This is old now (in a Web 2.0 world 6 months is old!) but this video about the The Transformation Lab, funded by The Danish National Library Authority and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (and The Main Library in Aarhus), is well worth watching to provoke discussion about future ideas and options for libraries.

Comments added to the YouTube video:

“There will be books in the physical library of the future – but I think they will be connected to digital material. In this way they can be enriched with relevant digital information that will be exposed, when the book gets near a mobile phone, interactive table or an info coloumn as in the video”.

“In another project at the Main Library in Aarhus – The Children’s Interactive Library – they made som prototypes showing how books can be tagged with digital information using RFID-chips”.

“One of the prototypes was a Bib Phone – A “phone” that allows you to talk to books and hear what other people have told them! This is a new, funny and different way of reviewing, commenting or even hiding secret messages in books. The messages are inherited in the particular book allowing the next person access to hear it”.

“Actually there were books in the labs. One of the ideas was to bring various types of media in closer contact with each other – combining words, images and sound – increases the user’s qualitative experience of the media. The Literature Lab presented successive literary topics. In connection with each topic – such as poetry — all types of media related to the topic were brought together and combined to increase the user’s qualitative experience and sense of coherence in the library”.