The Most Modern Library

Take a gander at the "library concept center" called DOK in Delft, Holland. Its goal is to be the most modern library in the world, and I was drooling while reading the article about all if offers its patrons: multimedia chairs, rotating art exhibits, video games, an entire room dedicated to graphic novels, cafes (please let's get cafes in school libraries at some point!) and a groovy information dispenser called a TANK U.

Jenny from the Shifted Librarian wrote a great article about her recent visit there and all the amazingly different things she found in comparison to traditional libraries. It's got me thinking about how the idea of what a library should be is so archaic, yet so engrained in people's minds as a quiet place where kids go to learn or study or read quietly. And that's it for many people. In order to change how we think of libraries, perhaps changing the name is the perfect place to start. I'm heading to a new school in July, the International School of Bangkok, and they have recently changed the name of the library to the Learning Hub, or Hub for short. What a myriad of possibilities a new name invites...

image taken from Shifted Librarian