What form should Harvard libraries assume in the twenty-first century? Should they simply vanish into virtual desktops and merge into a timeless and placeless universal database? These are the questions that students in the course "Bibliotheca II: Library Test Kitchen," taught by professor of Romance languages and literatures Jeffrey Schnapp, tackled this past spring, and that culminated in a variety of student projects that “define new dimensions of the library experience.” (Learn more about the course, and about efforts across the University to bring digital advances to bear on the humanities, with these links.)
Below, watch videos on several of the projects, including a Neo-Carrel sleeping chair created by Graduate School of Design student Vera Baranova; a WiFi cold spot; and Biblio, a “library friend” that scans books, tracks and shares research, and even makes bibliographic recommendations for further study (both projects created by Ben Brady, M.Arch ’12).
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