The first living lab located within a Library was the only living lab present at the Smart city Expo 2016 with a high number of visitors interested in replicating the Library’s model of innovation and citizen participation
Sant Cugat’s town council presented key projects in their stand at this year’s Smart City Expo, and the Library Living Lab was certainly one of the featured initiatives. With more than 14.000 visitors and over 600 guest cities, this Living Lab had a prominent space in order to promote Responsible Research and Innovation processes with a bottom up approach.
The Library Living Lab is a space where new dynamics and protocols of citizen participation to innovation are defined, contextualized in the public library. Furthermore, this space at Sant Cugat is a laboratory of services of the regional libraries network who is interested in replicating the model to other libraries, as well as a real implementation of the quadruple-helix model.
The Library Living Lab was created by a consortium including the Computer Vision Centre, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Sant Cugat Town Council, as well as the Provincial Council of Barcelona and the Association of Neighbours of Volpelleres. The initiative is also part of the European Network of Living Labs who also had an important presence at the Expo.
At the Smart City Expo, the Library Living Lab presented the activities that have taken place in the last year as well as the different prototypes and technologies that can be found within this space, featuring the 3D club, technology of augmented reality applied to books and revalorization of digitised cultural works. Within the last year, more than 1000 citizens have participated in the Living Lab’s activities, with more than 35 media mentions and 43 scheduled activities.
The Smart City Expo was the perfect place to present this project, as it is completely aligned with the European Commission’s priorities and the H2020 philosophy, granting access to new technologies to citizens and thus contributing actively in creating veritable Smart Cities.