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| The next age of discovery |
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Digitisation is a vital tool for increasing public access to rare items, while at the same time creating a disaster-proof record. In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitise crumbling literary treasures. In the process new discoveries are being unearthed, from never seen versions of the Gospels to unknown lines of ancient Greek poetry.
A digital arms race has been heating up in recent years as companies pour millions into large-scale digitisation projects, including Microsoft's effort to scan 80,000 books at the British Library and IBM's multimillion-dollar project to create a virtual version of China's Forbidden City.
New technology is opening up a new age of discovery, which Alexandra Alter explores in a fascinating article. |
| Inspired spaces |
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In a previous issue of New for Libraries we thought we'd found the world's most inspiring children's library, in Japan. Now our attention has been drawn to the most amazing dedicated children's bookshop in Beijing, designed by Japanese architect Keiichiro Sako.
Kid's Republic is stocked with picture books from all over the world. But it's the integrity of the concept, linking the design to the inner world of the child that makes it so startlingly different.
Recesses in walls and ceiling accommodate light fittings and displays - and children - and the stepped floor forms a natural stage and auditorium. |
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A ribbon of rainbow colours starts at the bottom of the stairs next to the entrance and winds its way up to the floor above, metamorphosing into various objects along the way, snaking into the activity area used for events and anime screenings. Functioning in places as bookshelf, table and gates, it twists and twirls to form counters and even parts of the ceiling.
Why is it important? Because in library design we need to be so much more adventurous - and our library architects and traditional furniture designers (and those who commission new library buildings) need to find more creative integrated concepts for library spaces that match the building, light, colour, display shelving and the books themselves to the imaginative worlds that libraries have always inspired through reading. An inspired building alone is not enough. |
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| Access publisher catalogues worldwide |
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Peter Scott, blues singer, librarian and frenetic library blogger, created this useful site (among many others), now added to the Libraries Agency's list of Useful Links. |
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