LibraryBox

The LibraryBox Project Website

There are some telling tools available to us that need not be connected to the net all the time in order to serve learning well. I think Librarybox is one of them. I listened to Jason Griffey’s “When Online is Offline: The Case for Hyperlocal Webservers and Networks” from the Berkman Center this morning. Couldn’t sleep so I listened.

I immediately emailed my department head, Rob, and suggested it as a good project for getting all of our work of our students and faculty into a public space. I also thought it might be a way to get some of the public domain media on an instance of Librarybox. I suggested that I work with a small team of interns to make it happen and then tell the story of how we did it as we did it. We’ll see whether he bites or not. I am convinced that at all levels these project-based ‘courses/internships/service projects/mini MOOCs’ are the wave of the future and a powerful way to re-involve the community in the life of our schools.

I highly recommend listening to Griffey and the great questions at the end. The existing use cases for this include non-profits, for-profits, schools, hackers, and many more. If you want to scrub to 9:19 on the video below you will here some specifics. But make sure you watch/listen to it all if you have the time. It is worth it especially for the underlying philosophy of openness that permeates it all. I had the same little frisson of joy that I recall so fiercely from the net’s earliest days. This is not the internet. This is the hyperlocal network that deserves equal billing with its bloviating older brother: the Interweb. I love it.