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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The changing library........................................................................................................ 1

Chapter 1: The foundation..................................................................................................................... 2

1.1 Personal development ................................................................................................................. 2

1.2 Educational theories ..................................................................................................................... 2

1.2.1 Theory of Multiple Intelligences ............................................................................................ 3

1.2.2 New Media Literacy ............................................................................................................... 3

1.2.3 The Reggio Emilia approach to education ........................................................................ 4

1.3 Bringing it all together ................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter 2: From theory to design ......................................................................................................... 6

2.1 Library spaces................................................................................................................................. 6

2.2 The model ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 3: Coherency in the library................................................................................................... 11

3.1 The talent lab, a practical example ......................................................................................... 11

Chapter 4: The catalogue ................................................................................................................... 13

Chapter 5: Further development ........................................................................................................ 14

Appendixes ............................................................................................................................................ 15
Product documentation Treehouse Project

INTRODUCTION:
THE CHANGING LIBRARY
The role of public libraries in the society is changing. While the amount of media and media
content grows, the amount of spare time people have becomes less with each passing year.
Because of this, people have to prioritise their list of possible activities. In most cases, going to
the library is far from the top of the list.

In order to provide for the functions the library currently offers, people use internet services
such as Google Search and Wikipedia to quickly find the information they need.
Furthermore, they order books online at stores like Amazon and Bol.com, which usually
deliver the books on your doorstep the next day. Even if some people don’t like to read
books, almost everyone reads their favourite weblogs and news sites, discusses on online
forums or reads tons of member profiles of various social networking sites (eg.
Hyves, MySpace).

For libraries to remain a meaningful commodity to the community, its role has to change. The
Dutch Public Library Association has acknowledged this and launched the Library 2040
project in response. A large number of people and institutions with different backgrounds
gave their point of view on the future library, these are documented in the book
“Bibliotheken 2040: De toekomst in uitvoering”.

In the context of Library 2040, the Treehouse Project is the latest instalment in a series of co-
operations between the Dutch Public Library Association and the Utrecht School of the Arts.
The Treehouse Project team, an interdisciplinary team consisting of both Master and PSAU
students, was asked by the Dutch Public Library Association to develop a concept for the
children’s section in the library of the future, in which sharing and imagination should play a
big role.

This report contains the results of the Treehouse Project team its efforts to envision a possible
future for the Dutch public libraries in which they do not compete with but supplement
peoples’ everyday usage of different media.

During this project we chose not to focus on specific details within this vision, but to create a
broad spectrum sketch of the future library. Thus, we mean to push the Dutch Public Library
Association in the direction we think is correct by handing them a solid foundation, for them
to be able to continue building on top of our work.

This report is built around the processes and notions we think are important in the library of
the future. The fact that these processes work is then proven by the supplemented test data
of specific implementations. This report does not offer information about our design process,
which can be found in our process documentation instead.

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CHAPTER 1:
THE FOUNDATION
The Dutch Public Library Association has defined five core functions, which are the primary
areas for which the libraries provide services. The core functions are knowledge &
information, education, reading & literature and meeting & debate. These five core functions
manifest themselves in dozens of different ways, but there is one thread that runs through
them all; libraries intend you to leave more knowledgeable or wiser than you were when you
came in. In other words, all five core functions contribute to the personal development of
people.

1.1 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Personal development however, takes both time and effort. This poses a problem for today’s
society, where people continually search for ways to do things faster and with less effort. We
order our books from bol.com or Amazon, sometimes based on what other customers
bought, without the website exactly telling us why. Children base their essays on information
retrieved from Wikipedia, assuming every word that’s written down is true. Although the
internet, and other media, offer large amounts of content, we increasingly tend to forget to
reflect on what it tells us and just accept the information at face value.

Thus, in order to stimulate personal development, people need an environment which

stimulates curiosity and inspires them to ask questions. This is a quality that modern media,
such as the world wide web, cannot offer. Modern media overload people with information,
which only results in people not being able to ask questions. However, this is exactly the point
where libraries can distinguish themselves from other content providers. Libraries have a
physical space and real people walking around who can assist you in your quest for
knowledge and/or wisdom.

In order for this to happen, several things have to change within the current libraries. First of
all, libraries should stop offering ever more content to people and switch to a context-
centred approach instead. Overloading people with information does not help them and,
even more important, it does not help if a librarian points to the computer running search
software if you ask a question that’s harder to answer than asking for the section with travel
guides. A context-centred approach to libraries makes use of the advantages the library has
over the use of modern media in that it can better support people in their personal
development.

For a context-centred approach to personal development to work, libraries should not only
inspire people to ask questions but also enable and assist them to find the answer to their
question and finally help them reflect on both question and answer. In other words, the
library of the future enables and stimulates people to get inspired, use that inspiration to find
answers and reflect back on what they found. To help us envision this environment, we have
taken elements from several theories on education.

1.2 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

During the project, we have borrowed from three different theoretical and practical
approaches to learning. The first and most influential to our project is Howard Gardner’s

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Theory of Multiple Intelligence, the second are Henry Jenkins’ ideas on new media literacy
and the third is Regio Emilia’s approach to preschool and primary education. Together, these
approaches to learning form the second cornerstone of the library of the future the way we
envisioned it.

1.2.1 Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence deals with different ways of thinking and
learning. It acknowledges that different people absorb information in different ways and thus
have talents in different areas. The theory distinguishes between eight different intelligences:

 Bodily – Kinesthetic
 Interpersonal
 Verbal – Linguistic
 Logical – Mathematical
 Naturalistic
 Intrapersonal
 Visual – Spatial
 Musical – Rhythmical

Taken back into context of the library, the fact that people have different talents, and
assuming that all those talents can be included in one of Gardner’s eight intelligences,
means the library should enable people to process information and develop themselves in
different ways.

In today’s libraries, a person can look at pictures in books if he or she is strong in the visual –
spatial talent or listen to music if the person is strong in the musical – rhythmical talent. It is
possible for everyone having one to find information in the library which can be processed
by using the talent the person in question is strong in. Thus, people cannot improve the use of
their talents within the library, or in other words, one’s personal development is currently
limited to processing information.

This brings us back to the context-centred approach, in which different people should be
inspired by and able to search for answers in different ways. This is not limited to reading a
book or watching episodes of a tv-show, but can also include creating a movie yourself,
learning to play or compose a piece of music and building a robot, just to name a few
examples. Because people are actually creating stuff, the answers to people’s questions,
can often be added to the library again to act as fuel for someone else’s curiosity.

1.2.2 New Media Literacy

The second part of theoretical background is about new media literacy. Henry Jenkins
identified eleven skills dealing with new media, which people need to function well in today’s
high-tech. These skills include:

 PLAY:
The capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving.
 PERFORMANCE:
The ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and
discovery.

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 SIMLATION:
The ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
 APPROPRIATION:
The ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
 MULTITASKING:
The ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
 DISTRIBUTED COGINITION:
The ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand our mental capacities.
 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE:
The ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common
goal.
 JUDGEMENT:
The ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
 TRANSMEDIA NAVIGATION:
The ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
 NETWORKING:
The ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
 NEGOTIATION:
The ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple
perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Although these skills are important in today’s society, they are rarely taught to people. Skill
sets dealing with new media literacy, such as using Google to find what you are looking for
or distinguishing between commercial and informative content on websites are often
learned through trial-and-error. The library can offer guidance in successfully tapping into the
wealth of information that can be accessed through modern media.

By helping people to learn and eventually master the use of modern media, libraries can
offer access to much more content than can be stored in physical media. This further
decreases the importance of the library as content provider, but shows that libraries can
offer services such as helping people to successfully make use of other content providers.

1.2.3 The Reggio Emilia approach to education

The third and last part of the theoretical background stems from the Reggio Emilia approach
to education. The philosophy of Reggio Emilia is centred around the natural development of
children, which coincides with the library of the future’s focus on personal development. This
development-centred approach manifests itself through the following principles:

 Children must have some control over the direction of their learning.
 Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening,
seeing and hearing.
 Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world
that children must be allowed to explore.
 Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

These principles match with the Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence, in that
they enable children to learn and express themselves in various ways, depending on the
preferences of the children. This also brings us back to our target group and original
assignment: designing the children’s section of the future library.

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1.3 BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

We envision the children’s section of the future libraries to be an inspiring place which
stimulates children to learn, experience, create and share; factors which all contribute to a
child’s personal development. By using the Theory of Multiple Intelligences as a base,
children can do this in the way that suits them best. When the library also acts as a guide to
using new media, all children have the chance to learn the skills they need in order to fully
function in today’s society. Furthermore, the children’s section of the library of the future is
influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach to education in that it gives children the choice,
what, when and how they want to learn, experience, create and/or share.

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CHAPTER 2:
FROM THEORY TO DESIGN
If the library is to stimulate learning, creating and sharing through meaningful experiences,
the inside of the library has to change. Space is needed for things other than physical media
containers (e.g. Books or compact discs). To achieve this, we split up the library into three
different spaces, each of these spaces deals with a separate step in the process of
inspiration, creation and exposition.

Part of the furniture of these spaces consists of interactive installations. In these installations,
one or more of Jenkins’ new media skills should be present and the installation needs to
stimulate one or more of Gardner’s intelligences. To make it easier for designers to think up
good concepts, we developed a grid based on the theoretical side of this project.

2.1 LIBRARY SPACES

In our concept for the youth section in the library of the future we have divided the available
library space into three sections. This makes it easier for a library to incorporate the process of
inspiration, creation and exposition. The three different spaces in the library are the inspiration
area, the work area and the flexible area.

Each space serves a different purpose. The inspiration space contains books, magazines,
news papers, movies, cartoons and other TV series, music and computers with internet
access among other stuff. All these sources of information can act as a stimulus for one’s
imagination. This still sounds a lot like a traditional library, but this is where the changes start.
One of the changes is that the inspiration area also contains requests from other people. Like
a notice board, everyone can put a note with a question on the question board. These
questions can be answered by people who already know the answer or by people who
have an interest in the subject and are willing to spend time into finding the answer.

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Aside from the notice board, a large part of the interactive installations briefly mentioned
before are positioned within the inspiration area. These installations are meant to inspire
children in ways not possible through traditional library content. One such installation is the
Kijkende Handen box. Kijkende Handen is a large box of about 9 square meters in which
children can engage with an audio story while being deprived from their sense of sight.
Before entering, children have to blindfold themselves and put on a set of headphones. This
way, the installation simulates being blind. But it doesn’t stop by being deprived from your
sight, the immersion is also increased by the combination of audio effects and the use of
physical objects.

Being engaged with installations like Kijkende Handen or finding information in traditional
media can inspire children to create something. This brings us to the second of the three
spaces, the work area. The work area can be used to transform your inspiration into
something you create yourself or with others. This can be an essay for school, a poem, a song
or just about anything else. If you’re interested in robots, it should be possible to build one. If
you want to form a band with other people and practice songs, this should also be possible.
Working in the work area can be done alone or with others, you can work on a subject of
your own choosing or participate in a workshop organised by someone else.

The interactive installations in the inspiration space are a good place to start for workshops.
Let us take Kijkende Handen as an example once more. It is possible to organise various
workshops around the installation, in which children go through the process of creating their
own audio-story step-by-step. Starting with a story writing workshop, the children can
continue in a sensory workshop, a prop building workshop and finally an audio editing
workshop.

When working in a series of workshops centred around an installation, it is impossible to do all

the work on your own. In these cases, children with different roles work together to finish the
workshop. In case of the workshops centred around Kijkende Handen, some children work
on the props while someone else is doing the voice acting and others are doing the audio
editing.

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The result of what happens in the work area varies according to the subject. A story made for
Kijkende Handen can be put back into the library and a drawing or movie can be uploaded
to the internet to act as inspiration for someone else. In this way, the smaller creations return
to the library as new content. The larger-scale creations however, cannot easily be exhibited
in the inspiration area. For this purpose, we added a third space to the library, the flexible
area.

The flexible area can be used for various purposes. As such, the contents of the flexible area
change over time. It is entirely possible to use it as an art gallery one week, while children
perform a play the week after. There is one thread running through all the activities in the
flexible area, the activities are meant to expose the work the children have created in the
work area. Since the library is still a public space, everyone can walk in, take a look at the
work, meet other people and discuss the work that is being exposed at the moment.

Besides choosing to show your work in the flexible area or putting it back in the inspiration
area, children can also choose to upload their work to the internet. This can then be shared
with other people through systems we call hotspots. These hotspots are placed within as well
as outside the library. Hotspots allow people to search through everything that’s been
uploaded, comment on creations and contact the person who uploaded the creation. This
way, the hotspots serve not only to expose someone’s work, but also to connect people with
similar interest.

The different spaces and the hotspots helps the library stimulate learning, creating and
sharing. The installations in the inspiration area, the workshops in the work area and the
exposure through the flexible area and hotspots all help to do this through meaningful
experiences. However, for the inspiration area to really work, different installations dealing
with different talents and skills have to be designed.

2.2 THE MODEL

We devised a model to help designers filter their ideas and analyse their concepts for
interactive installations. This model is based on the theory discussed in a previous chapter. Its
base consists of an 88-square grid, combining Gardner’s eight multiple talents along one axis
with Jenkins’ new media skills along the other. Each installation that can be designed for the
library has a different footprint in this grid, as different installations utilise different talents and
help to master different skills.

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The model can be used in two ways by designers. The first is to analyse existing concepts or
installations and us it as a filter to find the most promising concept. Using the model as a tool
for analysis is perhaps the easiest method, but probably not the best. The other way to use
the model is by taking one or more talents and or new media skills as basis for generating
ideas. A good example of this second usage is the way we have designed the SourceWell.
The SourceWell is from the start on designed for children to master the skill Jenkins defined as
Judgement.

The SourceWell is a tabletop computer on which you can put one or multiple sources of
information for comparison, such as a news paper article or a book. The SourceWell then
displays information about the writer and the publisher, based on which you can determine
the value of the source’s information. This way, children learn to distinguish valuable
information from gossip or commercial content.

Analysis of the different installations we designed show that the model is a usable tool during
the design process. And although this was our initial usage for the model, it can also be used
by librarians to select a sub-section from all the available installations. To make the selection
process easier, we expanded the model to include three additional layers of information.

The first of these additional layers is about what we call the ‘Amount of Guide Units’
(short:AGU). Some installations cannot be used by children without guidance, although the
amount of guidance they need can differ per age. The AGU layer shows the amount of
guidance, expressed in percentages, a child of a certain age needs to safely and
meaningfully interact with an installation. The second additional layer shows in which
balance an installation adds something to the implementation of one of the libraries’ core
functions. The last additional layer of information is about the process of inspiration, creation
and expression. The layer shows in which part of the process the installation fits by displaying
the balance between the different steps of the process in a pie-chart.

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The model brings theory and practice together. It is the bridge between the Theory of
Multiple Intelligence, Jenkins’ ideas on New Media Literacy and the actual design of
installations dealing either directly or indirectly with these skills. Furthermore, the model can
also be used as a tool for selecting installations to be used in the three library spaces; the
inspiration area, the work area and the flexible area. The description of the three library
spaces and the model help to bridge the gap between our ideas and an actual
implementation of the future library the way we envisioned it. They help enable libraries to
become an inspiring place which stimulates children to learn, experience, create and share
in meaningful ways.

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CHAPTER 3:
COHERENCY IN THE LIBRARY
Although the three library spaces, the dozens of different workshop tools and installations all
contribute to the library of the future, things can become an incoherent mess at this point.
When done wrong, future libraries can look like institutions with different purposes meshed
together. To make sure the library still feels like a coherent whole, we used themes to
connect the three library spaces and their contents. Themes can differ in many ways from
each other, but they always strengthen the connection between the different spaces and
the different steps in the process of inspiration, creation and exposition.

Although being the most commonly seen element of a theme, the different library themes
not only contain style guides. Library themes also come with props which can be placed in
the library, installations which fit the theme and advise on different workshops stemming from
the installations included with the theme. As different library themes come with different
artefacts, each library theme has a different footprint in the grid. Also, the themes can differ
across a wide variety of subjects. A library theme can be centred around a place such as an
oasis, the ocean or a jungle, it can be centred around ancient civilizations such as the
Romans, Greeks or Egyptians or around a scientific subject such as astronomy, physics or
biology. The possibilities are endless. To show how this works in practice, we designed a single
theme: the Talent Lab.

3.1 THE TALENT LAB, A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

A library themed with the Talent Lab poses itself as an experimental area, a facility that
provides controlled conditions in which research, experiments, and measurement may be
performed and where information, products and services are exchanged. The Talent Lab
contains graphic elements in six different colours such as the ones pictured below:

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Aside from the graphic elements, the Talent Lab contains props for use in the work space,
such as cordon tape, magnifying glasses, name tags, lab jackets, safety glasses, clipboards,
lab access tickets and a hand scanner. These props are not just for decoration, most of them
are actually useful in the work area and the access tickets and hand scanner provide
children with access to the work area.

Finally, the Talent Lab ships with three installations, the mix machine, the microscope and the
info pod. The three installations are all linked to the Talent Lab through the use of props or
other elements that match with the Talent Lab. The mix machine remixes stories. Children can
gather tags with words on them from within the work area and put these in test tubes. When
the test tubes are placed in the mix machine, the machine will compile a new story out of
other stories that match the tags. The second installation, the microscope, is a device
through which children can review recordings of past workshops. By selecting a petri dish
and placing it under the microscope, the corresponding recording is loaded and displayed.
It is then possible to watch the recording through the microscope. The last installation
included with the Talent Lab is the info pod. It is similar to the microscope installation in that it
gives information about workshop. The info pod is a helmet-like device, which a child can
put over his or her head, the child will then receive spoken information about the workshop
that is currently in progress. More information on the mix machine, microscope and info pod
can be found in the appendixes.

As shown with the Talent Lab, through small enhancements to the overall experience of the
three library spaces, the library themes create a feeling of coherency in the whole library
while also creating a more joyful experience.

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CHAPTER 4:
THE CATALOGUE
To bring all these installations and themes to the library, we devised a catalogue. The
catalogue is a web application not unlike the well known web stores Amazon and Bol.com.
Librarians can use the catalogue to step-by-step browse through its contents and select a
library theme and one or more installations. To make it possible for librarians to make an
educated choice, we built our catalogue application around the model discussed earlier.

When using the catalogue, librarians are first opted to select a theme for their library after
which they can select one or multiple installations. This is done after each other, so as not to
needlessly make the process more complicated. As a librarian navigates through the
application, the complexity slightly increases with each step, so as not to create too steep a
learning curve.

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CHAPTER 5:
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
In the past chapter, you have been introduced to the various components we created to
support our vision of the library of the future. From the foundation consisting of the libraries’
core functions and educational theories to the different spaces in the library, the model and
its various uses. This chapter talks about ways in which the “Vereniging van Openbare
Bibliotheken” can build upon the foundation we have laid out.

One of the ways in which the “Vereniging van Openbare Bibliotheken” can build upon this
framework is by having people design new installations and prototyping our concepts for
installations. Although various installations have been discussed in the previous chapters, only
one of these, the Kijkende Handen, has been prototyped and tested. There has been
thought about the technical requirements to create prototypes for these installations, as can
be seen in the appendixes. Besides conceptualizing and prototyping new installations, a
business model has to be thought out to make this work for the libraries. Since it should be
possible for both small and large libraries to exchange their theme and installations
periodically, letting libraries purchase their installations is out of the picture.

The business model for the different themes and installations has to be embedded in the
catalogue application, which need to be further developed itself. The catalogue
application is not finished yet. Early usability testing with wireframes has shown several points
of improvement and besides that, the wireframes have to be developed into a fully
designed and functional website.

Besides these pointers, evidence that this approach to the library of the future works already
exists. The public library of Heerhugowaard is a good example, in which certain elements
such as the combination of traditional library space with a workshop can be found. What is
left is to go a few steps further and actually build the future library.

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APPENDIXES

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APPENDIX A: REFERENCES
Bruynzeels, R. & Tiggelen, N. van (2001)
Bibliotheken 2040: De toekomst in uitvoering
Biblion Uitgeverij

Jenkins, H. (2006)
Confronting the challenges in participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century

Wikipedia
The Reggio Emilia approach
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggio_Emilia_approach

Wikipedia
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

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