Hyperrhiz 18

My Poet, My Poem & I: The NCSU Libraries bookBot Poet

Markus Wust
North Carolina State University

Citation: Wust, Markus. “My Poet, My Poem & I: The NCSU Libraries bookBot Poet.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 18, 2018. doi:10.20415/hyp/018.k02

Abstract: Getting new readers to engage with poetry can be difficult. To expose a wider audience to poetry, the NCSU Libraries created a tool (the “bookBot Poet”) that turns usage data from its automated book retrieval system into “poems” that are displayed inside the library. The goal was to have patrons think about what defines a poem and get them interested in reading poetry. Later, those “poems” were made publicly available through a small poem printer.

The essay describes the projects' history, their technical implementation, as well as project outcomes and future plans. The kit repository provides lasercutting files for the bookBot Poet Dispenser, along with dependent software.

Components

Essay: Do Robots Dream of Being Poets?

Implementation: the Poem Dispenser

Github Code Repository for the bookBot Poem Dispenser