Blended Libraries
Harald Reiterer
In the future physical libraries will have still great impact for knowledge work. The reason for it is, that many interesting objects are still not digitally available and the importance of libraries as physical and social place to encounter and to learn collaboratively is unchallenged. The goal of the talk is to present the idea of a project called “Blended Library”. The aim of the project is to develop new concepts to support the information seeking process and collaboration inside of the physical library of the future. Inside of the Blended Library, users will find novel ways for knowledge work and intermediation. This will be realized by the extensive application of new interactive devices and prospective visualizations that “blend” the real and virtual features of libraries. Beside the traditional terminal-based workplaces, particularly novel forms of interaction - embodied for example through multi touch tabletops, interactive wall displays or mobile devices - will be provided, especially for information seeking and group work. The intention behind the introduction of these technologies is to support the library users during the exploration of the capacious media space of the library in an intuitive and natural manner. During the project, concepts will be developed and implemented as prototypes, which will be evaluated in realistic scenarios and contexts. The demonstration of their value will be carried out in terms of a marquee project or best-practice example. In particular, this will be realized with the real operation of selected concepts as “living lab” inside the library. Hence, the possible applications of the established ideas and concepts in future libraries will be demonstrated and their feasibility and serviceability will be analysed. The project is funded by the "Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst" Baden-Württemberg in Germany.
