Jeffrey T. Schnapp is the faculty director of metaLAB at Harvard University and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Matthew Battles is Associate Director of metaLAB at Harvard University.
Transcending the tired debate of print vs. electronic, analog vs.
digital, the authors take a long view of library history and
attempt to envision possible scenarios for libraries of the future…
Schnapp and Battles make an invaluable point: libraries, from the
smallest to the largest, have way more stories than they know, and
The Library Beyond the Book represents a rare attempt from outside
the professional community to help libraries reconceive and better
tell these stories. Also, they show that imagining the future of
libraries doesn’t have to be a gripe session filled with doom and
gloom; it can be exciting, original, and fun.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
While iPad-bearing soothsayers banish print books to dustbins,
coauthors Schnapp and Battles, both insightful provocateurs from
Harvard University, envision dynamic and fluid architectural spaces
warehousing paper as well as pixels. In a spirit of refreshing
experimentation, they ask: What flexible qualities from the past
can accommodate tomorrow’s information consumers and, when
combined, produce innovative configurations for a digital world?
These structures incorporate basic components used in libraries
across centuries, such as bookshelves, card catalogs, librarians,
and reference desks. Building upon this framework, the authors
imagine six plausible scenarios for serving tomorrow’s diverse
information consumers, situating libraries as everything from study
shelters to civic institutions functioning as mobile libraries,
reading rooms promoting social change, and/or event-driven
knowledge centers… Schnapp and Battles offer plausible
configurations of both book and library in the age of the Internet
of Everything. Their imaginative essays demonstrate the rigorous
research and design thinking customary within university
settings.
*Library Journal*
Lively, quirky, and irreverent, this provocative book provides a
refreshing tonic to stale debates about the death or deathlessness
of the book.
*Leah Price, Professor of English, Harvard University*
Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Battles’ The Library Beyond the Book
offers a brilliant reflection on, and a cross-section through, the
past, present, and future of the library. If books have never been
just books, as they suggest, this publication demonstrates that
libraries have never been just libraries.
*Mirko Zardini, Director, Canadian Centre for Architecture*
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