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

At DOK, they’ve made an app for their Microsoft Surface table that first reads a patron’s profile off of their library card and then displays images from their photo archive based on their address information.  By engaging the user with a slick, seductive interface they make the experience so intriguing that they can’t help but want to search, browse and explore library resources further.  Not only is this project an interesting way to explore local history, it is a lesson in the value of designing interfaces for maximum “playfulness”.  This interface makes searching and browsing FUN!  Sure, that may seem an easy task when you have a sweet MS Surface table to work with, but consider of all of the other interfaces at your library.  The reference desk.  Signs.  The catalog.  All of these are interfaces. How can you create a fun, playful, curiosity-envoking user experience at your library WITHOUT some awesome high-end technologies?

I look forward to the next step in reinventing the library card, when it becomes writable as well as readable. Having just a few gigs of storage on the card would allow patrons to “check out” those images or any other materials as well.

Recently, I attended a program at the Flushing branch of the Queens Library titled “Innovation in Libraries by the Shanachies.” The two presenters, Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer, consider themselves “shanachies,” a Gaelic term meaning storytellers. They work at a public library in Delft, The Netherlands called DOK Library Concept Center and travel the world interviewing people about the future of libraries (follow them at www.twitter.com/shanachietour) .

In between showing clips of their documentary, they interviewed audience members (with a camera and microphone) about what they think the future of libraries entails. While it seemed most audience members felt that gaming and using Web 2.0 tools are necessary to push libraries into the future, there was also one passionate argument against having gaming in the library. Both Boekesteijn and van de Geer are avid believers of gaming in the library and this was demonstrated when they showed photographs of the DOK Library Concept Center.

The only term to describe this library is “mind-blowing.” A large, modern structure funded by the city council, the DOK Library Concept Center is an environmentally-friendly building full of gaming stations (Wii, PS2 and Xbox were just a few of the stations that I saw), blue tooth stations, cafes, artwork and much, much more. The entire collection is RFID, including approximately 7,000 pieces of artwork which have also be digitized. There is only one small reference desk because the library follows the roving librarian model (each librarian carries a small netbook with them in order to help patrons).

Perhaps the following example best demonstrates the direction of the DOK Library Concept Center. The library e-mails a recipe from a cookbook to their patrons. The patron then goes to a local grocery store where there is a designated ”library refrigerator,” in which the patron can get all of the ingredients to make the recipe. When the patron goes to purchase the ingredients at the checkout counter, they swipe their library card and get a 25% discount.

When Boekesteijn and van de Geer spoke about this, the audience seemed to collectively say “whoa.” After my initial excitement about using my library card at a grocery to receive a discount, it got me thinking about blurring the lines of consumer and patron. Would Americans be as excited about this, or would their privacy concerns outweigh libraries working as a consortium with other community organizations? Will this be the direction American libraries take in the not-so-distant future? I guess that will be determined by both the libraries and our patrons.