Join us for Design Index, a public program series at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library, where contemporary designers, artists, and creatives are invited to explore the library and select materials to be viewed, pondered, and discussed with a design librarian and a small group of attendees. Program participants will get a behind-the-scenes look at the resources that inspire today’s designers and artists while they develop their work.

For the next Design Index, writer, creative researcher, teacher, and library collaborator Shannon Mattern and Cooper Hewitt Librarian Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi will discuss the nature of the index—a way finding tool frequently used in libraries to help users find information quickly. In an era of tremendous technological transformation, particularly amid the rise of artificial intelligence and its distillation of the world’s knowledge, how might a design library like Cooper Hewitt’s help us to appreciate the index as a design system that creates order in our world? During the program, the books, journals, artifacts, and other materials Mattern has been studying and referencing during the last three months at the library will be on view, highlighting her ongoing research on the aesthetics of public knowledge infrastructures, from interface design to library architecture.