The Networked Shelves: Physical and Digital Spaces
Network Design 01: itp
I wanted to design a network that would bridge the physical and digital spaces. I used bookshelves because personalities are usually reflected in the books selected on the shelf. To begin with, I took ITP’s physical shelf, located in the Japanese Room, cleaned the shelf, logged in the ISBN numbers of 67 books, and opened an account on Shelfari to organize this database. Shelfari matches your bookshelf with other people who have similar interests (process documentation link).
Shelfari showed 12 people, who either had one or two books that were similar to the ITP physical shelf. The dozen shown is part of the site’s design. The one or two books are small compared to the number of books on their shelves. For instance (shown below), “beatnik” had two common books with the ITP library out of 120 books, and numerous tags. This image is a screenshot of "beatnik's" shelf, and the two books checked are what is common to the ITP library.
ITP library only had two friends that were forced, and were later added during design iterations. Also, there were no tags.
The majority of the books were dated technology books, and unwanted books that used to belong to the ITP community. The problem is that the books reflected on this shelf did not represent, as a whole, the ITP community. There was even a disconnect in the digital appearance of the bookshelf with the avatar thumbnail taken from the 2006 ITP Winter Show postcard.
In order to bridge the physical and digital shelves, I asked the ITP community to expand the ITP library’s personality by adding physical books to the shelf in the Japanese room. The book/books had to add to the community and could not be a reject, in essence, a donation. Two weeks have passed, and there were no new books on the shelf. Instead, only trash accumulated on the shelves. I also received feedback, mostly people from our class, that they wanted to participate, but were afraid that other people would steal their donations. One person admitted that she donated several books last year, and has since seen them on the shelf. In an effort to resolve the matter, she emailed the ITP list, but the books were never returned. I believe this network could be successful, and some suggestions I would have liked to implement are listed below:
1) Beautify the shelf to ward people from misusing the shelf as a trash receptacle. The Christmas lights were not enough. Even getting a new, bigger and colorful shelf with a modern aesthetic might have transformed this space into a library.
2) Rewarding the donors with a bookplate design implemented in the books (i.e. “This book was donated by “X” for the ITP community because “Y” reason). Treating the books on the ITP library shelf like a “reference” book may help communicate that these books belong to this shelf, similar to reference books from an institutional library. These books do not leave the premise, and allow some people to check them out for a restricted time period. Bookplates and a label on the books of the spine help indicate to readers that these books are for “reference use only.”
3) Networked bookmarks are physical bookmarks left in the individual books, and would engage readers by connecting them to similar readers specific to that book. This would have to be designed specifically so readers would print their names, email address, and dates. This suggestion would physically do what Shelfari does digitally.
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Network Design 02: syllabi
Learning from the design of the first network, I decided to design the other two networks digitally. The second network was designed for ITP faculty to display the books of their courses, and ITP students to analyze course descriptions.
For instance, Tom Igoe, who teaches Networked Objects next term has one required book, Adam Greenfield’s Everyware, yet other books on his shelf reflect books from his other courses relating to Physical Computing and Sustainable Practices. The image below is a screenshot of Tom Igoe's tagged books on the "syllabi" shelf.
There were 10 tags, mostly represented by professors that I had access to partial or full syllabi. I did email the link, username, and password out to Midori, and some faculty members. Between the 10 professors, there are 59 books currently, and compared to the ITP shelf, invitations for friendships improved. Out of four, two were forced, one is a second-year student (Alex), and an unknown Shelfari, non-ITP member, by the name of “Elise” requested friendship from ITP Faculty. She shares 6 books with the ITP Faculty digital shelf, and Alex shares 17 books with this shelf, a major improvement, compared to the ITP library.
All the checked books in this image represent common books between this user and ITP Faculty, and the same applies for the image below this. 
Perhaps this network would be of use when classes begin and when all the professors participate. I had some feedback that this shelf helped some people make final decisions for Spring 2007 registration. Also, when I emailed 4 or 5 ITP second years, and asked them to add books from their courses, they sent me a list of books. I believe they were reluctant to add books even though they had username and password for this account.
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Network
Design 03: thesis
This last iteration had the most involvement because I specifically asked and reminded people to add books to this shelf. The timing was right in that right before registration, second year students had to upload a description of their thesis and any source materials. In total, currently there are 77 books, and evidence that 19 tags that indicate second-year student participation, and 52 tags total. The tags are represented below in blue, orange and green text.
I also believe many more second years participated, but didn’t tag because the instructions were unclear. Number of similar books jumped to two digits. The most books shared with the thesis shelf are 13 books with a close 12 and 9 following. This shows that the personality of this thesis shelf is flexible. Unlike the other two shelf networks, there are four recommended books in this account (shown on the right side of this image below).
In the category of friends, thesis had a total of 5 friends. Two were forced, ITP and syllabi. Once common friend syllabi had with thesis is Alex Bisceglie (a second year at ITP). Two are not familiar to me, “cahill” and “killahbee.” In fact they could ITP members, but there location indicates otherwise (Hatfield, England) and unknown location. Also reader, “cahill” requested friendship with the thesis shelf, but share only one book in common, which is the graphic novel, Persepolis.
Some thought was put into “tagging.” At the minimum, readers had to put two tags, their name and the year they graduate (to help distinguish if there are multiple names, and to document genealogy of ITP members and their interests. In the thesis network, the middle columns represent tags from the books. This illustration shows three examples of links formed from this network. Avani sent me a list of books to add and tag to this network, one of which, Jitterbug Perfume, she recommended to Quanya for her thesis. Second, David added and tagged To Engineer is Human, which interested Alex and me. Avani and I possess the same book, Perspeolis, which is also tagged as "2007," "avani," and "anne."
The most important node in this network is the “librarian” because this node chooses books and maintains the catalogue. The librarian acts like a “benevolent dictator,” this node maintains the networks of books and readers. Without the librarian, this network would not succeed. The Shelfari networks operate like a complete and small worlds network in the digital space relative to a physical library space.
