The Library Beyond the Book (metaLABprojects)

The Library Beyond the Book (metaLABprojects)

<p>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. Future bookshelves will not be wholly virtual, and libraries will thrive―although in a variety of new social, cultural, and architectural forms. Schnapp and Battles combine deep study of the library’s history with a record of institutional and technical innovation at metaLAB, a research group at the forefront of the digital humanities. They gather these currents in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Library Beyond the Book</i>, exploring 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.</p><p>Libraries have always been mix-and-match spaces, and remix is their most plausible future scenario. Speculative and provocative, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Library Beyond the Book</i> explains book culture for a world where the physical and the virtual blend with ever increasing intimacy.</p>