"Bibliotheca II, alias “son of Bibliotheca” (last semester’s seminar/studio jointly run by Jeffrey Schnapp & John Palfrey), has now been launched with the help of Ann Whiteside (chief librarian at the Loeb Design Library), Jeff Goldenson (Law Library Innovation Lab), and Ben Brady (GSD). Otherwise known as The Library Test Kitchen or the “library rapid prototyping lab,” it’s being generously funded by the Harvard Library Lab. Questions of every kind are on the table regarding the future of libraries from signage to furniture, policies to experiences. The point is to build stuff: to translate “ah-ha” insights into actual devices, to fabricate the next new online/offline appliance (or at least a plausible iteration of such an appliance). Once these exist, we plan to deploy & test them in partner libraries, such as the Loeb Design, Widener & Fine Arts Libraries, that allocate portions of their public space to experimentation. We’ll be posting our progress to www.librarytestkitchen.org ."

"…can’t help but imagine how Agel & Fiore would go about packaging a book today. So much about culture has turned porous; surely the range of multimedia possibilities would excite them to no end, resulting in books as radical as ones they produced over 40 years ago. Perhaps they would film a reality TV show based on the production of a book, inviting viewers to vote on book’s content, format, design, & title as an author, designer, & editor tried to work under such circumstances in a studio that also served as their living quarters?

Whatever the result of working w/ today’s tools, I’m sure they would not deviate from what had been their primary focus: the reader. Schnapp & Michaels locate common ground all these experimental paperbacks share in how they empower readers: “Even if this book is ‘by’ a major thinker, you will fill in the blanks, you connect the dots, you navigate the book forward or backward to find the tasty tidbits; look for the patterns, ideas, & story lines yourself."

"…excavation of moment from e-Book’s prehistory & metabook on cut-&-paste genre of original paperbacks…explores…60-70s when former backstage players—designers, graphic artists, editors, “coordinators,” & “producers”—stepped into spotlight to create a set of exceptional paperback books…period begins in 1966 when Jerome Agel & Quentin Fiore, in collaboration w/ Marshall McLuhan, first developed The Medium Is the Massage into “an inventory of effects”…continues to 1975, publication year of Other Worlds, Agel’s collaboration w/…Carl Sagan. Graphic designers such as Fiore employed a variety of radical techniques—verbal visual collages & other typographic pyrotechnics—…as important to content as the text. Aimed squarely at young media-savvy consumers of “Electric Information Age,” these small, inexpensive paperbacks brought the ideas of contemporary thinkers to mass audiences & established a distinctive new graphics-rich, montage-based genre of bookmaking that still resonates loudly today."