ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how remix in the context of the digital humanities might be understood as a question of knowledge design through a discussion of the systems and spaces that define the book circulation of various contemporary libraries. The Seattle Central Library's spiral stacks materialize the relative positionality of the Dewey decimal classification; in spite of its unique form, the architecture is built upon age-worn disciplinary categories. At the University of Chicago's Mansueto Library, a giant glass dome sits atop subterranean stacks that are inhospitable to humans but suited to retrieval robots. Knowledge design has materialized the difference between an ordered universe, an efficient machine, an aesthetic practice, and a perpetual state of becoming. Realizing the latter two, bringing the remix library into being, can thus be understood as a matter of design. That external manifestation, the architectonics of the library, gives material form to mechanisms of knowledge management and control.