Announcing: Library Test Kitchen for Library Staff!

Library Test Kitchen for Library Staff

 

When
The workshop meets three times:
Tuesday June 19th, Thursday June 21st and Tuesday June 26th
10am – 12pm
Attendance for all meetings is asked, thanks -

Where
Visual and Material Resources Room, Loeb Library, L12
Graduate School of Design

What will we do?

  1. Tuesday June 19th: we go over the homework assigned for the first class meeting (yes, there will be homework, but not too much : ) We’ll learn from each other and do some creative stuff.
  2. Thursday June 21st: we’ll discuss project ideas, form teams, and begin work.
  3. Tuesday June 26th: we’ll debrief, and then present our work to each other for discussion!

 

More to come…


Final Presentations, May 12

About three weeks ago, we had our reviews. They were fantastic. The presentations themselves we’re great (just watch’em and see). We also had a great turn out — at its its peaks, over 60 people were in there. Lots of interest from across the library. I’ve been promising to get these online but much has been afoot. We’ve made a publication! But more on that in another post…

Here are the full presentations cut up by presenter. Apologies for the squishiness.

Jeffrey provides the introduction:

Yuhka presents Need it Now:

Kaitlyn presents Curious Collections:

Jessica presents Time/Slice:

Vera presents Neo-Carrel:

Ben presents research and the Wifi Coldspot:

…Congratulations to Ben who just won the Thesis Prize for his design of a library in NYC.


Onward and upward

This spring’s edition of the Library Test Kitchen is concluding. But we have big plans for the summer and beyond. Several projects will built out over the summer: Jessica’s Community Calendar, for instance, has received funding from the Harvard Library Lab. We’re also planning to continue to work on various iterations of the Cold Spot concept, as elaborated in some of Ben’s work from this semester. Work on the Livebrary, built around some hacks on library scanners and copiers, will also proceed.

And then there’s next academic year: a year during which we plan to extend our work through a continuation of the LTK course at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, build up a set of nationwide partnerships, and write a major grant. So keep coming back to look as what’s being cooked up.


comics and/or gifs in frames

From a webpage & animated gif point of view, there’s something fresh to this for sure. It’s fun but still asks for a little participation, leaving room for imagination between the frames.

There’s also something that feels right about where the medium meets Woodward’s publishing/distribution model. The old comic book collecting pattern maps naturally to the App store, $.99-a-pop mentality. http://www.bottom-of-the-ninth.com/

..I want to crib this style and see how it feels to think in these terms myself….

 


ROFLcon III | May 4 & 5

ROFLcon

Excerpted:

It was a classic story as old as time: college kids grow up online, decide that it’d be a great idea to throw a internet culture conference, and unleash sheer ridiculousness upon the world.
Back in April 2008, we put on the original ROFLCon — the first internet culture conference devoted to discussing what makes memes work, why they work, and where its all going (and then throwing a big-ass rocking party with the internet celebs themselves). It was a kickass time, not to mention the most important gatherings since the fall of the tower of Babel.
We figured we’d keep doing this as long as it remains awesome (and it still is), so we’ve put together several more internet culture events. Will we ever stop? WHO KNOWS?

ROFLcon


Join LTK

Join the Library Test Kitchen for presentations, Thursday, April 12, 11:30 – 2, Stubbins Room, Gund Hall, Graduate School of Design.

Flyer Excerpt

The Harvard Library is going through a mammoth transition. What are new futures for the Harvard Library?

The Library Test Kitchen is an R & D environment for students to explore this and other questions. Our primary mode of inquiry is making. Our goal is to prototype new visions for the Library, deploy them, and see if the the community takes to them.

Today we’ll see five projects before they go live. We hope to get community feedback so “the cooks” may then revise and release their work into the wilds of the Library.

A special thanks goes to The Harvard Library Lab who has generously funded the Test Kitchen, making it a unique opportunity for all involved.

Presenters
1. Yuhka Miura
2. Kaitlyn Fitzgerald
3. Jessica Yurkofsky
4. Vera Baranova
5. Ben Brady

 

Respondents
Daniel D’Oca

Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design
Principal, Interboro Partners

Mariana Ibanez
Mariana Ibanez is Assistant Professor of Architecture
Co-founder, I/K Studio with Simon Kim

Matthew Battles
Managing Editor + Curatorial Practice Fellow, metaLAB
Author, Library: An Unquiet History, W. W. Norton & Co.


References, Excerpts & Outtakes: April 5th

Next class is the “final” review. It’s not the end of class, but it’s the last time we’ll get big time feedback before setting these projects out into the wilds of the Harvard library. It’s gonna be a fun event, we’ll have a couple visiting critics which we’re excited about.

Dan D’Oca, Interboro Partners
Mariana Ibanez, IK Studio
John Morrison , LTL

Come on down:
Thursday, April 12th
11:30am – 2pm
Gund Hall, Graduate School of Design
Porticos 121 & 122

View Larger Map

In the meantime, we spent some class time thinking about what a rough broadsheet as a product of the Kitchen might look like. I heard about Linco Printing in Long Island City. Seems the way to go, a 3 – 5 day turnaround time.

Should it be recipes? A How-To? A strict editorial voice and style? In the end, I think we’re gonna let everybody go to town, we’ll take a step back and look at what we’ve got. If we need to tweak anything, we’ll do it then. We want to stoke this discussion about creating the future of the library by building.

What might a Library Test Kitchen cookbook look like? When in doubt, ask Ant Farm.

Grab Ant Farm’s whole Inflatocookbook here!

…or just so you see a glimpse…