A couple of weeks ago I was in Denver for vacation and we stopped at the Denver Art Museum. In addition to all the traditional art one expects to see in a museum they also had some patron contribution displays. Throughout the museum notebooks were set out and patrons could record their thoughts and feelings about the art. They could take the pages or leave them. There were poems about art and belief and creativity painted on the walls that were taken from another patron display. My favorite exhibit was this one, in the picture, the wall simple said “Art is….” and there were sticky notes and pencils. They were so widely ranging in definition is was amazing and through provoking. I’d love to see a library do this with “library is….” in fact I pitched it to my director today, he’s thinking maybe National Library Week. I think it would be a great way to get an informal sampling of what your patrons think your library is and want it to be. Have any other libraries done anything like this?
Librarian by Day 
ooh, what a great idea!
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Bobbi=Meme Queen?
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LOL that wasn’t my intent, but I’ll never stop you from spreading a good meme!
I was thinking how can libraries use this?
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What a great idea. I showed it to my boss and she wants our system (at least the branches) to do it for NLW too.
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Bobbi, I sent a link to this post to the programming people at my library, but failed to come back and comment until today. 🙂
We are in the process of building a new library (http://librarybuildingproject.blogspot.com), and we will be using this idea for a “Grand Opening” project. When we have our official opening, we are thinking of having a wall like this one, where people can envision and share with others what they would like to see happen at the new library.
It would be similar to our “Stones Foundation” project, where we had patrons write best wishes and hopes for the new library on a river stone. All the stones have been collected, and will be mixed into the concrete which will soon be poured into our library’s foundation.
I like this kind of interactive project, and feel that the patrons enjoy the ‘community’ aspect.
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Victoria – That’s wonderful! I hope you take lots of pictures & post them to flickr, I’d really like to see how it turns out. Congratulations on building a new library!
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