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 [9], and about efforts across the University to bring digital advances to bear on the humanities [10], 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).