I’m glad you asked! The way library designs can relate to refugee camps is not so much their physical structures, but in the way libraries function. They offer books, access to computers and meeting spaces, as well as educational outreach into poor communities – including book mobiles and reading programs. Many libraries also offer free public workshops on skill-building, and resume classes for jobs. These things don’t need a classical physical structure to be as just effective in refugee camps, where there is a great need to develop skills, teach literacy and offer community support and outreach.

Also, libraries have streamlined how books and documents are transferred from one agency to another, and one book to a specific person, without a heavily political agenda. This kind of information exchange can also apply to refugees, who often wait many years for documents to make it through poorly organized information systems. These documents are necessary get visa’s or to access public resources and become eligible for legal work.

– You’re absolutely right that many of these integrated systems don’t exist in camps. This is why I’m doing this research – to build support for beginning to design comps with these features in mind, and to update older camps so that they are able to share information and resources more efficiently.

So, it’s not the physical space of libraries, but rather the methods of community support and the transfer of information and documents, that I feel can be applied to refugee camp designs. I am just beginning this research, and hopefully this idea will become more clear (and defendable) in the next few years.
I realize I have a lot to learn still. Talking about this idea, like in this letter to you, and in my program at Yale, is part of the learning process. I hope that clarified my research a bit!

Best,

Frances

“her interest in refugee camp designs and how they relate to common library infrastructures.”

That makes no sense to me. A refugee camp often is full of tents and poorly built wooden buildings. .. Libraries are often built better than a building in a refugee camp, and, the internal structure is quite different as well. There are shelves, books, computers, air conditioning. If it’s a big library it has steel beams to support the structure.

How a refugee camps and library infrastructure, even how the network of libraries in the USA are mapped out and connected through laws and sharing books, how does that relate to refugee camp designs AT ALL??