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.

But before I go, let me share with you some information about the Next Library conference (or unconference) in Aarhus, Denmark in June of 2009.  The event will feature presentations focusing on:

CO-CREATION
USER CENTRED INNOVATION
YOUTH CULTURE
THE PHYSICAL LIBRARY
INTERACTIVE LIBRARY SPACES
COMPETENCES
COMMUNITY BUILDING
CREATIVITY AND LEARNING

Sounds Like pretty great stuff, right?  If you aren’t convinced to get a plane ticket to Denmark yet, have a look at this Transformation Lab video created by Rolf Hapel and his team.  Rolf is the conference chair and Director of Citizen’s Service and Libraries in Aarhus. 

And if even THAT isn’t enough to bring you to Denmark, maybe I can convince you to come and see me present there!  I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to share a presentation of the Library Outpost service model integrated with a user-generated materials shelving system.  I’ll be drawing from data and my experiences at Brooklyn Public Library as a case study.  Should be fun!

Below is an image of the Bushwick Library floor plan with all of the shelves color coded and labeled to explain what materials are where in the building. I’m unhappy with the current arrangement.

• the world language material circulates too well to be tucked in the back corner
• the fiction collection is jammed in an awkward spot
• young adults do not have their own space
• parents cannot sit next to children in the children’s section

Now have a look at the way that this maps out when you make bubbles for material types and display the number of items circulated in each bubble in fiscal year 2008:

Terrible, right? Look at the weird shaped young adult space. Why is the fiction and the world language stuff jammed in the back, while the comparatively low circulating non-fiction is out on the main floor? Another fun discovery when you visualize things this way: look at how much circ you get from the DVDs and videos which take up a tiny amount of floor space.

OK, now take a look at how the space can be rearranged to smooth things out for out users.

• The world language collection comes out to the main floor
• The fiction collection comes out to the main floor
• Young adults get to hang out in their own little nook
• parents and children can hang together in the childrens area

And, just for good measure, have a look at the way the circ bubbles look in this new and improved floor plan:

It is incredibly revealing when you use maps and visual aids to reveal patterns in your data, especially when your data is describing the movements of real books located on real shelves in a real space.  Data doesn’t always make sense until you look at it right, but when you look at it just right it can steer your decision making in ways that will improve efficiency.  I geeked out on the computer to create these images to share with my library and all of you readers, but this same thing can be done with makers on a dry erase board or a big piece of paper.  I’d like to encourage other librarians to make maps like these of their libraries and see if it helps you draw any interesting conclusions.  You never know what you might discover once you look.

In my last post I promoted the creation of ‘pictotags,’ user-assigned icons that can help describe characteristics of a book or media object. In the case of that post, the images described the physical location of an object, but I anticipate them being more descriptive in the future. Visual literacy is embedded in cultural histories and mores, so naturally the winning pictograms presented to the Swedes by the competitors will have to make sense to people who live in and visit public places in Sweden. In the age of the inernet and simplified global communication via graphic user interfaces, it becomes more and more challenging to create standards that will translate internationally. How does the designer account for the visual vocabulary of every tourist that might come through Stockholm, and should the designer in the age of global communication be accountable to every possible user?

Creating visual standards is analogous to creating a controlled vocabulary. Can one create a global, visual, controlled vocabulary? It has been attempted before; it was part of Otto Neurath’s ‘isotype‘ vision at the Bauhaus. Arguable, progenitors of the field of infographics like Ladislav Sutnar were striving for the same kind of thing. Will librarians work with graphic designers to make these decisions? How will visual literacies determine the structure of information and information retrieval in the coming century?

For me, this provoked a lot of thought about library identity in the eyes of our users. Enjoy these icons. I’ll be away for the Thanksgiving holiday. More posts after the holiday.

Winning Library pictogram:

The rest of the entries:

A few years ago I presented a new service model for urban public libraries that I called the Library Outpost. The Outpost is a small, storefront library space in a busy retail environment with no local, physical browsing collection. It is a space that assumes an increasing number of library users are happy doing their browsing on the web, and that they can have materials delivered to this convenient location for pickup. You can read about it in detail here.

The Outpost service model still remains unrealized in its purest application. It has been a few years since I first proposed it, and in that time GPS and the mobile web has really taken off. In this post I am sharing my sketch of a greatly abbreviated experience prototype highlighting the ‘parking’ feature of a library app for mobile devices. The ‘parking’ system is a shelving arrangement for materials in a Library Outpost. Its organization is based on user-assigned pictogram tags on both the mobile app and in the signage at the physical location. Currently, the user-assigned pictotags (yep, I just made that word up) don’t describe the materials themselves in any way other than their parking location. In a future version, it would be interesting to get users to assign a more descriptive pictotag that could contribute to item level metadata and power some kind of social element, but for now words remain the best tags. Still, I’m proud of the way these pictotags connect virtual and physical information spaces.

Again, this is a mockup, beta, version 1.0, whatever. I invite your commentary and criticism.

Here are the three most important components of the app, as I see it now:

• Because your mobile is connected to the internet, you can just as easily be linked to an electronic version of the item, be it an e-book, a video, a song, whatever.

• GPS takes advantage of your location at the time of your search, so if you do want a physical copy, you can get the physical copy nearest to you and have it sent to the place nearest to you.

• The parking system creates a visual standard linking library users physical and virtual experience.

Link to a large image of the whole thing here, or just scroll down the rest of this post for screenshots.

Below is an image of the shelving with corresponding pictotags.

After strategic planning BootCamp last week, I’ve had Nelson and Garcia’s 18 service responses on my mind non-stop.  It’s a significant step to drill down the services we can offer at public libraries to 18 clear bullet points.  My last post on this blog offered a few anecdotes advocating for simplicity in the communication arts.  Having 18 concise service responses for public libraries to choose from is a great starting point as we strive for simplicity.  The next piece of Nelson and Garcia’s process requires that a library creating a strategic plan pick only a few of these 18 responses as priorities.  My assessment of the current climate is that public libraries have had a really hard time spelling out their mission and vision in the digital age, and that is one of the reasons we have wishy-washy statements of purpose.  A little while back Wendy Lukehart of the DCPL wrote a great piece about “Mission Envy” on the Urban Library Council’s Foresight 2020 discussion board.  I republished it here a while back on my old personal blog and it’s a really nice piece.  Read it, and consider how you might clarify your library’s mission.

Still, I keep coming back to my favorite service response offered in the 18.  It is a rather new service response, one that likely does not land high in the priorities at my library.  I suspect that at this point it is not the highest priority at many public libraries at all, but its one that I am interested in and hope to see more libraries embrace in the near future.  Without further ado, it is:

Express Creativity: Create and Share Content

Residents will have the services and support they need to express themselves by creating original print, video, audio, or visual content in a real-world or online environment.

It is easy enough to imagine tackling this priority at your library with physical-world activities.  You probably already do so via arts and crafts programs, poetry slams, or any collaborative activity that results in a finished product like a mural or an exquisite corpse drawing or a work of fiction.  It’s a little harder to figure out how that creative process can be facilitated by a library in virtual or networked setting.   I’m aware of two tools/projects that become activities supporting this initiative, no doubt there are more. I thought I’d share the two I’ve been looking at and invite people to post similar projects.   As I find new things I’ll do my best to keep posting them to this blog as well.

1) Available at Cleveland Public Library, and perhaps at other libraries: Scratch.

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

2) Currently in development at IIT Institute of Design: ThinkeringSpace.

ThinkeringSpace is a system, made of both physical and virtual environments, that aims to promote creative and critical thinking skills for the 21st century. Celebrating the book, it presents opportunities for doing things together, sharing ideas and authoring in new ways. Focused on school-aged children in libraries, the project is part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

Kimberly Bolan of Kimberly Bolan and Associates and Marc Ciccarelli of Studio Techne Architects began the session with a discussion of trends. Ciccarelli said changing needs in society pressures libraries to remodel their public space. It is space that people love because it remains uncommercialized in a very branded society. Bolan said the space often needs a makeover based on customer needs. She then proceeded to discuss Ten Things About What People Want:

• Comfortable places (soft furniture, fireplaces, lights)
• Meeting rooms and study rooms
• Supported services (self-check out, drive-up windows, outside pick-up lockers)
• Food service (Vending is more practical than coffee shops)
• Multi-functional children’s areas (with special sized doors, murals)
• Teen friendly areas
• Retail-oriented merchandising (bookstore-like open face shelving)
• Technology (unobtrusive stations, wireless patios, RFD checkout)
• Good way finding (more than just good signs – good paths)
• Sustainable environment (energy efficiency, green materials, pollution free)

Bolan said libraries should consider swapping reference and teen spaces. She also said that libraries need several children’s spaces, as what serves preschool children does not serve third graders well.

Pamela Vander-Ploeg and Michelle Boisvenue-Fox of Kent District Library, Michigan (you need a compound name to work at KDL) told about the extensive remodeling of their systems branch libraries. Much of their portion of the program was show and tell and included some interesting ideas:

• Buy trendy inexpensive furniture and plan to replace it to keep a contemporary feel
• Have teens go on a buying spree at a music store to update the CD collection
• Put neon open signs on the library so people can see whether it is open before parking and getting out of their cars
• Make your reading areas into living rooms, dens, conservatories. Have comfortable seats and lots of greenery.
• Have lots of electrical outlets.
• Have book displays on side tables. Train various staff members to make book displays to get maximum staff input.
• Watch HDTV for design ideas.

Cathy Hakala-Ausperk of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library, Ohio (even the library has a compound name) was the last speaker. She told what her library did with its expanded 40,000 square feet (it connected to a YMCA that it took over). (I hope I got the size right – it was humongous.) It is beyond what most public libraries have even considered:

• Sign information is incorporated into murals.
• All the display cases are movable and reset in new locations to change patterns.
• The reference desk is gone. Reference librarians rove and have small computer stations.
• The circulation desk is gone. Staff help people learn self-checkout.
• There is an office supply vending machine with pens, writable CDs, etc).
• Vending machines have only healthy items and the library gets a share of the profits.
• There is an ATM in the library.
• Besides programs and organization meetings, the meeting rooms can host birthday parties, weddings, and funerals.

This was a very thought provoking program. I know I want us to get neon signs. I have to think about some of the rest of this.