digitization in Mattern 2014


s identity and its
intellectual values. It might sound corny, but the luminescent glow permeating
the stacks acts as a beacon, a welcoming gesture. There are still many
contemporary libraries that privilege — perhaps even fetishize — the book and
the bookstack: take MVRDV’s [Book
Mountain](http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/spijkenisse/) (2012), for a town in the
Netherlands; or TAX arquitectura’s [Biblioteca Jose
Vasconcelos](http://www.designboom.com/architecture/biblioteca-vasconcelos-by-
tax-arquitectura-alberto-kalach/) (2006) in Mexico City.

Stacks occupy a different, though also fetishized, space in Helmut Jahn’s
[Mansueto Library](http://www.archdaily.com/143532/joe-and-rika-mansueto-
library-murphy-jahn/) (2011) at the University of Chicago, which mixes diverse
infrastructures to accommodate media of varying materialities: a grand reading
room, a conservation department, a digitization department, and [a
subterranean warehouse of books retrieved by
robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESCxYchCaWI&feature=youtu.be). (It’s
worth noting that Boston and other libraries contained [book
railways](http://libraryhistorybuff.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-retrieval-
systems.html) and conveyer belt retrieval systems — proto-robots — a century
ago.) Snøhetta’s [James B. Hunt Jr.
Library](http://www.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/watch/) (2013) at North Carolina
State University also incorporates a robotic storage and retrieval system, so
that the library can store more books on site, as well as meet its goal of
providing seating for 20 percent of the student population. 23 Here the
patrons come before the collection.

[![Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. \[Photo
by
brewbooks\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIB


ew-downtown-library), on public library design. See _The New Downtown Library: Designing With Communities_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
16. Personal communication with Marcellus Turner, March 21, 2014.
17. Marcellus Turner in _Library 2020_ : 92.
18. Ken Worpole addresses library partnerships, and their implications for design in his _Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide_ (New York: Routledge, 2013). The book offers a comprehensive look the public roles that libraries serve, and how they inform library planning and design.
19. Kristin Fontichiaro in _Library 2020_ : 8.
20. See Bill Ptacek in _Library 2020_ : 119.
21. The quotations are from my earlier article for Places, “[Marginalia: Little Libraries in the Urban Margins](http://places.designobserver.com/feature/little-libraries-and-tactical-urbanism/33968/).” Within mass-digitization projects like Google Books, as Elisabeth Jones explains, “works that are still in copyright but out of print and works of indeterminate copyright status and/or ownership” will fall between the cracks (in _Library 2020_ : 17).
22. I dedicate a chapter in _The New Downtown Library_ to what makes a library “contextual” — and I address just how slippery that term can be.
23. This sentence was amended after publication to note the multiple motives of implementing the bookBot storage and retrieval system; its compact storage allowed the library to reintegrate some collections that were formerly stored off-site. The library has also developed a Virtual Browse catalog system, which aims to promote virtual discovery that isn’t possible in the physical stacks.
24. According to a late 2013 web-based survey of libraries, 41 percent of respondents provide maker-spaces or maker activ

 

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