Spaces of Thinking. An Essay on the Libraries of the Future

Libraries are far more than mere repositories of knowledge: they are a cosmos of knowledge that can both be experienced haptically as well as it can be imagined. They are spaces of thinking that enable us to communicate across generations about fundamental questions of mankind, environment, and the cosmos. The internal functioning of libraries as memories of society is based on techniques that have been tried and tested for centuries, such as signature and finding systems, the development of collection parameters, loan notes or, in general, the ordering of knowledge in space, i. e., the meaningful division into subject groups. If we want to understand the profound change in our knowledge culture, which has been slowly but unstoppably taking place over the years as a result of digitisation, it is worth taking a look at their traditional functions for a vision of the library of the future: as memory of the society, as framework-providing knowledge organisation and order that is largely independent of discourses of the disciplines and as a space for thought and reflection in our society.