Post #3: Shanachietour! We had some Dutch librarians vist my LIS 753 class

In my LIS 753 class at Dominican University we were fortunate to have three Dutch “librarians” visit; Erik, Geert and Jaap. They are visiting from Delft, which is a city in the province of South Holland, in the Netherlands (“Delft” Wikipedia, 2007).

They do not call themselves a library; they are known as DOK. In Dutch DOK stands for Discotake (Music), Openbare (Public), Kunst (Art). Their “library” is very heavily technology oriented; they have 24″ Mac computers throughout their library, round/pod shaped music charis that have speakers inside the chair, flat screen televisions that all have a Wii connected to each one and Playstation 3’s.

DOK’s mission is to become the world´s most modern “library” in the world. They are gathering information about gaming in libraries, what libraries in the United States are doing and what people think about the future of libraries by touring across the United States in a camper they rented; calling themselves the LBI: the “Library Bureau of Investigation”. They started at the New York Public Library and will end up in Monterey, CA for the 2007 Internet Librarian Conference. Check out the website/blog for their tour, called the Shanachietour (the story tour).

They also interviewed my classmates, my professor (Michael Stephens) and myself about what we think the library of the future will look like (see picture below). I answered that in the future school libraries should be able to use Web 2.0 Technology and Tools to enhance teaching and learning. Look for the video they made with us in it; it is posted on their Schanachitour blog and titled  LBI Shanachie Tour 2007 Episode 7.1.

Photo from mstephens7 Flickr page

Check out other photos from the mstephens7 Flickr page of the Dutch visit to Dominican!

Don’t forget to check out the DOK website and blog!

Thanks so much for visiting Erik, Japp and Jeert!!