The good
The awesome décor/creativity blog decor8 writes about a community bookcase in Hannover, Germany, with contents that are 100% free to the public. No library card or money is needed – all this bookcase requests is that you add a few books of your own to replenish its supply. What I love most about this project is that it actually works. Europe wins this round, folks – I really don’t think this would be as successful in greedier North America.

The bad
The Boston Globe writes about a library with no books, as a New England prep school eliminates their collection of more than 20,000 books and replaces them with three flat-screen TVs projecting data from the web, 18 e-readers (a mix of Kindles and Sony Readers), and a coffee shop with a $12,000 cappuccino machine. Words cannot explain my disgust, and no, the disgust isn’t all because of my hate for coffee.

The super fun

{Photo by Thorsten Becker}