Cooking up some dishes in the Library Test Kitchen

Bibliotheca II, alias “son of Bibliotheca” (last semester’s seminar/studio jointly run by Jeffrey Schnapp and John Palfrey), has now been launched with the help of Ann Whiteside (chief librarian at the Loeb Design Library), Jeff Goldenson (Law Library Innovation Lab), and Ben Brady (GSD). Otherwise known as The Library Test Kitchen or the “library rapid prototyping lab,” it’s being generously funded by the Harvard Library Lab. Questions of every kind are on the table regarding the future of libraries from signage to furniture, policies to experiences. The point is to build stuff: to translate “ah-ha” insights into actual devices, to fabricate the next new online/offline appliance (or at least a plausible iteration of such an appliance). Once these exist, we plan to deploy and test them in partner libraries, such as the Loeb Design, Widener and Fine Arts Libraries, that allocate portions of their public space to experimentation. We’ll be posting our progress to www.librarytestkitchen.org.

The Library Test Kitchen meets on Thursdays at 11:30 am – 2 pm in the Visual Resources Room of Loeb Design Library @ the Graduate School of Design, L12. We have an open door policy, so stop on by.