A Look at the Future

I forgot to remember to look at the future last week, what with Thanksgiving and all.

Last week, we looked at some predictions for 2018 made in 1968. Fifty years is a long, long time these days.

What might our public library look like in 2018? It’s only ten years away; shouldn’t be too hard to guess. The library today is fundamentally the same as it was in 1968:

The same building, plus some. It’s full of books, magazines, newspapers, and now other kinds of “media,” such as videotapes, audiotapes, audio CDs, computer CDs, DVDs, plus a conduit to the enormous and messy marketplace of information, The Internet.

The same building is more often than not full of people. Circulation rises year by year (15% this year), even though the official district population has leveled off or even shrunk, depending who you ask.

Twelve years ago, in response to election issues about school and library buildings, a letter in Colorado Central Magazine said:

“Instead of urging us to waste our tax money on buildings for educational purposes, our local government officials should have told us that the world is rapidly moving to a future where buildings will be utterly useless because everything there is to know will be available on a 13-inch computer screen.

“Instead of urging us to pay for buildings because “nothing is too good for our children,” they should have urged us to buy each student a $500 monitor/modem/keyboard to use at home with a subscription to the Internet.”

So, twelve years later, far from everything is available, but it can be seen on 2-inch screens as well as 32-inch screens (although it’s a struggle to use a 12-year-old computer). Much of what is new to “know” is “owned” by someone who has ever-increasing property rights to that “intellectual property.”

And this remains, for me, the most important variable in the future of the public library.

The truly radical thing about a public library is its role as a focus of sharing. It is a cooperative purchasing project of sorts in which we all share both costs of and access to a community collection.

If most of our society’s future intellectual content is offered only in some digital form, and if “digital rights” continue to evolve to prevent any kind of sharing, then public libraries may have nothing new to share.

Academic libraries have been merely “leasing” their academic journals collections for years. They no longer own copies of most of the journals. They “rent” them year to year, providing online access to approved users.

We offer similar access to journals in addition to our sizeable collection of print magazines, and we offer downloadable audiobooks in addition to audiotapes and CDs that you can hold in your hands.

So, the letter writer twelve years ago wasn’t quite right. Of course not.

Use of digital content is also a function of users. Immersion in digital information will probably take a generational change, and so looking at the future of libraries will require looking at today’s children.

I wonder, with some trepidation, if there will be a wave of children in the near future that loses the skill of deep reading. Our electronic devices and digital content are increasingly about audiovisual experience. And brief ones.

Mankind used to tell stories around a fire (a nice audiovisual experience), and there is some pleasure and advantage in that. But a profound freedom was attained through reading and writing, and there are tremendous advantages in that.

I like freedom. We shall examine some of these issues this winter.