>> So, let's agree on this: Technology issues are not the overriding factor in the future success of libraries, academic or public.
I won't agree to that. I think perhaps you meant it in a very limited
sense—how bad catalogs are. But you give me the opportunity to restate
the obvious. While many factors contribute to the success of
libraries, most of them aren't changing rapidly. Librarians are not
getting better or worse at their job, library chairs more or less
comfy, reading rooms more or less friendly in a rapid, general way.
What's changing is technology, and its changing faster and faster and
in ways that touch the very heart of the library.
Libraries are moving from a situation in which resource finding and
aggregation could only happen locally, physically, to one with no such
constraints. The original and core justification for the
library—whatever else has been added, and I don't deny it is
much!—isn't just changing, it's *evaporating*. On top of this,
libraries are dealing with a massive explosion of other information
options, and a consequent steep *comparative* loss of usefulness (ie.,
lots of things you had to go to a library for twenty years ago, you
just don't now). As overheard on my local NPR station: "Do you
remember the days when the phone had a *dial* on it? Do you remember
the days when the *library* was where information lived?"
I know a hew and cry is raised every time I compare libraries to
bookstores, so let's compare them to all *media* industries. Wherever
you look digitization, anywhere availability and greater options are
overturning industries like newspapers, print magazines, music stores,
record labels, video rental stores, book stores (indie, chain, used),
certain types of publishers and some database businesses—not to
mention threatening long-comfortable notions of authorship, filtering
and intellectual property.
Every one of these industries is in for wrenching change. Some will
perish entirely. It is inconceivable that the library, which depends
upon those industries, will sail through unaffected. Libraries may be
protected from rapid swings, and may even benefit as bookstores, video
stores and music stores shut down. But these trends cut to their very
core.
I don't think the future is far off. My city, which had three new
bookstores when I arrived five years ago, is down to one. We're about
to become the largest city to lose its only newspaper.*** We lost our
art-house movie theater and shuttered a 133-year old local library.**
(It's not just the recession. The bookstore and the theatre died on a
block that now has *five* coffee shops.) I don't know how the local
music and video stores are doing, but I haven't visited either in two
years, although I was a frequent customer before. Something tells me
as more and more people get their videos and music online, those
places will go away.
All in all, it's not improbable that, ten years from now, a small city
like Portland, Maine will have no new bookstores, video stores, music
stores, local magazines or local newspaper. I can't believe that
physical libraries will do well in that desolated environment.
I don't know if that's the future. I hope some media industries can
reinvent themselves to shed what's unnecessary and keep or improve
what's best. I certainly hope libraries do. But it's not a forgone
conclusion.
Tim
*Not to mention industries that have almost wholly vanished. When's
the last time you visited an adult theater or a "software store"?
**The Warren library, a public, trust-funded library that lost much of
its endowment. Efforts to step in with public money failed
utterly.***A local reporter Twittered my favorite prognosis for the
newspaper industry: They should rename the obituary section
"Subscriber Countdown."
Received on Tue May 05 2009 - 23:26:55 EDT