June 24

This morning was the first day of class for our study abroad program. We gathered in the small lobby of the Bicycle Hotel over coffee and breakfast to begin exploring the topic of innovation. We started to think about innovation by giving examples of the ways we had already seen innovation in our short time in Amsterdam. Personally, the first thing that came to mind was the availability of bike racks and accessibility of bike lanes. In Seattle, there is a huge promotion of bicycles yet we lack the infrastructure to really encourage a larger portion of the population to bike more regularly. The streets here are lined with racks filled with bicycles and you see nearly as many bikes as you do cars on the road. We then moved to looking at things that were originally considered innovative but ultimately had unintended and unforeseen consequences. One of the examples that was given was an artificial intelligence Twitter bot that Microsoft had created. It had the capability to learn speech from other Twitter users and within hours it had to be shut down because Twitter users had taught it hate speech and racial slurs. Innovation seems to be one of those words that had a fluid definition that we can’t quite pin down and it is important to recognize that not all innovations come without a price.

We spent a great deal of time discussing the intention of libraries and its connection to Barbakoff’s article on “Ferry Tales”. The article centered around the discussion of the creation of a book club for commuters on the Bainbridge Island ferry route in Washington State. This idea of developing a book club on a ferry is considered an innovative idea by Washington State standards. We dove into a discussion of how we, as Americans, think of libraries as places that are for independent work, book rentals and computer use and that this only exists within the physical space of the library building. Barbakoff’s book club is an example of pushing the physical boundaries and notions of the library to be a collaborative spaces not simply inside a designated building, which is not something we commonly see in the United States. We then moved the discussion towards how the collaborative model for libraries is something we see in Dutch libraries as a standard, rather than an innovation. Compared to countries like the United States, this idea of using libraries, some without books, as a space to collaborate, build community and even check-out wall decor for three months is considered an innovation in the public sector.

During this upcoming week, we will be visiting the A’dam Public Library. I am excited to finally see the inside of a Dutch library since we have spent the past few months hearing about how innovative they are. I am especially curious as to how it will compare to my experience with American libraries as a quiet space to work. Particularly, the comparison of how libraries here in the Netherlands are architecturally designed to facilitate collaboration and community and what similarities and differences we see between the A’dam Public Library and American libraries. I have always had this sense that libraries in the United States carry somewhat of a negative connotation connected to the stereotype of a “nerd” or a “loner”. I am interested in exploring how the design of Dutch libraries have pushed back against this stereotype that we as Americans tend to associate with individuals who frequently use libraries, or if this stereotype is something that only exists in American culture.