Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch the public library?
阅读空间，社会服务中心，创新实验室。我们能将公共图书馆延伸到何处？
Left: Rijksmuseum Library, Amsterdam. [Photo by Ton Nolles] Right: Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. [Photo by Google/Connie Zhou]
左：荷兰阿姆斯特丹国立图书馆【照片来自Ton Nolles】右：位于爱荷华州Council Bluffs的谷歌数据中心【照片来自 Google/Connie Zhou】
<aside> ➡️ 左：荷兰阿姆斯特丹国立图书馆【照片来自 Ton Nolles】右：位于爱荷华州 Council Bluffs 的谷歌数据中心【照片来自 Google / Connie Zhou】
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Melvil Dewey was a one-man Silicon Valley born a century before Steve Jobs. He was the quintessential Industrial Age entrepreneur, but unlike the Carnegies and Rockefellers, with their industries of heavy materiality and heavy labor, Dewey sold ideas. His ambition revealed itself early: in 1876, shortly after graduating from Amherst College, he copyrighted his library classification scheme. That same year, he helped found the American Library Association, served as founding editor of Library Journal, and launched the American Metric Bureau, which campaigned for adoption of the metric system. He was 24 years old. He had already established the Library Bureau, a company that sold (and helped standardize) library supplies, furniture, media display and storage devices, and equipment for managing the circulation of collection materials. Its catalog (which would later include another Dewey invention, the hanging vertical file) represented the library as a “machine” of uplift and enlightenment that enabled proto-Taylorist approaches to public education and the provision of social services. As chief librarian at Columbia College, Dewey established the first library school — called, notably, the School of Library Economy — whose first class was 85% female; then he brought the school to Albany, where he directed the New York State Library. In his spare time, he founded the Lake Placid Club and helped win the bid for the 1932 Winter Olympics.
梅尔维尔-杜威（Melvil Dewey），曾经一个人就是一个硅谷，出生乔布斯（Steve Jobs）的前一个世纪。他是典型的工业时代企业家，与卡內基（Carnegies）和洛克菲勒 （Rockefellers）重物质和重劳动力产业不同的是，杜威贩卖思想。他在早年的时候就展现了野心：1876年，从阿默斯特学院毕业后不久，杜威就为自己的图书馆分类方案申请了版权。同年，他帮助成立了美国图书馆协会（American Library Association），担任《图书馆杂志》（Library Journal）的创始编辑，并成立了美国公制部门（American Metric Bureau）——为公制系统的纳用而四处活动。杜威24岁时已经成立了图书馆局（ Library Bureau），一家销售（并帮助实现标准化）图书馆用品、家具、媒体展示和存储设备以及管理馆藏资料流通设备的公司。它的目录（后来包括杜威的另一项发明--悬挂式垂直档案）将图书馆展现为一台提升和启蒙的 "机器"，使泰勒制原型在公共教育和提供社会服务的领域成为可能。作为哥伦比亚学院的图书馆长，杜威建立了第一所图书馆学校—被特称为图书馆经济学院—其第一届学生中有85%是女性，然后他把这所学校带到了奥尔巴尼，在那里他指导了纽约州图书馆。在业余时间，他创立了普莱西德湖俱乐部，并助力获得了1932年冬季奥运会的申办权。
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梅尔维尔-杜威（Melvil Dewey），出生在乔布斯（Steve Jobs）一个世纪以前，是位一个人就顶得上一个硅谷的人物。他是典型的工业时代企业家，但与卡內基（Carnegies）和洛克菲勒 （Rockefellers）重物质和重劳动力产业不同的是，杜威贩卖思想。他在早年的时候就展现了野心：1876 年，从阿默斯特学院毕业后不久，杜威就为自己的图书馆分类方案申请了版权。同年，他协助成立了美国图书馆协会（American Library Association），担任《图书馆杂志》（Library Journal）的创始编辑，并成立了美国公制部门（American Metric Bureau）——为公制系统的纳用而四处活动。杜威 24 岁时已经成立了图书馆局（ Library Bureau），一家销售（并帮助实现标准化）图书馆用品、家具、媒体展示和存储设备以及管理馆藏资料流通设备的公司。它的目录（后来包括杜威的另一项发明——悬挂式垂直档案）将图书馆展现为一台提升和启蒙的“机器”，使泰勒制原型在公共教育和提供社会服务的领域成为可能。作为哥伦比亚学院的图书馆长，杜威建立了第一所图书馆学校——被特称为图书馆经济学院——其第一届学生中有 85% 是女性，然后他把这所学校带到了奥尔巴尼，在那里他指导了纽约州图书馆。在业余时间，他创立了普莱西德湖俱乐部，并助力获得了 1932 年冬季奥运会的申办权。
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Dewey was thus simultaneously in the furniture business, the office-supply business, the consulting business, the publishing business, the education business, the human resources business, and what we might today call the “knowledge solutions” business. Not only did he recognize the potential for monetizing and cross-promoting his work across these fields; he also saw that each field would be the better for it. His career (which was not without its significant controversies) 1embodied a belief that classification systems and labeling standards and furniture designs and people work best when they work towards the same end — in other words, that intellectual and material systems and labor practices are mutually constructed and mutually reinforcing.
所以，杜威在那时同时从事着家具、办公用品、咨询、出版、教育、人力资源的业务，我们今天称之为“知识解决方案”。他不仅认识到他的工作在这些领域有货币化和交叉推广的潜力，并认为每个领域都会因此而变得更好。杜威的职业生涯（其中不乏重大争议 [1]）体现了一种信念，即分类系统、标签标准、家具设计和人在为同一目的工作时效果最好——换句话说，知识、物质系统以及劳动实践是相互构建和相互促进的。
Today’s libraries, Apple-era versions of the Dewey/Carnegie institution, continue to materialize, at multiple scales, their underlying bureaucratic and epistemic structures — from the design of their web interfaces to the architecture of their buildings to the networking of their technical infrastructures. This has been true of knowledge institutions throughout history, and it will be true of our future institutions, too. I propose that thinking about the library as a network of integrated, mutually reinforcing, evolving infrastructures — in particular, architectural, technological, social, epistemological and ethical infrastructures — can help us better identify what roles we want our libraries to serve, and what we can reasonably expect of them. What ideas, values and social responsibilities can we scaffold within the library’s material systems — its walls and wires, shelves and servers?
今天的图书馆，苹果时代的杜威/卡内基机构，继续在多种规模上物质化他们暗含的官僚和知识的结构——从其网络界面的设计到建筑，再到技术基础设施的联网。历史上的知识机构都是如此，而我们未来的机构也将如此。我建议把图书馆看作是一个综合的、相互促进的、不断发展的基础设施网络，尤其是在建筑、技术、社会、认识论和伦理方面，这可以帮助我们更好地明确我们希望图书馆发挥什么作用，以及我们合理的期望是什么。我们可以在图书馆的物质系统——它的墙壁和电线、书架和服务器——中构建怎样的思想、价值观和社会责任？
<aside> ➡️ 今天的图书馆，是杜威/卡内基机构的苹果时代版，在多种维度上继承了僵化的官僚主义和知识结构——从其网络界面的设计，到建筑的风格，再到技术基础设施的联网。历史上的知识机构都是如此，而我们未来的机构也将如此。我建议把图书馆看作是一个综合的、相互促进的、不断发展的基础设施网络，尤其是在建筑、技术、社会、认识论和伦理方面，这可以帮助我们更好地明确我们希望图书馆发挥什么作用，以及我们合理的期望是什么。我们可以在图书馆的物质系统——它的墙壁和电线、书架和服务器——中构建怎样的思想、价值观和社会责任？
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