This workshop and exhibit are the first steps in a series of community conversations with our tech savvy patronage about the potential pitfalls and gains that are likely to occur in the next decade. The challenge and opportunity here are two-fold: spreading knowledge of this evolving technology to libraries and getting the general public excited about the future impact of a WWW that finally delivers on the promise of empowering freedom of speech in a censorship-resistant, people-powered global information ecosystem.

Many libraries have been busy exploring potential applications for blockchain technology in the future or showcasing VR content with their customers in recent years. We went beyond this and built something completely new with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and A-Frame, an open-source web framework for interactive 3-D objects and scenery. This new style of library technology programming is innovative because it elevates the role of the public library as a platform and not just a place, and celebrates the creative process.

The eLibrary team at Palo Alto City Library combined the creative output of our customers’ imagination in virtual reality with a cooperative, free and open source global content delivery network called IPFS. This demonstrated an entirely new model for publishing content to the web and moved beyond proof of concept design to a working example of how to future-proof digital collections on global scale.