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A LIBRARY PROGRAM WITH Media & Design Scholar Shannon Mattern & DESIGN LIBRARIAN JENNIFER COHLMAN BRACCHI

Join us for Design Index, a public program series at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library, where contemporary designers, artists, and creatives are invited to explore the library and select materials to be viewed, pondered, and discussed with a design librarian and a small group of attendees. Program participants will get a behind-the-scenes look at the resources that inspire today’s designers and artists while they develop their work.

For the next Design Index, writer, creative researcher, teacher, and library collaborator Shannon Mattern and Cooper Hewitt Librarian Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi will discuss the nature of the index—a way finding tool frequently used in libraries to help users find information quickly. In an era of tremendous technological transformation, particularly amid the rise of artificial intelligence and its distillation of the world’s knowledge, how might a design library like Cooper Hewitt’s help us to appreciate the index as a design system that creates order in our world? During the program, the books, journals, artifacts, and other materials Mattern has been studying and referencing during the last three months at the library will be on view, highlighting her ongoing research on the aesthetics of public knowledge infrastructures, from interface design to library architecture.

About the Library
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library is the largest design library in the United States for books, trade catalogs, magazines, photographs, and archival material covering design and decorative art from the Renaissance to the present.

SPEAKERS

Shannon Mattern is the Director of Creative Research at the Metropolitan New York Library Council. Previously, she held full professorships in media studies, anthropology, and art history at The New School and the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on media architectures, information infrastructures, and urban technologies. She is the author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities; Deep Mapping the Media City; Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: 5000 Years of Urban Media; and A City Is Not a Computer. She also contributes a regular long-form column about urban data and mediated infrastructures to Places Journal and regularly collaborates on public design and interactive projects and exhibitions. You can find her at wordsinspace.net.

Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi is the Head Librarian at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Library. She came to Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in 2003 by way of the museum where she served as its first digital imaging specialist. Her interest in digitization led to earning a Masters in Library and Information Science from Queens College, CUNY. She has led numerous grant-funded digitization efforts for rare books and special collections and oversees Cooper Hewitt Library’s contributions to mass digitization programs including the Biodiversity Heritage Library. She has served on Metropolitan New York Library Council’s (METRO) Digital Services Advisory Council and Digital Grants Review Committee. She curated her first exhibition Color in a New Light (February 2016 – May 2017) for Smithsonian Libraries at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. She co-curated the expanded exhibition Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 2018 – March 2019) for Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum with Susan Brown, Associate Curator of Textiles.

ACCESSIBILITY & WHAT TO EXPECT:

Format: This program will include an illustrated presentation with slides followed by an audience Q&A and opportunity for the attendees to view and handle selected books. 
About the space: This program will take place in person in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library at Cooper Hewitt. The entrance for the library is located at 9 East 90th Street, New York, NY. A Cooper Hewitt staff member will meet all program attendees at the entrance and escort them to the Library. The Library is on the second floor and fully wheelchair accessible. There is also an accessible restroom on the second floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
Accommodations: If we can provide additional services to support your participation, email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.