The future of the library

[SFG75]

Found this great blog from a facebook post from my local library director.


Seth's blog: The future of the library
What he believes it should be:

The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who understands the Mesh, a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it's fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many web terminals there's always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don't view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight--it's the entire point.

A librarian's riposte to Seth's points.

No Mr. Godin you are missing the point, again. We ARE fighting for the future of the librarian as a producer, concierge, connector, teach and impresario, but we know to do that we need books. We need the information contained in those books, so we DO need “clever ebook lending solutions”. Information is not free, it costs. One of the many roles of the public library is to ensure that all people have access to that information.

Overall, I think he does a much better job in his new post. But honestly I wish he’d just stop writing about libraries. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great writer, I think I own all of his books, but I think he should stick with what he knows, and clearly that’s not libraries.

Touche....someone got the book thrown at them!:whistling: