Janes - Library 2020: Todays Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrows Library

Library 2020

Todays Leading Visionaries

Describe Tomorrows Library

Edited by Joseph Janes

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham Toronto Plymouth, UK

2013

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

http://www.scarecrowpress.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright 2013 by Joseph Janes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library 2020 : today's leading visionaries describe tomorrow's library / edited by Joseph Janes. pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8108-8714-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-8108-8715-2 (ebook) 1. Library science--Forecasting. 2. Libraries--Forecasting. 3. Libraries--Aims and objectives. 4. Libraries--Information technology. 5. Libraries and the Internet. 6. Libraries and society. I. Janes, Joseph, editor of compilation.

Z665.L587 2013

020--dc23

2013009872

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Joseph Janes

Welcome to 2020. We know a few things about this year; there will almost certainly be a presidential election, heaven help us, which means the campaigning should start about the time this book is published. There will also be an Olympic Games, a leap year, and, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the Giant Magellan Telescope will be completed, the Russian Space Agency will be mining helium from the moon, and the California High-Speed Rail system will be finished. Whether Wikipedia will still be around, they dont say.

Why 2020 for a book of future visions of libraries? Why not? Its far enough out that some exciting things might well have happened but not so far out as to have to resort to shiny-jump suit and hovercar predictions left over from 1965 about 2000. It seemed a goodly amount of lead time for an esteemed and varied group of thinkers and doers and dreamers and screamers to ponder futures of all sorts.

And thats precisely what we have here. I solicited participation from a variety of folks, mostly friends as well as some people I admire a great deal, and asked them to fill in the blank: The library in 2020 will be _________. Heres the rest of what I asked:

You can go on from there. You could discuss a specific library (one you work in, use, know, etc., or not), a kind of library, libraries in general, the way professionals or clientele think about them, or something even more interesting. Be bold, be inspirational, be hopeful, be true, be provocative, be realistic, be depressing, be light-hearted, be thoughtful, be fun... be yourself, and for heavens sake, dont be boring!

What I have in mind is a collection of short piecesbetween 1,500 and 2,500 words, maybe 47 pages each, from a wide range of voices from within the library field and beyond, which I hope will add richness and texture to the discussion and bring perspectives we dont always hear.

Mission accomplished, in spades. What you will find here runs the gamut on lots of dimensions, utopias to dystopias, specifics to broad overviews, touching on a large number of issues, settings, challenges, successes, and potential pitfalls. Some of these will make you happy, some will make you mad, a few might depress you, and all of them, in one way or another, has the potential to make you think, or rethink, or question, or imagine what might be, which is exactly what I had in mind.

Once they started to come in, I realized that my work was just beginning, since theres no obvious order in which to present these; in reading through them, though, I began to see patternsyou will likely, of course, see othersthat echo ideas Ive had for many years about the nature of libraries and what they do and are. Hence, you find here very broad groupings about stuff, people, community, place, and leadership and vision. Ive long maintained that these are the essential and basic building blocks of libraries, and lo and behold, here they are again. I hope none of my contributors minds the environs Ive situated them in, and if the neighbors play their music too loud, just let me know. And yet, within those categories, theres tremendous variety and individuality; bear in mind while reading, though, that those groupings are entirely mine.

And then, naturally, I get the last word. Or, more correctly, the chance to spin a few ideas of my own. I didnt try to summarize or comment on anybody elses work; I dont know any better than anybody else, though I do think I have a few notions to offer for your consideration.

In a sense, you could think of these as messages in a bottle, sent forward into an uncertain future that we are all part of creating every day. Writing a book about the future is a fools errand, of course; if youre right, then it was all too obvious, and if youre wrong, well, then, ha ha ha on you. Lots of people also say theyd rather create the future than predict it, which I support entirely, and as youll notice, many of the people you hear from here are doing precisely that. Its nonetheless worthwhile, particularly at moments when it all seems up in the air, to take a step or two back and fix your eyes on the horizon and see what you see. Nobody knows how much of the following will, or even should, come true, but Im optimistic enough to believe that when we get to 2020sooner than some of us might like to thinkmore people will be pondering where libraries go from there, and on and on.

Of course, I want to express my gratitude to everybody who took the time and energy to spin these futures and share them with the wider world. I very much appreciate your participation, and I owe you all a drink. Special thanks go to my tireless and always-supportive publisher, Charles Harmon, who, once again nudged and prodded me most elegantly and gently toward bringing this to fruition. And, as ever, to my beloved husband Terry, who makes everything in my life much more interesting.

The library in 2020 will be just like the library today, except without all the books, music, and movies.

The books will be the first to go, because theyre already going. E-books are becoming more popular every year, and Amazon announced recently that its selling more e-books than print books. That trend is only going to continue because everyone likes e-books. Readers like them for the convenience, Amazon likes them because they dont take up warehouse space, and publishers like them because they can keep e-books out of libraries. Publishers really dont like libraries, which is why the few publishers willing to license e-books to libraries give such bad deals on themnot that it prevents libraries from throwing good money after bad to get their relative handful of e-books into library patrons hands.

But wait, you protest, libraries will still be able to supply print books! Not for long, they wont. Eventually, print books will go away, at least for the most part. The big exception will be childrens books, which will probably be around for quite a while longer. Spilling soda on a paperback book is much less of a problem than spilling it on an iPad. Plus, children like the tactile sensation of print books, and a generation of children will grow up dissatisfied that they can no longer enjoy the feeling of a new print book for readers over ten years old. There will also still be small publishers putting out specialized books or fiction for niche markets. But the thing about books for specialized or niche markets is that not many people want to read them, and the mantra for most public libraries is that unless books are popular, libraries dont want them. The major publishers will slowly move away from print books as they figure out how to make money and survive in a digital world. Or they wont figure out a way to survive, and the only new books available will be Internet fan fiction. Either way, no more print books for adults in libraries. This might not happen by 2020, but itll happen within the lifetime of most people reading this. The best-case scenario for getting books is that libraries invest in lots of e-book readers, buy books for them, and then lend out the readers. If youve ever seen the underside of the average library DVD after a few loans, you can imagine how well those Nooks and Kindles will hold up.