The Library Beyond the Book
The Library Beyond the Book explains, speculates and provokes book culture for a world where the physical and the virtual blend with ever increasing intimacy.- Time
With textbook readers and digital downloads proliferating, it is easy to imagine a time when printed books will vanish. Such forecasts miss the mark, argue Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles: libraries have always been mix-and-match spaces, and remix is their most plausible future scenario. Future bookshelves will not be wholly virtual, and libraries will thrive — although in a variety of new social, cultural, and architectural forms.
Combining deep study of the library’s history with the metaLAB’s record of institutional and technical innovation, The Library Beyond the Book explores what libraries have been in the past to speculate on what they will become: hybrid places that intermingle books and ebooks, analog and digital formats, paper and pixels.
