Libraries!

I love NPR. They cater to all my optimistic "the world is actually pretty great despite all that other crap" sentiments. They write a lot of articles on social progress, design, and innovation, all three of which happen to be things that I like. I click on basically every one of their posts on Facebook, so it's gotten to the point where there is little difference from my main feed and the NPR home page. This article particularly caught my social-media-photo-addicted fancy:

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217211315/with-modern-makeovers-americas-libraries-are-branching-out?utm_source=news&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130901

Libraries are redesigning themselves to be the publicly accessible forums for content creation, consumption, and inspiration they were originally intended to be. Yay! I had been focusing on the classroom as a design context, but libraries have clinched a place in the running. If anyone has any resources on library innovation or stories of great/terrible library experiences that would help me explore this further, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

On transitioning from bookshelf archives to public innovation spaces:
"If we were going to serve today's people building economic value in their communities and being creative, we had to think about the world differently."
—Ginnie Cooper, D.C. Chief Librarian, who is clearly a total badass.