Collection Development for My Random Life.

The Boise Bike Project is moving in near where my apartment is (see below).  I ask you, is this a type of “library” to? Must a library be books, or can a library manifest itself in the way other forms of knowledge are organized and accessed such as bike expertise?

Home at Last | Rec News | Boise Weekly – News, Opinion, Music, Events, Dining – Boise, Idaho.

and also here for more info.

Super-Designed Rail Car Apartment

Core 77 design blog has a cool video on a railroad car apartment (clickty-click on the link above to view it). Looks super boss to me. It got me thinking though, what if a mobile library were put in a rail car?  If I remember right, Montana has an “art train” or something like that which goes to rural areas in Montana. The train provides access to culture and art those areas which would not normally be exposed to such things. Libraries have bookmobiles… would there be a need for a “library train” anywhere?

Another article in last week’s Economist caught my eye from their Technology Quarterly. We have all by now heard of open source software where users can tweak the open code to make it better, more functional, and even create new products all together. The article in the Economist was about open hardware where the specs for various products such as phones and various other consumer electronics products are available for customers to tweak, redesign, and make better. I think the concept is readily summed up by this quote from the guy behind Chumby (which is really awesome by the way and I want one really bad).

“The community makes suggestions and shares hacks. And we don’t try to sue our innovators. We make heroes of them.”

You can view the article here.

This idea of open hardware got me thinking of libraries (of course). The whole concept of an open library… an open work… which I have talked about before, in that a library can be interpreted and reinterpreted, even changed by patrons. Since patrons are our primary service audience shouldn’t we be soliciting their input as to what a library should be from the online catalog, to the furniture, to what we collect?  If a library were open, flexible, able to change, and react (as well as be proactive) to patron needs, would this make libraries more relevant?  Think about such things as LibraryThing which is customizable, or a Kindle where patrons could decide the collections it held, if it were possible wouldn’t it be great to customize your library experience to fit your needs as well as have input into its overall design and function? I wonder what libraries would look like?

The Unshelved comic strip is running a theme that is something similar, check it out here. I particularly like this one.

I don’t know, this is all pie-in-the-sky theorizing.