[myself248]

Take the kid to a physical library a few times. I think the visceral experience of the vastness really has to be experienced by our spatial-relation lizard-brains. Explain the "anything you want, but only a few at a time" concept. Nurture the kid-in-a-candy-store wonder.

Then take them to the most impressive library you can feasibly drive to. Universities spring to mind. Let that awe really sink in. See if you can get a librarian to talk to the kid for a few minutes about why _they_ personally think this is important.

THEN introduce ebooks, gutenberg, archive.org, apps, etc. All that and then some, right here in the palm of your hand.

[tacLog]

I think you are highlighting great ways to impress upon a kid the: "visceral experience of the vastness." Which is the core of what I want. That's a really good way to put it by the way.

I really like the idea of taking kids to really impressive libraries as well. My parents did that for me and it really did create lasting memories.

But I am more thinking of something that can emulate that experience remotely. Your focus on the space made me thing of maybe a library on Minecraft or Roblox? Maybe it can be a space where you can somehow see the books in a virtual space and design something that allows you to explore the collections. I know this would be really hard in Minecraft and I don't know how hard this would be in roblox. But I really like this idea because it would be easy to create, easier to maintain, and be a really cool thing that a teacher could say take a class trip to.

It would be important that you where presented with a way to checkout the books you found in this virtual library from a real library near you that has ebooks for children. This would also allow you to checkout the public works books from the awesome sites you referenced instantly.

[indigochill]

Maybe something like this (aimed more at journalism, but the virtual space is still impressive): https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/21184041/minecraft-librar...

[tacLog]

This looks really cool and is exactly along the lines of what I was thinking. I will explore it later after work.

Thank you for linking this.

[myself248]

Oh oh oh.

I think you mean https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360054148012-Brow...

[tacLog]

This is exactly the kind of tool I was hoping to find. Thank you!

I wasn't really expecting to be having novel ideas here and as usual someone built something close and someone on hackernews can tell me about it.

This service isn't perfect and doesn't seem very kid friendly to me. But it exists and is free so it's something to learn from and recommend.