Library Rant/Philosophy/Manifesto/Something

I’m about to strive to correct a seeming misunderstanding about today’s library and librarians.  Librarians (or anyone!) out there, feel free to post links and add your own thoughts to this.  I’d be interested to see if we have the same opinions.  Also, anyone have a link to that awesome essay on LiveJournal that was making the rounds about the Digital Divide?  I would love to have a permanent copy of that and I forgot at the time.

I won’t often tell passenger stories on here, because who knows what people can find online, but this one must be told (and it’s a general enough situation that I point few if any specific fingers).

So on Wednesday, I went to go set up Bridge and I got cornered by the sole person waiting for bridge.   The conversation went something like this:

Man: Are you here to play?

Me: No, I’m just here to set up. (this happens all the time)

Man: Ah.  When you’re not setting up bridge, what is your job on the ship?

Me: I’m the librarian.

Man: Oh.  Well.  In fifty years, you won’t have a job if you stay a librarian.

Me: …sir, I can guarantee you that in fifty years, there will completely be librarians.  (also, let us pause and remind ourselves that in 50 years I will be approaching 75 and hopefully happily retired after 40+ contented years of librarianship or whatever.)

The man proceeded to go on a long winded rant about how paper books were going the way of the dodo and he hadn’t bought paper book in over a year but he’d bought almost 90 on his Kindle/Nook/E-reader (I never got close enough to identify).  He insisted that he was seeing evolution in progress and it would make librarians and physical books obsolete.  

He made some off-handed comment about his grandchildren and technology, but didn’t specify, although I wish he had because I’m curious if he was going to say they used Nooks to read at night or something, but he was on such a rant and refused to listen to a word I said (or let me say many words) that I decided to just extract myself from the situation.  This I did as soon as he took a breath, since I was still ‘on the clock.’

However, I do have things to say so I’m saying them here.  This blog needs to get more Libraryish and less Traveling Librarianish sometimes anyway ;)

Here’s my library philosophy or manifesto or whatever you want to call it:

Look, libraries and librarians are not going out of style.  Instead, they are adapting and, actually, seem to be coming back into style.  The stereotypical grey haired, bespectacled, shushing librarian is not today’s librarian.  Today’s librarians are tech savvy, young people who understand that technology and digital access is changing the world while also being aware that there are a lot of people out there who cannot yet access that technology readily for a wide variety of reasons – personal preference, poverty, etc.  

As much as my master’s program missed a lot of the practical, if there’s one thing UPitt did well, it was grounding us in the fact libraries are changing and that we need to be adaptable and ready for it.  Also, I happen to like a certain noise level in my workplace.  Anyone who shushes in ‘my’ library gets politely told off, especially since this library is much gathering place/coffee shop as library (I mean, for goodness’ sake, we’re open on one whole wall to a bar).

Are libraries changing?  Yes, of course they are, but what in today’s world isn’t?  Will the library of today look a lot different from my passenger friend’s future library of 2061?  No doubt.  There’s no denying that technology is changing the world, but take a look at the statistics for a minute.  There are a ridiculously high percentage of people in the world/US/wherever today who rely on their local library for any sort of computer or internet access.   We provide a service that is found nowhere else.  Okay, let’s pause and just absorb that for a minute.

Doesn’t that alone make us indispensible?  And that’s not even looking at all the other services that a library offers and/or will offer in the future.  What people like my passenger friend forget is that not everyone has the resources he does.  Just because he was able to purchase an e-reader and can afford to buy 90 books in a year on it – does he honestly think the entire rest of the world can afford that?  E-books aren’t as cheap as they were in the beginning of the boom – a paperback equivalent is at least the same price as a brand new physical paperback and while hardcovers are still cheaper in e-book form, the more popular ones are creeping up around $15, which is not cheap, just cheaper.  That’s just too expensive, especially when you add in the $100+ for the initial reader.

People will always have a need for someone to find information for them.  Maybe someday in that 2061 library, it will be entirely electronic and we will only contact our librarians through instant messaging systems or systems like Skype or even through a mental interface link ala books like the YA book Feed, by Anderson.  Fifty years is a decently long time, but think about it this way: Librarians have survived for something like 3000+ years (Library at Alexandria, anyone?).  Do you really think that in a mere fifty they’ll go completely extinct?

Yes, the argument can be made that almost all information in the world is currently at our fingertips using that great big thing called the Internet/World Wide Web, even for those who need their library to access it, but the truth is that it’s just not that simple.  There is so much information out there that is buried under a tangle of broken links and out of date pages.  Going hand in hand with this is the number of pages that are just plain wrong.  False information is rampant on the web – any old person can make a page/blog/etc. with false information and have no one be the wiser or be allowed to shut it down (except, obviously, in cases of slander/defamation, etc.).

Think of the number of times that pranks have been pulled on Wikipedia resulting in continuously wrong information – wasn’t it Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert who asked everyone to change a specific fact on a Wikipedia page?  That’s another reason why we’re here – we shift through all the bad information to find what you’re really looking for.  Unless search engines figure out a new way of searching – not likely in the immediately future if nothing else – that weeds out that or makes it easier to search like the human brain things, librarians will be useful.

One only needs to look at the fights and extremes that communities are going to as their library’s funding is threatened and sometimes shut off to see that people value what the library brings to their area – free internet café, free social area, free and safe place for their children and teenagers, free community hub, free information, and more.  I think we can all see the trend here.

I could talk about this forever but I’ll leave it there for now.

The moral of the story here is that libraries today are not just about lending books, even if that is still an important part of what they do, but they are so much more than that and that is what makes it so that I can say with confidence:

Libraries will absolutely still be here in 2061 and 2111 and probably even 2161.  Will they look the same?  Of course not.  Today’s libraries often bear little resemblance to the quiet archives of the early 20^th century, let alone the massive structures of places like Alexandria and the earliest libraries.

And if I’m wrong, well, the only one I’m likely to see is 2061 ;)