Library Beyond the Book

<p>With textbook readers and digital downloads proliferating it is easy to imagine a time when printed books will vanish. Such forecasts miss the mark argue Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles. Future bookshelves will not be wholly virtual and libraries will thrive--although in a variety of new social cultural and architectural forms. Schnapp and Battles combine deep study of the library's history with a record of institutional and technical innovation at metaLAB a research group at the forefront of the digital humanities. They gather these currents in <i>The Library Beyond the Book</i> exploring what libraries have been in the past to speculate on what they will become: hybrid places that intermingle books and ebooks analog and digital formats paper and pixels. <p/>Libraries have always been mix-and-match spaces and remix is their most plausible future scenario. Speculative and provocative <i>The Library Beyond the Book</i> explains book culture for a world where the physical and the virtual blend with ever increasing intimacy.</p>