Our eagle-eyed Learning 2.0 team has pointed out me that I have gone from #14 to #16 without a stop at #15. Math has never been this old bird's strong point, but she does want that laptop, so...
Apparently the future of libraries is 80% male. Does anyone else think it odd than is a discussion of the future of a profession that's still at least 80% female, only 1/5 of those OCLC articles we were asked to read were written by someone with 2 X chromosomes? The Old Crowe, unapologetic and cranky Boomer feminist that she is, notices things like that. Perhaps I digress. Perhaps not.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Wendy Schultz came up with the concept I like best--Library 4.0, Experience, "knowldge spa." Yeah.
If I could predict the future, I would have bought stock in certain companies many years ago--not to mention California real estate--and we would not now be having this conversation because I would have long since left the working world to live off interest and dividends. I like Dr. Schultz's notion that Library 4.0 will not replace Libraries 1.0-3.0, but incorporate all its predecessors. After all, despite many predictions to the contrary, paper has not gone away as things have gone digital. Formats seem to have exploded rather than contracted. In some ways we've gone back in time a couple of millennia--a web page is more like a scroll than a codex, after all.
I think Book as Object will be around for many years to come, even as it migrates, perhaps, in the direction of Book as Art Object. It's becoming increasingly effective to combine word and image digitally, but not yet the tactile aspects of a book. Books are going in two directions at once--content migrating off on one end and dissolving into the digital; and morphing on the other end into an art medium that sometimes deconstructs the concept of book almost as completely; and sometimes looks at just what constitutes the essential bookness of a book.
Egad, she's getting all arty on us. Go see something like http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/artistsbook/index.htm or http://content.otis.edu/collections/artistsbooks.htm...or look in our own OPAC under artists books as SUBJECT (especially the ones in Special Collections).
Anyway, the Library as Place better not disappear anytime soon. I'm looking forward to my post-retirement appreciation of my local public library, longtime feeder of my mystery book habit. Soon I'll have time to hang out in their very attractive periodicals room by the fireplace, spend lots of time browsing the stacks instead of just running in and out, research lots of non-academic and non-work things like how best to apply ceramic tiles to the side of a stucco house. Until everybody has equal access to the net, equal comfort levels with technology (or at least a certain baseline comfort level) and one learning style, some aspects of Library 1.0-3.0 will hang around--including librarians to help people navigate and discover.
Check with me after I've been retired as long as I've been a librarian, and we'll see. You might need a medium. You might not.
Oops, some good carrion over there. Gotta go.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
We nag because we like reading what you have to say. (Don't forget thing 18.)
Post a Comment