Friday, June 22, 2012

Libraries Within Libraries


Image: "Integrated Marketing: Lady Gaga's Workshop at Barney's New York. #gagasworkshop" Courtesy of Robert Raines

I was thinking about the stores-within-stores concept that I originally learned about at Fitch, and I wondered if there was anything like that in the library world.  I was curious how this might be different that just areas set aside for a particular subject area (like LAPL's children's lit department).  A Store-within-a-store "is an agreement in which a retailer rents a part of the retail space to be used by a different company to run another, independent store" (Wikipedia, 2012).  So, what if the library rented space out to another non-profit like a historical society or to a a for-profit like a publisher that is library/e-book friendly?

In searching, I didn't find any concrete examples (read: opportunity!), but I did come across the National Library Board of Singapore's "unlibrary."  In essence, they created nodes within the library that subverted physical/virtual space and adopted means that challenge the traditional knowledge transference from book to person (i.e. "living library" or "borrow a person" concept).

The UnLibrary: library within a library
View more PowerPoint from Damien_Wang

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Further Reading:
PSFK has a nice post on stores-within-stores here

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