madcow writes “”I thought that since students are online so much that they always wanted to be near a computer,” one of the librarians said. “But it turns out that part of the reason they’re coming to the library is to unplug, is to actually have some time where they can concentrate on their work.”
This and more here“
Canary in the mineshaft
Just imagine that in 1887, ten years after the invention of the telephone, public librarians (led by Gilded Age “enlightened” populists) decide to transform libraries into places for people to use telephones. Visualize the rows of telephones on library tables, the shelves with hundred of phone books, the PR blitz (We’re All About Telephones! TM ), the rapid changeover in library personnel from Aristotelian bookworms to wire-based Electrical Engineers, and the consequent drop-off in championing books and ideas, reading, public forums, literature, linear thought, democracy etc.
But then, 20 years later, according to the January 26, 1907 New York Times, personal and business telephone use has grown to over 7,000,000 units. The high-end, early adopters (the equivalent of 2007’s college students) never use the library anymore, because its transformed mission as We’re All About Telephones! TM is of no use to them. By the end of WWII more than half of households have their own telephones and the We’re All About Telephones! TM concept collapses.
Unfortunately, by then all the books have been dumped, the programming canceled, the preparation of children for the love of reading and the world of ideas has been moribund for decades, as the children’s room has been filled with darling little telephones that transmit important ideas about Working Together and Conforming to Difference while Always Having Fun. With no discernible constituency in existence or in the upcoming generation, (they’re Having Fun), tax funding for libraries disappears and most libraries have to close their doors.
The Library-As-Telephone-Booth transformation reveals itself as a fundamentally shortsighted and irresponsibly anti-democratic paradigm shift brought on by Gilded Age socialist techno-nerds.
Naaaah, couldn’t happen.
Re:Canary in the mineshaft
You are so right! I no longer do programming or book displays or even collection development because we have no books or any other materials. The library is filled with public internet computers as far as the eye can see.
Thanks for the Monday morning giggle.
Re:Canary in the mineshaft
I no longer do programming or book displays or even collection development because we have no books or any other materials.
But you really wouldn’t do any of those things if you worked in an “information commons,” would you?
Re:Canary in the mineshaft
Maybe, but when I clicked through to North Carolina State’s IC, it did not appear that they have gotten rid of books, just expanded with more technology and areas for group study.
I work in a public library and I don’t see print materials or programming going away anytime in the foreseeable future. Children’s programming and book circulation is the bread and butter of a lot of public library systems.