The Interactive Childrens Library is an interactivespaces project with a range of external partners and institutions. The main focus of the project is to develop prototypes for childrens libraries that combine IT research with a new understanding of the library.

The project is structured in a number of phases that include context observations, workshops, sketching, evaluations, production, implementation and user studies.

In june 2004 the entire project group started out with an introductury meeting at interactivespaces. The purpose of the meeting was to let the partners meet eachother and to do some quick brainstorms to get the thought process going.

Later the design team at interactivespaces - peter krogh, eva eriksson, maiken fogtmann, mikkel olsen and I did a number of context observations at the children libraries in odder and silkeborg.

After the contextual observations we returned on another field study and did small drawing workshops with kids to have them think of a future childrens library. To understand how they looked at the library today, we had them doing video-walk-throughs on their own that we later analysed.

The outcome of the second visit to odder and silkeborg was used in the design team together with jannik mulvad as an offset to get working on different concepts. Some of these related directly to the schetches made with the kids where others were based on our own ideas and observations.

The first concepts were taking to a fairly rough stage and presented at two workshop meetings. The first meeting included the interactivespaces design team and the industrial partners and here we discussed the concepts in relation to production and realisation.

The other meeting included the institutional partners. The division into two was done to discuss different aspects in the research project - some relating to production and others relating to future use. Both meetings included a small brainstorm workshop where the concepts were discussed and evaluated.

The outcome of the two meetings was again confronted with the design concepts - all evaluated by both librarians and industry - and the design team including jannik mulvad agreed on seven concepts to present further at the last upcoming meeting in december where decisions on which one or to prototypes to implement should take place.

During november and the first week of december we developed the seven concepts - the egg, the bibphone, the shelve slider, the rating system, the eBib profile, the cube search and the bib-box.

These seven concept were presented at the meeting in december where all partners - industrial and institutional - were gathered. Through evaluations in gruops mixed of designers, librarians and industry people the seven concepts were rated and discussed in relation to research angles, new aspects for the library and considerations regarding production.

The outcome of the meeting pointed at the cube search, the egg, the bibphone and the shelve slider. The further work will probably focus on the cube search as it contains a range of interesting research aspects both regarding software, hardware, architecture and social and spatial interaction.