Macquarie is currently working on a conceptual library installation on SNC’s campus. For now the location is unknown, as well as what kind of life it will live after he leaves. The installation would consist of books and a wireless network that anyone can sign on to with their mobile device. Users could download files of books, maps, or other documents Macquarie has provided access to. It would also allow people to sign and store messages.

“Hopefully the students will download some cool documents, all of which have fascinating value,” Macquarie said. “In my wildest dreams, it might let people think a little bit more about what it means to share and utilize a lot of resources upon which we completely rely, but which belong to all of us, and reimagine that other worlds are possible.”

Lillegard said that Macquarie’s work is a really nice crossover with SNC and what the student body and college are interested in.” She added that Macquarie provides us with “other ways of thinking of library, location, and how we are collecting and disseminating information.

In his Poetry Center talk, Macquarie referred to the infamous but authorless quote: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”

He said that a library goes against that idea because it’s “an institution which functions and exists in the world, but which is not driven by a profit motive.”

“The goal is to share things more widely,” Macquarie said. “That seems really powerful to me because it feels like a completely different way to think about success than we are bred to understand.”

With hope for the art of sharing as a practice, Macquarie said, “I hope students will think more about how this might relate to what we think of as our responsibility in the world.”