Library as an encyclopedia

We receive a request for a project on the phone.  Could you come to a briefing?  In the library we enter a conference room with a huge table. We sit in a square, meters apart from each other, and are shown the task.  Keywords, maps, encyclopaedias, registers, catalogues, reference works: how do you get science, technical terms, highly complex content into a framework everyone can understand and that is also fun to look at? That’s what it’s all about. We go through the library, and it is full of keywords, maps, encyclopaedias, registers, catalogues, reference works, spread all over the building.

We find an answer. It is quite simple: by creating a framework that speaks the language of the house: understandable, humorous and informative, and not excessively pedagogical like a teacher talking to ignorant students.

Martina Scheitenberger on Keywords, maps, encyclopaedias, registers, catalogues and reference works