Public libraries are about books, right? Yes, books, PCWorld reports. And something other than books, too. Public libraries are physical homes for the human imagination. The human imagination is represented physically in books, but also in the things we build and make. The media we make. The contraptions we devise. The songs we compose. The art we make. Traditionally, we haven’t thought of public libraries as “houses of ingenuity,” but maybe that’s the direction in which they’re headed. Maybe people will start heading over to the public library because they’ve been wondering about something. And they want to talk to a library staffer who is good at soldering, or is good at Google SketchUp, or is handy at prototyping, or who likes to build solar charged lawn mowers, or has incredible talent at making a cat feeder from a VCR, or who is excellent at animation using free software…
Read more [1]