Soofas for Your Library?

No, that's not a typo - honest! A friend from Columbia, Missouri (where I lived and went to Library School) sent me an article recently about a Soofa in front of their city hall. It was very intriguing and I had to share it with you.

Soofa is a solar-powered charging bench. The company was started out of MIT in 2014 and is based in Boston. Their mission "is to update the urban context for the mobile generation." When I read the article, my first thought was how libraries could use something like this in their outdoor spaces. Many libraries have gardens, wi-fi gardens, or patrons using their parking lots to access wi-fi. How cool would it be to not only offer wi-fi but a place to charge their device at the same time?

Soofa was unveiled at last year's White House Maker Faire (see this article for a picture of President Obama using one) and since then has been installed in cities across the nation. According to this Boston Globe article, 11 benches were installed in Cambridge, Massachusetts and 100 more have been sent around the country. I'll be watching for one to show up in Wisconsin and at a public library.