June 22, 2007 at 9:45 pm (Convenience, Libraries in Unusual Places, Magical Thinking)
I’ve always loved working downtown, if only for the fact that I frequently stumble upon things like this. Although this isn’t the exact mailbox I saw today, it is just like the one currently standing at the corner of Main and Exchange.
It made me have one of those ubiquitous “aha” moments where I thought, Man, how cool is the USPS? Immediately followed by, we (the library) should do something like this.
When I was at Ogden, I always wanted to paint a monster or dragon head around the interior of our drive-up book drop, with the shute through which all the books dropped being the mouth. The drop was in the back wall of the library, in the office, but directly across from the checkout side of the circ desk, so when the office doors were open, people could see it. Alas, I never got around to it.
Again, back in my Ogden days, I wanted to put book vending machines in various spots in the Village. I even tested the idea out with a couple different vending machine companies and, if I had stayed there, would probably have debuted the first one this summer. Now I see that the Contra Costa Library is doing something very like that but they’re taking it one step further. They are rolling out automatic book dispensers that will let users check out and return books at various locations. If I were at Contra Costa, I might think about running a contest like the USPS did with the whole uspsjedimaster.com thing and see what kinds of designs people came up with for decorating these book dispensers. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to check out a book that comes out of a Wild Thing mouth?
So what other things could we do in our community to attract this kind of attention?
Patty
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May 2, 2007 at 5:13 am (Convenience, Food for Thought, Libraries in Unusual Places, emerging technology)
I discovered yet another gem produced by the digitizing folks at the Central Library — the annual reports and minutes from the Reynolds Library, the precursor to the Rochester Public Library. Of course only a true library geek would find these reports and minutes exciting, but well, that’s me. What I found especially interesting is the similarity in thinking by these men (and they were all men running the library in 1886) and contemporary library thinkers. For example, from the 1886 Anual Report of the Reynolds Library Committee, page 4, comes these little jewels:
- They have consequently kept before their eyes, not simply the library which is, but the library which is to be.
- But a large, growing library soon expands beyond the capacity of any one mind.
Of course, these two phrases were written as part of a discussion about setting up a classification system for arranging books, and whether it is proper to “admit the public promiscuously to the shelves,” but nonetheless, I think they had some good thinkin’ goin’ on.
Cathy said it best at our Emerging Tech meeting last week — we have to go where the people are, and the people are on the Internet. So what implications does that have on the library which is to be? There are some thinkers out there who believe the brick & mortar library is rapidly becoming a dinosaur. I’m not so sure about that. I see the library building as we know it morphing into a destination that is combined with other aspects of “village life” if you will.
I’ve been watching with great interest the development of urban community centers that combine the indoor mall concept with municipal government, libraries, and living spaces. Of course, I can’t find any of the links I thought I saved to some of these developments, but picture the Irondequoit Public Library housed in the Medley Center along with the Town of Irondequoit government offices, a post office, laundromat, restaurants, grocery store, retail shops, an arcade, a night club, a gym, and apartments — all under one roof — and you’ll get what I’m talking about. Edited 5/3/07 – Of course after what Terry said at the Directors Council meeting yesterday, no way no how the Irondequoit Library will be located in the mall.
Maybe I’m too practical to envision a future for libraries that aren’t brick & mortar places, but I imagine that the men who wrote about the “library which is to be” in 1886 and struggled with how to classfy and organize the books were too practical to envision a library catalog that wasn’t paper, yet they got the idea that they had to think of the future to make the present work. Pretty smart guys, I’d say…
Patty
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November 19, 2006 at 1:18 am (Libraries in Unusual Places)
Wouldn’t it be cool if MCLS invested in one of these V.Boxes and let members borrow it? I can see libraries popping up all over the place — outside Frontier Field on a game day, all those summer celebrations, Charlotte by the pier, Genesee Country Village during one of their Civil War field day things, the County Fair, in the middle of a Corn Maize even…
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