I just started reading The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel.

In this passage (p. 14), Manguel talks about his library at night:

The order decreed by library catalogues is, at night, merely conventional; it holds no prestige in the shadows. Though my own library has no authoritarian catalogue, even such milder ones as alphabetical arrangement by author or division into sections by language find their power diminished. Free from quotidian constraints, unobserved in the late hours, my eyes and hands roam restlessly across the tidy rows, restoring chaos. One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries. A half-remembered line is echoed by another for reasons which, in the light of day, remain unclear. If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonably wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejioce in the world’s essential, joyful muddle.

So, is there a place for disorder in the library? Could we create a kind of browsing or discovery library, without a catalogue or a classification system, containing books from different genres and subjects, where library users could go to simply discover new ideas and learn about new things they would never have thought to look for in the library? Would anyone use this type of space? It could be a space designed for browsing and reading, with selected books from the collection that might be of interest.

While libraries often have displays of interesting books or shelves of new acquisitions, I’m envisioning more of an entire room with randomly arranged books from fiction to nonfiction on different topics, with comfortable chairs and windows. Or it could be an entirely separate library with a different purpose from a typical library, the chaotic synthesis of ideas rather than the ordered exploration of knowledge. Could it help those with different learning styles and thought processes?