Check out a "living book"

In an effort to combat budget cuts and ebooks, City Centre Library in Surrey, British Columbia, which is scheduled to open next month, has created the first ever "living books" program.

Basically in addition to bound volumes, the library will also provide residents with access to people. The librarian staff will maintain a list of local residents who have volunteered to share their knowledge of any topic, and other library patrons can make appointments for 30-45-minute conversations.

According to Good.is, librarian Ravi Basi told CTV British Columbia that the Surrey library staff initially imagined the living books initiative as a way to break down barriers between people of different races or religions, but people with interesting careers, life experiences, or academic research topics would make good volunteers as well.

The library is connecting local neighbors in a social atmosphere and advocating for open-knowledge sharing. My only question is how long until this hits the US?

A new kind of ink book

McSweeney's brand new children's imprint has a book coming out in December that you'll want to get your hands on- literally. Remember those cool hypercolor tshirts you wore when you were in elementary school that changed color when you touched them? Well, the book equivalent has been created!

Keep Our Secrets by Jordan Crane will be printed with thermally-activated color-changing ink that lets kids discover hidden illustrations as the heat from their fingers rubbing the pages causes some ink layers to become transparent (check out the video below). It's a fun way to encourage children to learn and explore on their own.

In an industry ripe for innovation, we're seeing some exciting changes recently. Push Pop Press, acquired earlier this year by Facebook set out to re-imagine books on the iPad. Now we've got a publisher re-inventing the wheel with a hard-cover. How would you change books to enhance the way we interact with them?