Stanley A. Milner Library | ?m | 6s | EPL | Teeple Architects
- Thread starter Daveography
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archited
Senior Member
I need new glasses.
Stevey_G
Active Member
Did they film this photo drunk and using a musical greeting card?
thommyjo
Senior Member
Finally made it to the library today. It was incredible. Wow. Honestly a huge sell for living downtown too with kids potentially one day. Just need a legit playground in that park behind it.
The size was surprising as well. Felt huge. The quality of spaces was insane too. I'm excited to visit Calgarys and compare. They win by a landslide on facade and exterior/skyline improvement. But our inside is nothing like the quality of the outside.
The size was surprising as well. Felt huge. The quality of spaces was insane too. I'm excited to visit Calgarys and compare. They win by a landslide on facade and exterior/skyline improvement. But our inside is nothing like the quality of the outside.
occidentalcapital
Senior Member
Is it just me, or do libraries today mostly feature everything except books? I heard they routinely sell off books that are a few years old...this shocked me as I thought the whole point of a library was to be a reference point for what has been published. I guess the only libraries where you still have a reference approach are university libraries? I think it is a loss for the City when it no longer has a real library at its disposal.
Guy 1
Active Member
Physical books are still a component, but the library had to evolve or it really wouldn't be relevant anymore. They're places for learning and community, which I think they do exceptionally well. The internet has kind of replaced the need for physical reference points.
Stevey_G
Active Member
I’m a bit concerned about the impact the internet era is going to have on more obscure knowledge and information (albeit torrenting and peer to peer helps preserve it).
Say I want to listen to a local, modestly popular band from the 2000s: Social Code or Ten Second Epic for example. How do I do this? Without a physical CD to listen to, I’ll never find this information anywhere.
Another example is an old Showtime TV show called “The Foundation”. It only ran a single season and albeit being the funniest TV show I’ve ever seen, no DVDs or physically production was ever put into place as it only ran a single season. So it is lost forever outside of a few skits on YouTube.
Libraries and archives represent the preservation of knowledge and information. One thing that does concern me is the brittle and delicate nature of how we store things now. In 1000 years, will we be able to gather and collect data from the server farms? Or will the old manuscripts sitting in pottery in a cave uncovered outlast those mediums?
That’s my thoughts for the day.
thommyjo
Senior Member
I think that's an older view and understanding of city libraries. There is an important role for libraries to play in the preservation of knowledge, history, etc. Many of the great national libraries or educational ones represent this. But I wouldn't critique the internet as throughout history we often lost whole collections of history and of cultures due to fires, wars, etc. The ability for all knowledge to exist in the cloud is much more important than on book shelves in geographically constrained and vulnerable areas.
Also, at a local level, when I think of our library, I dont think of books. Now...there arenliterally tens of thousands of books at our central library haha. So to downplay that is a miss. And digitally they offer a ton too (I use the libby app to read 80% of my books through epl on my phone vs heavy paper copies that take up space at home. I still buy some important ones though).
Like mentioned above, I think their true purpose is 1) education and 2) community
It's both a place to learn and place to connect. That's really apparent in this library. There are music and podcast studios, 3d printers, fabric stations and sewing machines, a full kitchen and cooking classes, computers, toys, indigenous spaces, magical instruments, coffee shop soon, egaming rooms, conference rooms, theater spaces, offices, etc etc. It is a powerhouse of a free local amenity. A true community hub for all ages. I think its a home run and actually a HUGE improvement over the older model of libraries being book warehouses with a little space to read maybe (very quietly!).
Very happy to see the vision and heart of libraries expand and so thankful for how strong EPL is vs what other cities have.
Stevey_G
Active Member
I can appreciate this sentiment.
I would offer a counter-argument though that the server-farms that support cloud based storage are no different than the centralization of knowledge you saw at great libraries of the past. The absolutely best way to preserve knowledge is easy replication and non-centralized storage on robust and durable mediums. If you truly want to preserve knowledge for deeper time, server farms simply will not hold up as a means to do so.
But we digress, the Library looks amazing, and I totally understand it's evolving function, I can't wait to see it if I move back home to Edmonton.
thommyjo
Senior Member
Enter the block chain
Great book on libraries is called The Last Chance Library. You can get at epl. It's about this Library that was going to be shut down because it wasn't seen as valuable through the lens of book borrowing and digital reads. But the lesson in the book is all about how it was really a community hub that served people with diverse needs/supports, like immigrants.
Windermere
Active Member
Both of these bands are on Apple Music
Stevey_G
Active Member
I was just using them as examples I didn’t actually check. A better example would be some punk options from the early 80s
occidentalcapital
Senior Member
Bits and bytes will only last until the next massive solar flare...
Or at least that is what people say. I think we'll find a way to carry on, but agreed there is potential for permanent loss of knowledge in non-physical formats.
Knowledge discovery is easier when you can go to a particular area of the library and look at all books on that subject. Sometimes there is too much information online and we actually forget more than we know.
thommyjo
Senior Member
I dont think "knowledge discovery is easier when you can go to a particular area of the library..."
There's a reason Google is working to convert every book in the world to digital and why the majority of university research is now done through online catalogs and databases.
Its fine if you personally prefer physical books in a library. But there's no way you can say something constrained by geography, exposed to the elements, limited in users per time, etc is better. It's probably a both/and. But if we had to choose 1, digital is better than physical for so many reasons if the goal is knowledge sharing, preservation, accessibility.
Stevey_G
Active Member
I would argue sharing and accessibility, you are on point. Long term preservation? As in 1000 years? Not so much. Things like paper and papyrus used thousands of years ago may very well outlast all the digitized information we have on the planet.
It doesn’t even need to be a carrington-like event as described above, it could just by the cyclical nature of rising and falling civilizations. Server farms that form the backbone of the internet, without constant maintenance, would fall into disrepair immediately front a relative standpoint.
And that doesn’t even go into the life spans of the mediums they are encoded upon. HDDs and SSDs both respectively don’t have very long life expectancies even when not in use.