PLIX at Next Library Satellite Seoul May 2026

Each May, Seoul is in full bloom with flowers, but this year librarians flew in from around the world, abuzz with the shared joy of connected communities. Already an internationally renowned network of library innovators, this was Next Library’s first ever satellite conference in Asia.

One delightful aspect of my role at MIT Public Library Innovation Exchange (PLIX) is to share the creative and innovative ways we foster community connections through joyful STEM education, with full transparency or charming sneakiness. For this conference, I signed up to run a workshop on the AI literacies embodied in the games of our newest activity, PLIX LLM-Algorithm Arcade.

During my experience of this conference, with the backdrop of the smells and tastes and sights of Seoul, an odd question snuck up on me… is there a place for my own Asian cultural heritage in this work I’ve been doing? Or have I been neglecting it because the skills and knowledge I’ve learned has only ever been framed in an U.S.-centric contexts? One particular site visit felt eerily similar to the processes and experiences I design into my home life.

Site visit: Invitations to reading embedded in an award-winning youth library

tTsome, or “Library Titi Island” in Seongnam-dong is a few neighborhoods south of Seoul. At each school day’s end, over 200 tweens and teens take the elevator up to floors 9 through 12 to be warmly welcomed by a staff of 14 facilitators, and to explore, play, and nap in all the little nooks and activity stations across the 4 floors.

Designed and facilitated by SeeArt Foundation, tTsome rarely offers “library programs” with a start and end time. Instead, they offered a neverending maze of activity stations. Each station supported curiosity and exploration with physical examples, printed visual resources, and materials and tools set up for immediate play. Their facilitation choices were somewhat sneaky in promoting reading literacy. Activities range from woodworking to dancing to watching movies to trying makeup to cooking to napping. Nooks and bean bag chairs invited youth to catch up on much needed rest.

According to the tTsome facilitators, when Korean youth gain more independence as adults, there’s a huge drop in the statistics on reading for fun. (A recent survey found that 30.6% of students struggle reading long text for more than 10 minutes (The Korea Herald, March 19, 2026), despite a reported 96.4% of students reading at least 1 book a year, which drops down to 38.5% in adulthood (Korea JoongAng Daily, March 6, 2026).) It is very likely, the facilitators conjectured, that youth are only reading because their parents tell them to, and without that pressure, they choose not to read.

At each activity station, in addition to having a variety of physical and printed example projects, illustrated how-to books were displayed prominently and “pre-opened” for project ideas. By elevating the contents of the books over their covers, the setup invited youth to dig in. For example, next to one of the sewing machines, there's an open book on how to make different types of small bags, from easy to challenging. At one of the woodworking stations, there is a hammer, large nails, and a block of wood with nails, that invite youth to go ahead and hammer a nail into a block of wood! At another station, people are invited to use a stone grain mill to grind black sesame into a sesame dessert. An abundance of printed signage, examples, and books offer easy entry starting points and information about the tools and activities.

But do the youth actually use the books? According to the facilitators, most of the time, youth want to make something they saw on social media. Because those platforms are not designed for users to play, pause, and rewind to follow along, the facilitators are thrilled whenever youth discover that books enable them to follow the steps at their own pace.

In my past conversations with PLIX ambassadors, librarians in the U.S., about how they design their library programs, one common practice is to display supplementary books during the program, just in case the program participants want to learn more. It is rare for participants to pick up these books. In tTsome, this choice of displaying open books might be informed by how they have always-available activity stations. It is a different framing from scheduled library programs.

Workshop: Early literacies embedded in PLIX LLM-Algorithm Arcade

My workshop session was on the last day of the conference. I was paired up with Min, one of the folks involved in planning the conference. Min had designed a playful and creative interactive survey for conference attendees. Among her many talents included marketing, and she enticed a sizable group to attend.

To get the creativity flowing at the start of the workshop, I invited people to create little doodles of their interests, crumple the paper and toss them at other people in the room. This is the Social Media Toss-Up game, which invites people to think about how they made their choices in who to toss their drawing to, and wonder about what information social media algorithms use to make recommendations.

After a 20-minute photo-op interlude where I shared the values and year-long process for designing an AI activity that is centered on librarians’ emotions and library contexts (a different blogpost in the near future), we transitioned to connecting playfully with each other.

During the free play, the six tables, with 4 people each, explored the printed game guides and physical materials while slowly warming up to each other. The room was calm and quiet, with occasional soft giggles bubbling up from different corners. (This, I learned, represented a cultural difference in what “play” and “focus” looks like.) At each table, there was always someone taking on the service role of reading the printed game guides and facilitating the group to play together. There were only a few questions about the game play.  This signaled that people could easily offer these games in their library context, and I had some game facilitation details to include.

After free play, some immediate feedback included:

• A remark on how the activities supported a variety of early literacies, from drawing, to reading, to building sentences, and categorizing animal features. “[These games] have so many different literacies!”
• Many comments on how the printed game guides were “easy to get started, and easy to do”
• Through embodied processes, the games deepened people’s understanding of the concepts of machine learning and Large Language Models. “Oh, so this is what the AI is doing!”

Reflections on Facilitating for Cultural Belonging and Play

Over my 5 years of running PLIX, I have slowly woven in my personal interests and hobbies into the activities (paper crafts, fashion, and more) and the ways I run workshops for librarians (cute snail mail, presentation slides printed and bound up as booklets, tea and snacks, and music). Librarians in the U.S. usually offer events—intentional library programs with a goal, a start time, and an end time.

But tTsome felt more like the home I live in. There were places to lounge and different creative activities youth could do at any time. In my home, if I’m hungry, I could cook a treat. If my hands feel too dry from doing dishes, I could make a hand lotion with glycerin for hydration or vitamin E for skin repair. If I wanted to mend pants for a friend, I have books and fabrics and tools. And if I needed to take breaks in between, there’s a spot to lounge in every room (except the kitchen… for now).

Environmentally, I’ve made my home a calm space. Room diffusers and scented candles signal through my nose that I am home. The warm LED lights of different lamps are a significant contrast from the bright fluorescent tube lighting in the office. And the fabric curtains, rugs, and thick sheepskin I use as room decoration all absorb sound to create an incredibly peaceful soundscape.

So why did I feel thrown off by the quiet attentive focus of participants in the workshop? This activity features a set of games people play together. I realized I was expecting loud laughter, big body gestures, people smiling at each other, and excitement expressed in tangible ways. That is what I look for when selecting photos that show off active engagement. And that is what I have come to expect from educational engagement. But that’s not how I grew up. And that’s not how many East Asian cultures show attention and engagement.