Fait accompli.

Our Surface arrived this week.  We’ve been talking about it internally for awhile as a theoretical purchase.  Now it’s a reality.  It’s already made Microsoft’s Surface Blog, too!  It’s actually surprisingly easy to get one.  I thought we’d have to jump through hoops, sign NDAs, and give up our first-borns.  Not so.

So what are we going to do with it?  We’re giving it to the kids.  We have a perfect little niche in the Children’s Room that was literally designed with power and data in the floor to accommodate surface computing.  Yes that’s right.  Designed for the Surface.

We decided to put it in the Children’s Room for several very basic reasons.  Kids will just “get it” immediately without any explanation.  Kids are tactile creatures who are very comfortable with hands-on activity.  If we can give them a piece of really cool technology they’ve never seen before and invite them to literally put their hands on it, I have no doubt they will not only be impressed, but empowered as well.  They’re not going to ask silly questions like, “why would you put one of these in a library”, because they intuitively know why.

By the way, you clean it with a mild dish-soap solution.

Details!

We’ve purchased the SDK (software development kit) as well.  When the dust settles from our move, we will certainly begin exploring some of the myriad possibilities.  I can already think of a number of ways to build interesting applications on top of Locum and Insurge.  We were all musing this morning about how cool it would be if we tagged certain picture books so that when they were placed on the Surface, a video-recording of a story-time with that book would pop up.  As far as I can tell, the Surface SDK takes advantage of Silverlight, so it should be fairly simple to quickly develop attractive and fun applications.

There are challenges.  I had always assumed that interaction between the Surface and physical objects was RFID-based.  That would have been perfect.  Instead, the Surface uses proprietary tags that look to be something akin to semacode in ultra-violet ink.  We’ll look in to getting some, but I doubt we’ll be getting B&T to process our books with them any time soon!

We would like to eventually put a Surface in our Teen Room and then Reference.  I’ve liked the whole Surface concept from the onset.  I think that anytime technology and physical space can be mashed up in a natural, intuitive way, a whole new realm of posibility opens up.  A platform like the Surface extends our horizon of influence.  It’s also freaking cool.  We’ll keep you posted!

I’m really proud of the people I work with. If it were possible to capture in a single word the confluence of physical space, library science, technology, focus on service, hospitality, and user experience that our new building embodies, it would be something akin to “masterpiece”.

But we’ve got miles to go before …

Here is the official announcement:

Darien Library will be hosting a “Drupal4Lib Camp” on  Friday, February 27, 2009 from 9 am to 4 pm.

The camp will be an  opportunity for libraries who are working with Drupal, or interested in  implementing Drupal, to get together, share experiences, solve problems, and  collaborate. This unconference will be a combination of a series of 10 min  lightning talks given by Drupal veterans in the morning followed by break-out  sessions in the afternoon.

Audio and video from Drupal4Lib Camp  sessions will also be streamed lived online.

There is no registration  fee. However, participation is limited to 70.  Please register for the  Drupal4Lib Camp at http://drupalib.interoperating.info/node/167

Josh Hadro has written a very nice article about the particulars of the new social catalog application suite, and Richard Wallis has posted a podcast of a conversation I had with him last week about it.

We’re lucky to have such a great staff here in Darien, all of whom have put a huge amount of effort to making the new site a success.  Thanks guys!

And now, it’s time for a nap!

In short, I’m busy.

We’re building a new library which will open in January (watch the time-lapse construction videos!). Of course, that’s not enough to do, so we’re launching our new website on September 1st, which gives me… well, not very much time to myself these days.

It was just about a year ago that I started working at Darien Library. The construction site was little more than a razed patch of dirt. It’s now something quite different. When it’s done, it will be quite clear that there has never been a library built quite like this one. From rethinking our entire classification system to planning how to use a building that is wired to the hilt, to an RFID conversion, to a major web redesign, to some other things yet-to-be-announced, we’re about to enter a period of serious metamorphosis.

So, I’ve put this blog on a slow burn while I tend to a few other things.

Announced this evening:

Kate Sheehan will join Darien Library as Head of Knowledge and Innovation Services on March 1, 2008. She is currently Coordinator of Library Automation at Danbury Library, blogs at loosecannonlibrarian.net, is an active speaker on Library 2.0 and social software initiatives, and has gained national recognition for implementing the first LibraryThing plug-in to a library catalog.

(full announcement)

We are lucky to have her join our staff and I’m looking forward to working with her.  Congrats Kate, and welcome!

I know all of ours deserve a good long rest. Great job guys, you’ve helped remind more than a few kids (and parents too) that the library is way cooler than Barnes and Noble.

Louise Berry (hands-down the most flickeringest library director in the known universe) has already put together a set on Flickr documenting the Darien Library’s Deathly Hallows launch. Some of these pictures should be ALA marketing posters.

(link)

Can you imagine plopping a CD or DVD down on this thing and getting an instant preview, then checking it out by simply placing your library card anywhere on the table?

How about letting the kids go nuts on it.

Or using it as a reference tool, “…have a seat while I blow your freakin’ mind.”

At about $10,000 a piece, these might just be a killer app for libraries.

(more info)