About the failed 'Taste Tagging'-project in Haarlem Oost and 'lazybrarians'
Via the LIS Newslist I stumbled upon a rather critical story about our Haarlem City Library in the Netherlands. A story which generates lots of acclaim in the reactions. Sadly the story is only partly true. We did realise a new branche library back in 2006 for the focusgroups kids & 'less mobile' people in the district Haarlem Oost. The library is set-up in a large multifuntional 'old folks home' which also functions as a district centre. The library is situated together with a small supermarket, hairdresser, drugstore, general practice and physiotherapy practice around a large atrium in the building. The district Haarlem Oost consists of large percentages immigrants and people with low incomes.
We planned several innovations in the new library such as RFID bookdrops, a semi permanent opened 'staffless' section, a 'livingroom-like' atmosphere, an integrated social counter, much frontally presented media etc. The bookdrop is a piece of furniture with 'intelligent' shelves. Patrons just have to put their books on the shelves to bring them back.
Interior architect Jan David Hanrath suggested in his plan a taste tagging system in the furniture. Shelves were tagged 'bold', 'boring', 'funny' etc. etc. It was intended that placing a returned book on the interactive shelve would generate a tag in the librarysystem. Sadly our librarysystem (Infor's Vubis Smart System) couldn't provide the tagging funcionality at that moment. So the tagging labels on the shelves actually didn't add much value. Furthermore adults ignored the labels and placed all the books on the nearest shelves using the other shelves only when the nearest were full. A technical solution (linking the furniture with the system) couldn't be forseen in the nearby future and there were also some difficult to solve logistical problems so the project was eventually abandoned. Nothing to do with lazy librarians actually. The Haarlem Oost staff are a bunch of hard working nice people.
More blogging also here
Photo: Jan David Hanrath
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2 reacties:
Thanks for sharing the background information, Jan! The Harleem librarians and their architect are very obviously no lazybrarians, but smart and creative. Too bad that your ILS provider is neither!
I work in a large academic library myself and a return system like yours would in no way be feasible, space-wise. But I really like the idea of transfering Web 2.0-functionality into the real world. And I think that even if it did not work out, it was a brilliant idea because lots of not too tech-savvy people could have contributed valuably to the data.
Regards from Hamburg,
Anne
Hi Jan,
I didn't see them as "lazy" -- just unable to deal with the changes.
But I'm confused. Your account is very different from what my friend heard from the librarian at the front desk when she visited Haarlem Oost. That librarian said that people were using the shelves properly and liked them. How do you reconcile this difference?
Nina
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