Design
Would More People Use the Public Library If It Had a Water Slide?
More than half of Poland doesn't seem to be reading anything. Would a more festive library design help them pick up a book?
In 2010, Poland's National Library performed a survey to determine the reading habits of the Polish citizenry. The results were not buoying: 56 percent of Poles had not read a book in the past year, either in hard or electronic form. Just as bad was that 46 percent had not attempted to digest anything longer than three pages in the previous month – and this included students and university graduates.
But who's to blame here: The willfully non-literate masses for not trekking to the public library? Or is it the library's fault for not attracting these individuals, what with its classically stodgy, hermetic-cage-for-learning design?