Library Lab

Names: Nate Hill, Sam Klein, Katie Filbert
Partners: Wikimedia DC; Washington DC Public Library; Noll & Tam Architects and Planners; Matthew Williams Design; Nate Hill
URL: http://www.librarylab.org/

The Library Lab proposal presents the design concept for a Library Lab, a unique way of creating a footprint for the digital library in the physical world.  The project’s creators have also assembled a prototypical Library Lab that is operating in the Washington DC Public Library’s main facility, the Martin Luther King Jr. Library, this fall.

The Lab is an infrastructure for the input of physical, audio, and visual information into the digital realm, and for the transfer of that digital information back into physical form of various sorts.  The creators have conceived of a number of modules that will serve to support or contain the equipment needed for the transfer of the digital information.  These modules 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 Library Lab is extensible and can easily be configured and assembled to suit the needs of an urban museum with a large space and budget or a small, rural library with only a limited space and a very specific use case.

Over the course of the months that the demonstration library lab in Washington, D.C. is operating, the creators will 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 components to their own use cases.