Awesome Libraries

Inspired by his childhood dreams of a fancy home library, maker Morley Kert came up with something more special — a personal library embedded in a nook alongside a staircase. Watch as Morley takes a small storage closet and tricks it out with a coffered ceiling, a cabinet with tambour doors, custom bookshelves with edge lighting, and a secret compartment.

Take a tour of the beautiful and serene Seashore Library, which sits along China’s Bohai Sea near Nandaihe Pleasure City. Architect Dong Gong’s design was designed to provide each occupant of its reading room with an unobscured view of the beach outside, and a sense of peace and solitude for each visitor.

Gizmodo writer Attila Nagy takes us behind the scenes of a 3.7 mile-long conveyor system that shuttles books to reading rooms around the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, Hungary. Here’s a video of a similar system in action.

The University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library houses up to 3.5 million books and periodicals in its underground robotic shelving system delivering books to readers in a minimal reading room.