bibox: A Tangible Approach to Motivating Participation in Public Libraries

Abstract

Within the Library 2.0 model, visitors of public libraries are enabled to actively shape the services of their library. Unlike previous trends, principles of participation and collaboration should be assimilated into the physical space of public libraries instead of being added as an extra layer on top of existing services. We present a set of eight design principles for motivating participatory systems in the Library 2.0 context. Based on these principles, we introduce bibox, a tangible book rating- and recommendation system for public libraries. In an in-the-wild study, we evaluate how our system motivates active participation. We show that the proposed design principles lead to higher levels of engagement from the users of the system within the Library 2.0 context.