Library 2020: Today's Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow's Library
Language: English
Pages: 168
ISBN: 0810887142
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Thinking about the future of libraries, librarianship and the work librarians do is as old as libraries themselves. (No doubt seminars were organized by the Alexandria Librarians Association on the future of the scroll and what to do about the rising barbarian tide.) At no time in our memory, though, have these discussions and conversations been so profound and critical.
Here one of today’s leading thinkers and speakers about the future of libraries brings together 30 leaders from all types of libraries and from outside librarianship to describe their vision of what the library will be in 2020. Contributors including Stephen Abram, Susan Hildreth, Marie Radford, Clifford Lynch, and Library Journal’s The Annoyed Librarian were asked to describe the “library of 2020,” in whatever terms they wanted, either a specific library or situation or libraries in general. They were told: “be bold, be inspirational, be hopeful, be true, be provocative, be realistic, be depressing, be light-hearted, be thoughtful, be fun…be yourself, and for heaven’s sake, don’t be boring.” Not that they could be.
Broadly representative of important perspectives and aspects within the profession as well as featuring important voices beyond the professional realm, Library 2020 presents thought-provoking and illuminating visions from many points of view. It is both required reading for library leaders and trustees as well as an ideal supplemental text for LIS classes looking at the future of the profession.
scholars are seeking a public, and they have found that partnerships with public libraries, including participation in live events of various kinds hosted at the library, are very effective in building such an audience. Vast amounts of older, public-domain materials are readily available in digital form and can be explored by libraries for local relevance. And, oddly, nontextual materials have become more mainstream and more heavily used as part of the library’s collection. Although the biggest
video-streaming services available to libraries, public libraries are unlikely to invest heavily in things like the Boring Documentary Archive. That’s what academic libraries are for. The masses who want to get their latest superhero flick from the library will be out of luck. And music, long a staple at public libraries? You can probably tell where I’m going with this one. That’ll be going away to because sales of music attached to a physical medium are just about over. The CD is going the way
digital environments, and different types of users. These adaptations are all appearing amid a time of increasing (and competing) demands on our services. Additionally, there is the undeniably essential goal of continuing to provide excellent service during a time of economic recession, in which librarians are pushed to “do more with less.” It is a bit of a paradox that during this era of diminished monetary support, demand for service has increased. Many libraries have had to contend with frozen
free Kindle books or Nook downloads outprice the cost of a bus ticket or the car fuel for a library visit, or when it is faster to search online than to ask the librarian, then library-as-collection is a dangerous basket in which to put too many of our eggs. When books are freely or near-freely available elsewhere, being “the book place” is a dangerous stance to defend. Libraries can no longer count on describing themselves as the repositories for stuff. Against the backdrop of continuing
by the erosion in funding for school libraries. Librarians will work closely with teachers to help them utilize or access information that best fits their curriculum needs. Digital reference materials in public-library collections will be aggregated to fit specific needs or subject areas, and other library educational resources, such as instructional gaming software or the Kahn approach to independent learning, create services and resources perfectly suited to a public library–public school