The Curated Library behind the Scenes

It may be a little late now (in time for a new year) to recap all the things that transpired over the past month or two. Indeed some labbers are already amazed by how far we have come. Nevertheless the co-creative process of working out ideas in action for a library of the future is too incredible to be missed in documentation, albeit in hindsight. Let me just try to supply my perspective.

As I recall now, what I remember best is actually trudging through the stories the lab collected from the Sham Shui Po community, though we have since gone far beyond the story collection phase to the prototyping phase which only culminated of late. Perhaps this is a fair reflection of how we would otherwise do field research and thorough consultation bottom-up, had citizens got the chance to take matters in our own hands for most of public affairs. We looked for people to talk to, probed their interests and habits and, for the most part, rambled something random with them like a favourite dinner place nearby, but only to find that there was little time later on to deal with the massive amount of information we ambitiously gathered. There were more blog posts bubbling each day than the editors could digest as the analysis deadline approached, and somehow, some 70 stories were published at last.

Then came the crazy part. Within around a week, all stories were analysed, not to mention the analysis methodology was also revised during the time. At one of the earlier analysis sessions I participated in, we broke the stories down into focus questions that would guide our brainstorming, noting the interviewee’s current situation and our analysis of his/her needs on Wieteke’s canvas. A few prominent common issues came up already like community resources, library resources (also the gap between these resources and the user community), the role of technology in innovation, as well as reading in general. In preliminary efforts of organising them in a framework, we conjured up initial (and all-encompassing) themes such as human-centred library management, happy reading and community building. We were well aware of their inadequacies, and further boiled them down to five core themes:

1. Connecting library resources with the community
2. Addressing community needs by generation
3. Addressing community needs by social group
4. Happiness of library users and staff
5. Enhancing knowledge of community resources

Interested in the community building potential of books, I joined the group committed to library resources. At the early stage, teammates thought of curating library materials in pockets. Some of us were also excited by the idea of audio books that bridge children with the elderly. More research and discussion inspired the concept of our prototype: a flow chart that introduced books to readers according to their inclination, as if a game. Noticing that the Po On Road Library is right above the market, and that parents and senior citizens (who make up a larger part of the Sham Shui Po population) probably would never grow tired of things about cooking, we confirmed using food and health as the overarching theme, and started to compile a database of related and available library resources (print, audio-visual, electronic). The guiltily greasy Dongbo pork, for example, is featured in (or it is made famous by?) Dream of the Red Chamber, a classic Chinese novel. Certain music tracks were also found to be able to put insomniacs to sleep, etc.

Dongpo pork was the spirit of our prototype!

We experimented with multiple ways of ‘flowing’ readers to books by the way they eat:

1. Company: with friends, with family, alone
2. Diet: pork, beef, vegetarian
3. Eating habit: cooking, takeaway/dining out

Each response led to several book genres we deemed suitable for the reader. As we played with the flow chart and consulted one of the more outspoken Sham Shui Po residents Siu Siu, we found out a few flaws with our design:

1. We could not mobilise only the library resources in our database, which was catalogued by key words search. Locating library resources by key words meant they were brought to our attention because their titles or subjects obviously referred to the topic of food. Introducing these materials fell short of our goal of expanding readers’ imagination of libraries and enriching their reading experience beyond known parameters. We would need books that look irrelevant but contain hidden gems.
2. The responses had to be as mutually exclusive as possible, so readers could easily identify themselves along one path, or they would lose interest quickly.
3. The responses should better centre around the patterns of parents and the elderly rather than young people. Some options and book types were considered too artistic.

We also reorganised our database and picked six genres from which to curate food-related books for respective audiences:

1. Parenting and family (for cooks)
2. Green living (for cooks)
3. Travel (for restaurant hunters)
4. History (for restaurant hunters)
5. Literature (for solo diners)
6. Art and design (for solo diners)

How this very first idea developed into the food shelf prototype was in fact as much driven by our fine-tuning as it was by logistic possibilities. Until shortly before the action day, we had been imagining framing a section of a library shelf that displayed our chosen books. How to direct visitors there was a problem, so we suggested sticking the route on the floor, in addition to other possible artworks or creative engagement on cylindrical columns. Then the library staff advised that a multi-sided children’s shelf was available for use, so we began to structure everything around the shelf: sample books as showcase (not for loan) on the left-front, other books on the shelves and a book menu on top.

Instead of gathering books of the above genres all over the library, shelving concerns made us do it the other way round: to pick these books from the 427 applied science aisle. It sounded counter-intuitive to me at first, but upon second thought, the implications turned out to be more meaningful, exploding otherwise undiscovered possibilities for a greater range of books from a single shelf. We were also not to emphasise any particular genre or book, as this would deplete the library of that resource making other users unable to access it, so we selected 11 books from each genre, ten for borrowing and one for showcase (not for loan). We also used our personal accounts to borrow and secure the six showcase books in case they were checked out before the action day.

Production was going on all this while. Designers were diligently creating the menus and illustrations; researchers were looking for book descriptions and compiling lists for librarians to help us reserve the rest of the books and track their loan data. At a later stage, we dreamed of a questionnaire in the form of a dim sum order sheet (just to be in line with our food theme) for visitors to fill out their reading habits and feedback on the prototype, and hopefully if they wish, invent an alternative way of curating library books. We also did away with bulletins next to the shelf to save space, so the menus would be printed as a handy read.

Over the weekend of mid-December, the curated library prototype was born, thanks to an amazingly productive team. On the action day, few visitors approached the shelf or us, but MaD related to us later that more people did stop by the display. It was a good sign, not only because the worries that our props would be stolen or taken away for sale did not happen, but also because the prototype could bring Sham Shui Po residents to appreciate books, at least for a while. Now as we are wrapping up the lab soon, we got to think about how the spirit of the curated library may live on, if it is to be implemented in actual public libraries. Ideas and more ideas to come!