How to build a modern library
Slate has a regular slideshow column, and it’s always interesting. This week it tackles the architecture of libraries, and how library design has had to change since computers defeated books by a score of 6 to 2 in 1993.
The author, Witold Rybczynski, says that while a library isn’t the first place people go for information anymore, it’s still an “urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information.” So library designers have to rethink the stuffy reading rooms of the past, replacing them with more flexible reading spaces, lots of computers, and, of course, cafés and shops.
Seattle’s already-famous new library looks pretty inviting, featuring an airy, Rem Koolhaas-designed space for reading.
Denver, meanwhile, settled on a reading room anchored by a massive wooden structure, which looks like a Tesla coil that shoots pure, crackling knowledge at the terrified citizens of Denver. Now that’s how to build a library.
THE BEATITUDES NETWORK – REBUILDING THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES OF NEW ORLEANS http://www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com
*Lyn LeJeune is helping rebuild New Orleans, specifically the public libraries. She is donating ALL OF THE ROYALTIES from the sale of her novel, THE BEATITUDES, directly to the New Orleans Public Library Foundation; that’s three years of hard work You can help us, The Beatitudes Network, help New Orleans. Simply buy the book for yourself and anyone you know who wants to see New Orleans come back as one of our great American cities. THE BEATITUDES is a great crime novel set in New Orleans. Go to Amazon.com and see 5 star reviews!
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“BUY A BOOK, BUILD A LIBRARY,” AS QUOTED AT FREAKONOMICS, NEW YORK TIMES, 8/14/07.
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Merci mille fois- thanks a million.
Nita Cowart, Publicist for The Beatitudes Network at lynlejeune@cox.net
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