While walking through, you can usually find me snapping photos of design ideas for changing the house *yet again* and eventually, before I end up at the exit, I’ll have had the sudden “need” to purchase a small, usually cheap, organizational apparatus or *yet another* sheet set or kitchen item to make my house (and life) finally click. Today, however, i was already more than halfway through the showroom before i realized – not only had i absolutely no desire to buy anything, i suddenly saw the big picture and the whole key to the perfectly organized house and life.

You don’t need organizational tools, bins or schemas to help you organize if you just have less stuff.

I mean, my “epiphany” might be your “duh” moment, but this definitely was an “ah-ha” moment for me when the last few years suddenly just came together. Here’s how i think i finally ended up here:

I’m pretty sure it all started with high fructose corn syrup. Hang with me for a sec, this will all make sense soon. However I got on the HFCS kick, about 3-4 years ago i decided to take a stand against the rampant use of HFCS in everything and start reading labels and only buying things with sugar in them. Let me just tell you how annoyed i was to find HFCS in my cough medicine and my beloved childhood brand of apple sauce. Starting out, everything in my fridge with HFCS in it, got an X on it  and when it ran out, i’d look for an HFCS-free alternative- and let me tell you, that was not easy. Today, however, companies have gotten the memo and you can find plenty of “throwback,” “classic” or similarly branded items with sugar, like they used to have.

After that came the rest of my diet… I had read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and it opened my eyes (again) to the eating local and more consciously concept that somehow, over the years, had gotten lost in my life. Around the same time, a friend of mine invited me to a screening of FRESH at a nearby church where local growers, raisers, and makers of food were set up and my whole life changed. I learned about CSA’s and since that very moment we’ve been completely ignoring the existence of the middle of the grocery store (if not the grocery store all together), buying meat only from happy grass fed cows* or happy roaming chickens, making sure our milk and eggs are from said happy animals and buying what we can at local farm stands and markets for the fruits and veggies. I’m still working on a source of cheese, yogurt, and other similar dairy products that meets my now serious requirements (but i’m pretty sure within the year i’ll be making them myself).

Somewhere along the line of the HFCS crusade, the last straw was that i could only find canned mushrooms that were grown in PA (40 miles north), shipped to China for processing and then shipped back for canning. And so began my moratorium on anything made in China. It had the added benefit of making me think i could do my part for the ”carbon crisis, continuing the local idea, and voting with my dollar as far as international trade regulations were concerned (hello lead paint). It didn’t take long to realize that everything we buy is made there and gave me a mental image of a land full of factories, instead of the beautiful China my aunt speaks of from the  70s. Regardless,it is possible to find things made elsewhere (or god forbid in the USA). You may have to look a little harder, pay a little more or simply go without, but i think it’s worth it.

Similarly, i started to bug my normally receptive parents about their use of paper plates and cups over their regular dishes, and their need for paper napkins and paper towels instead of reusable cloth ones (which we’d been using for a few years now). because of the environmental issue (one word: WALL-E). I’m happy to report that I finally won that battle a few weeks ago. My next goal with them is to switch them to biodegradable trash bags.

About two years ago, when we moved to our current place, we learned the county had a very aggressive recycling program that accepted essentially everything (seriously not kidding) without it needing to be rinsed, cleaned, or sorted AT ALL. I’ve always recycled but now we were tossing out a huge bin of recycling and only a tiny half-filled bag of trash each week. If we composted (it’s coming, i can tell), we’d have no trash at all.

So all this is going on in the food and environmental sphere of my life, and over in sphere B, i’m still fighting the seemingly never-ending battle with my stuff. It needs to be organized, cleaned, picked up, and purged CONSTANTLY and it seems that every spare moment i have (not many) includes a to do list that has “organize X” or “clean up Y” right at the top. But even when i did that, it never looked or felt like I had made a dent.

I constantly felt overwhelmed. My home office was a dumping ground and it was a constant battle of moving piles from open spot A to open spot B in order to move something else just to have space to do stuff. Instead of spending time on projects, work, or just doing nothing, i spent time trying to get a hold of the “stuff monster.” We live in plenty of room for two people, but i felt like i was being crowded out.

In an attempts to at least curb the incoming stuff, last Christmas I put serious limits on the gift giving. Gifts is what my dad does. It fills him with joy to buy things that he thinks you will enjoy – and even more joy when he sees you open it on Christmas morning. In fact, until last year when I started imposing those limits on Christmas  (just call me Scrooge), Christmas morning gift giving was an almost all-day affair, each of the three of us taking turns opening one item at a time. But all that stuff takes up space and i was at my mental limit. Dad did okay last year – he tried, he really did- but it was painful and I still ended up with stuff because no one knew how to change the tradition of an all-day gift opening fest when there seemed to be nothing to fill the space with. The boy and I were creative with our own Christmas, however, wrapping games we already owned and playing them after they were unwrapped. This year, i’ve put a COMPLETE MORATORIUM on stuff at Christmas at home. One gift each, if you must at all; high premium on experiences over things; homemade items are good. Things made of plastic, in China, or something that won’t last forever are verboten.

If you’re wondering if my stuff problem extends to the bedroom, it does. The bedroom closet, that is (sheesh, people). A tshirt and jeans girl (& no shoes if i can help it), i never understood or was taught the concept of an outfit. What Not To Wear intrigued me, but always left me mostly baffled when it came time to apply the theory. Mostly solo clothes shopping was basically hell for me, and i continued to buy pieces, instead of seeing the whole picture (which is funny because i’m really good at seeing the whole picture everywhere else in my life and work). This all leaves me with a closet bursting at the seams with things that maybe kinda go together, but not really. And regardless of the things i owned, I still basically wore the same few things. Enter Kendi Everyday. I’ve had Kendi in my rss reader for maybe a year now but only recently have really started to pay attention to her 30 in 30 project – 30 items to make 30 outfits in 30 days. Basically – forcing yourself to see your clothes in a different way, and make them do new things for you. I had the unique ability to wear a skirt and have it still look like my normal tee and jeans uniform- no extra finishing pieces, no accessories, nothing special – slap it on and you’re on your way. But in the last month or so i’ve seen more new combinations in my closet than i have ever. For example, I had no concept of just how different a whole outfit can look just by tucking in a shirt. Bless you, Kendi. (Outfit Mentor status also goes to my friend A whom i very much miss shopping with (especially now that i know what i’m doing.)

So where does this leave us? Well, enter two of the final pieces of the puzzle: 1) my complete abhorrence for my current commute and my intense desire to work closer to where i live / live closer to where i work at some point in the not-so-distant future and 2) my reading of The Feast Nearby (also, a blog). Dreams of living locally, biking around town, knowing my neighbors and canning my own chutneys and whatnot (because with all this local veggie buying, winter is going to suck), everything consolidated for me.

Somehow a life that was never about stuff, turned into one of not just stuff, but complacency and a disconnect from nature as i tried to find my way in the world. I bought into the completely ridiculous idea that if i dressed a certain way, bought into this new productivity practice, or purchased a new thing, something would click and it’d all be okay. But letting go (of expectations, material things, and completely bullshit ideas of the kind of person you have to be to do x, y, or z)… making careful and conscious choices about my life (and the stuff in it)… and following the bliss – naysayers be damned – is my true path now. And i can’t tell you how glad i am that i’ve found it, even if it seems to have taken forever.

So the journey has been long, but the destination isn’t yet here. I’ve been selling our stuff on ebay like mad, we’ve ditched our TV service (with the added benefit of confusing and annoying The Company and saving a lot of $), I’ve relearned the word “no” and we continue making good choices for ourselves – happy cows, sustainable building materials and being creative with what we’ve got and making what we don’t (if we must).

All this to say, with less stuff, you really can do (and be) more.

———-

* I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is a difference i can feel between meat from a happy cow versus an unhappy one (think the difference between open field and feed lot). i feel better after the meal, it’s easier to digest, and tastes completely different (read: better). My mom was skeptical but let me buy them a pound of “happy cow” (as it’s now come to be known in our houses, though i’d imagine that if the meat is in my procession at some point the cow was no longer happy). They kept it frozen for a while but finally cooked with it. Mom was astounded- she didn’t feel a heaviness and sloth that she usually does after eating beef and she noticed the difference later too as it didn’t make her stomach do flips during digestion. WIN!

possibly related posts:

1. ToDo: 2009
2. Book lending; Netflix style

(c) erinbarker*, on Flickr

the boy and i were discussing something the other day which lead me to my normal rant of content versus container. here it is in case you’ve never heard it before:

When knowledge and stories finally got a container, they were preserved and shared in book form. (prior was via spoken word.) Libraries were the vessel for those book containers. Along the way to present day, the containers changed (disk, cd, dvd, database, journal, magazine, playaway, flash drive, internet, conversations with humans, etc). But during this change over the last umpteen decades, libraries had forgotten to tell people the knowledge moved which is exactly why people still equate libraries with books – except nowadays, books are those frivolous things some people use for entertainment (but who reads nowadays anyways).

[see also: Try again buddy: a note on libraries and books]

The reason libraries do not equal books anymore is because libraries are about knowledge – and the knowledge moved**. And we forgot to send out “we’ve moved” cards. Silly us.

Except we still haven’t sent out those cards (I’m generalizing here to make a point – I know many many libraries, library systems and librarians have sent out those metaphorical cards). We continue to have more book clubs than technology classes, advertise more bestsellers than databases, and hire more shy bookish people than interesting and engaging customer service focused people who love information and people.

We can’t keep complaining that no one loves us, funds us, or cares if we die a slow and lonely death and then continue to sell ourselves and our customers the same old, dusty and worn-out kool-aid.

The kool-aid is no longer hip. We’re all drinking martinis now.

And our martini is made of equal parts of the following:

• libraries are places where people can learn – we’ve got ridiculously awesome resources and ridiculously awesome people to help teach you how to find what you need (*cough*information literacy) and other amazing things (google+ for example)

• libraries are places where people can create- we’ve got ridiculously awesome resources for that too!

• libraries are places where people can grow- Sally grows by falling in love with The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Brian grows by taking a class on photoshop. Marianne grows by joining in on a knitting group.

• libraries are places where people commune***- we’ve got space, ac/heat, a cafe, and the resources for you to create whatever community you want

• libraries are places where magic can happen- ’nuff said.

You may have noticed a trend here. Libraries are places where people do stuff. And you better believe i mean “place” in the broadest sense- your building, your website, all your presences around the community. And “people”- that’s a no brainer. Libraries exist for the people who use them. And the best way to engage people? By talking AND listening to them. It’s the only way you’ll know what they want and they’ll know what you’ve got (*cough*databases).

So. Are you drinking the kool-aid or the martinis? Which is your library drinking? And what are you doing about it?

——————–

* thank to Erin for graciously letting me use her photo

** credit goes to the boy for the succinct and awesome phrasing

*** I was told i was using commune in an obsolete manner ala Shakespeare. Well if it was good enough for him, my friends, it’s good enough for you. (commune: to talk over, discuss)

possibly related posts:

1. Why we should stop caring about e-books versus “real” books
2. the perception of librarians Or so you like to read

With the exception of the Volkswagen commercial (which is just damned adorable), i can’t stand car commercials (well, all commercials but car commercials tend to annoy me way more than usual). But this Toyota commercial is BRILLIANT.

We see a fairly – vapid isn’t the right word- girl sitting at her laptop with all her vintagey-feel items behind her on the bookshelf (which i bet were bought at Target instead of at a thrift store or passed down or handmade) talking about how her parents basically aren’t getting the modern idea of friends and socializing- clearly, since they only have 19 facebook friends and she’s got 687.

I love this commercial so much because it states REALLY CLEARLY a) what older adults think of us (us = the millennial’s, screenagers, etc) and b) what i think is all sorts of wrong with the world today (world = first world, obviously).

I hear conversations on the metro, in the grocery store and in the ether about facebook and, as the commercial puts it, “cute puppies” instead of – oh i don’t know – the debt ceiling, Oslo, what we can be doing about making the world a better, more awesome, safer, more educated, and equal place. Conversations are happening about things that didn’t happen in physical space and time and we’ve relabeled the not important, not urgent stuff as both urgent and important (okay yes technically, the internet is physical space and time, but you know what i’m trying to say, right?)

Okay, i know plenty of people (those i usually choose to associate myself with) who *are* discussing the big things and not just the “like omigod, he totally did this and then i said this and omigod how’s my hair” crap but i’m being harsh to illustrate a point. The commercial (to me) speaks of two issues: the fact that we (us youngin’s) have incorrectly redefined “socializing” and that we’re giving too much thought and time over to the crap that doesn’t matter. (*cough* Farmville *cough*).

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you:

You swipe open your device and look at it. It didn’t buzz, blink, or chirp but it calls to you. You check twitter, facebook, your email, tumblr, etc looking for new information – clearly in the intervening minute and a half since you put it down, something earth shattering must have happened? You flip through and tag an article to read later (not even now, when clearly you have nothing better to do), favorite someone’s witty tweet about their cat, and upload a photo you took last night of yourself at the computer. You go back and refresh twitter, fb, and your email. Nothing new. You pause because you’re not sure what to do with yourself now. (i have some suggestions).

If any of that sounded even remotely familiar  i suggest you put your device in a drawer and go for a walk. To maybe even pay attention to your to do list and start checking things off it.

We’ve let our devices and the technology define us instead of using the devices and technology to do what we do best, better.

The internet and other technologies could allow me to live in a box, devoid of sunlight, and order and pay for everything i needed – food? delivered. bills? paid. entertainment? enjoyed (maybe). But no where in there are other humans. The more i don’t interact with other people, the more i start to feel like i exist alone and the more self centered, self serving, etc i get – which leads to a lack of civility (why be nice when i’m the only one who matters?), increase in greed (it’s all about me), and increase in destructive actions (i’m above the law, i wont get caught, no one will know, etc).

Call me old school (or just plain old at the ripe old age of 28-again), but I think paying more attention to the physical will help us solve a lot of problems we’ve found ourselves in lately. Environmental issues relating to agriculture problems, feed lots, and the commercialization of the family table? Fixable when you start riding your bike to the farmers market and talking to the people who grow your food.

Now, i’m not saying the internet and our devices are bad (if it wasn’t for the internet, i’d be out of a job), i’m just saying we should use them to work for us, instead of letting them rule our lives. And for the love of Pete – to put them down every so often.

I recently had a conversation with my mother about communication – and when i mentioned how in the (actual) old days prior to answering machines (yes kids! machines!), when someone called and you weren’t home, you never knew! And you just weren’t available! My mom (strangely) came back with something along the lines of “but that’s not how it works today and when i call, i expect you to answer!” (i knew i shouldn’t have let them give me a cell phone to go to college with).

We talk of information overload (here, here, here, and here – to name a few… even though i just think it’s filter failure) and fail to realize that it’s quite simple to solve it – step away from the computer/tablet/smartphone/etc and go talk to some real, physical, face to face humans.

Perhaps it’s just that we (at least i do) work in a very in-your-head profession. We do lots of sitting, thinking, collaborating, reading, etc. It’s brain work. And at some point your brain needs something else.

In the last few months I’ve had almost a standing date with some friends to go see a movie (usually non-mainstream) and have dinner. It’s these interactions – the eating, the walking around town, the breathing in different air and seeing different sights that allows my brain the space to think differently.

I hear friends whining about their lives and then i see them tweet/post about how many episodes of Deadliest Catch they just finished watching. To quote the best poster ever, “If you don’t have enough time, stop watching tv.” Get out and go do something.

Okay so what’s my point? My point(s) are that we need to remember there are bigger things out there – that community (physical community too!) matters – and that the technology should be working FOR us, not the other way around.

On that note, i’m going to leave my computer, get on a plane, and go visit some humans for the weekend.

—-
here are the other commercials, clearly making fun of us, making fun of them: Missing Them, Messages, Commute, Cross-Country

possibly related posts:

1. a word on Geico commercials
2. thoughts on seeing clearly

Until I read Pete Bromberg’s eloquent and biting post I was having trouble finding the words to discuss what was happening in my beloved home state. Please take a moment to read what he has to say.

Building on what Pete said, here are my own 2¢:

QandANJ, and other services around the world like it, are tremendously valuable for the libraries who provide it, librarians who staff it and customers and students who use it. QandANJ provides reliable information access to customers, understanding that questions don’t have business hours. In a time of decreased library hours and staffing, QandANJ ensures that people get what they need even when their library can’t. QandANJ provides opportunities for staff to increase their technology, interpersonal and customer service skills in an online environment – one that is only going to be more important and ever-increasing in the coming years/decades. Not to mention the staggeringly awesome benefit to citizenss, QandANJ provides the same benefits as my own service:

• provides a positive return on small investment of staff hours for e.g. small institutions provide a few hours of staff time in return for 24/7 access;
• reaches new users and bring them into library services;
• supports customer preferences for online engagement;
• gives visibility for other library services through service provider referrals;
• increases usage of online databases: enhanced access to experts facilitates student and lifelong learner use of online databases;
• provides consistent service across K-12 and post-secondary sector and addressing the needs of the lifelong learner;
• creates collaborative partnerships within and across sectors e.g. multi-sector bundle, resource sharing, building the shared services of our library community;
• encourages innovation within a supported environment; centralized coordination and training means libraries don’t have to provide administrative or technical support;
• offers professional development for service providers: a collaborative environment facilitates sharing of expertise;
• serves as risk avoidance in the event of a disaster, QandANJ provides a way for libraries to maintain access to reference service if library service is compromised

I might even argue that because of the way NJ municipalities are set up, QandANJ provides much-needed cohesion of services throughout the state.

You only have to look at librarian and customer comments to see the immense value this service has to both the citizens of New Jersey but to the world. In the last 10 years QandANJ has been a model for other services around the globe. Maryland AskUsNow!, launched in 2003, took cues from and brainstormed with the leadership of QandANJ and enjoys continued success because of the intellectual partnership between QandANJ and other state- and province-wide services around the world.

Deciding to end such a valuable, respected, and needed service in the library world today without good reason should be punishable by banishment from the library community.

QandANJ (as well as all vr services, including my own) will always and forever have my support as a library user, library staffer, and citizen of this universe.

Check out the Save QandANJ event on facebook, the QandANJ facebook page, read customer comments on twitter and add your supportive voice here.

possibly related posts:

1. Xtreme Customer Service or TTWWADI must die.
2. (inter)national virtual reference service?

To better arm our librarians to handle these sensitive situations, we created training, guidelines and a resource list with the help of one of our librarians who’s also a social worker.

While we were creating our resource list, it became very apparent that telephone hotlines were still the norm and even in this new world where people appreciate the anonymity and immediacy of conversations via some online text-based system, none was available. We were very aware of the mismatch of suggesting a telephone hotline to someone who had come to us in chat to help them.

I am very happy to say that there is now a viable chat option for those in crisis:

From imalive.org:

You are panicked, short of breath, and the pain is so palpable that you cannot feel or think about anything else. The terror of picking up the phone to call a hotline not knowing who will answer prevents you from doing so. Or, even if you have the courage to pick up the phone, the sound of the person’s voice scares you and you hang up. We know this happens because over 30% of all people who call suicide hotlines do just that—they hang up as soon as they hear the human voice.

More importantly, we recognize the technological age we find ourselves in today and we know that millions of people in crisis will never pick up the phone. We believe that IMAlive is part of the solution to the problem. IMAlive is a live online crisis network that uses instant messaging to respond to people in crisis. People need a safe place to go 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We’ll be updating our resources page and spreading the word. I hope you do the same. Everyone needs a place to go.

possibly related posts:

1. IM versus Chat: What’s better for customer service?
2. a word about doing things online (or If i can’t pay online, you’re saying you dont want your $)

The focus, for whatever reason, seems to always be on the “technology” (usually perceived as disruptive) and how it’s going to put us out of business or put a lot of us out of jobs or some such other nonsense. Books- for instance, are perceived as our primary business- not just by the customers (usually non-users) but also (unfortunately) by those who work in libraries (time for you to retire yet?). When i was in library school i remember discussions about libraries versus booksellers. It was always “versus” and i never understood why since we’re not really in the same business.

And now, as people are freaking out about ebooks, i ask the same question- why?

It seems we forget that our business is not defined by our things – the modes in which our information is delivered- physical book, ebook, database, audio cd, computer, etc- our technology if you will. The library is NOT an information warehouse and calling it such removes the element that actually IS our business – the people. Calling us “information gatekeepers” also does us a disservice – enforcing that stereotype that we are better than you and only we can dole out the world’s knowledge on a need-to-know basis and only if you’re worthy. Um, no.

Libraries are in the people business and i’d like to invite everyone who is in the profession on a front lines service desk who does not agree with me to do some soul searching and perhaps find another calling. Libraries are in the people business- connecting people to people (staff to customers and customers to their communities) and people to things (information, skills, knowledge, etc); usually people to the things they need to become better people. When libraries define themselves through their community, suddenly the technology doesn’t matter. And it shouldn’t. Technology is simply a way of getting things done, of solving problems. Sure, I’ll be the first to sign up for something flashy and new just because it is such but that doesn’t mean i’m going to implement it on a system-wide basis simply because it’s “the new thing.” In fact i’m very much against technology for technology’s sake in this context. With something new and interesting, I’m going to file it away and hope i recall it later when i’m faced with a challenge it might help solve. Wordle, for instance- was fun to play with in the beginning but what the hell can i use a word cloud for? Not much… until it came time to write the final grant report and i needed a visual way of representing the year’s worth of customer comments. Bingo.

That’s a simple example but i’m hoping you get my drift. If we define ourselves by the needs of the people in our community, and the relationships we build with them, suddenly we’ve just given ourselves the flexibility to ebb and flow with whatever the world throws at us. Suddenly “omg mobile” doesn’t seem so scary.

See, we have to be limber. Not just people and libraries, but everyone. Businesses that can’t move with the waves of life suffer. Take Western Union- the president of the company in 1876 said, ”this ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” Missed opportunity there. And i bet he’d pass out if he could look around the world today.

We’re very good, in libraries, at letting others decide what we should be doing – waiting for others to define who we are and what business we’re in. The great thing about the future that people tend to forget is that WE CAN INVENT IT! The Future is not something that happens to us; we are something that happens to the future. Feel free to quote me on that.

Seriously though, if libraries defined their identities and purposes by their specific community’s needs and stopped worrying about what other people were doing (not in that informed, always-looking kind of way but the “i don’t know what to do, oh lets do what they’re doing” kind of way), libraries would be more embraced into their community as a whole, start to chip away at the stereotype (the stuffy one, not the sexpot one.. though that annoys me too), and be more relevant to their worlds and more flexible as technology shifts (as it tends to do).

It’s our communities that binds us together. Sure, everyone has a hugely different demographic and community base but regardless of who their community is, libraries should be building relationships with those people, asking them what they need in life, and then providing it (either directly or as a referral or partnership).

I’ll go back to my mobile example from a bit ago- Sure, mobile is the thing we need to be in right now- its not going away. the xx billion text messages sent daily is a sign that something’s up. But if your small town library serves a community of aging ESL, perhaps texting and mobile isn’t really a bandwagon you should be jumping on right yet. But if you have conversations with them – keep them up to date with the world just as you try to be as a professional (you ARE, right?) and it piques their interest – ask them what they want to do. Maybe they’ll surprise you and already all have iphones and they want to try this new augmented reality thing. Or maybe you’ll delight them when they finally learn how to retrieve a text message from their granddaughter. You never know unless you ask.

The moral of the story is this- Stop freaking out about technology. Play with it, learn it, talk to people about it, but don’t let it cause an identify crisis. Be flexible. Build relationships with your community. Ask them what they need (and then give it to them).

So- now that i’ve said all that… what do YOU think the future of libraries is? I want to hear what you have to say- comment or trackback. :-)

[oh, and for giggles, here's this post in wordle (for no good reason other than i felt like it)]

possibly related posts:

1. Foresight 2020- Scenario Planning: Learning to Think in the Future Tense
2. You are the Future of Libraries, no pressure (or Be the conversation people)

(c) Andrew Mason on Flickr

Why do we care about e-books versus “real” books?

I, for one, don’t.

“Tree*” books, “real” books or just plain “books” as they’re often called have been around for 5,000 +/- years and now i swear there are more “ebooks vs books” writings than curls on my head. Why is that? Why does anyone care what format our stories, facts, conversations, and fun come in? Why are we so worried that tree books might be going away? Is it because they are “tradition”? Is it because “books” are what libraries are known for and if they go away, we think we’ll disappear too?

I would like to take this moment to remind you that it isn’t the technology that is important but rather the information it is sharing or the problem it is solving. True, a book is very old “technology”, but that’s what it is- it is just another casing through which ideas, stories, facts, conversations, teachings, are shared. And it’s not the method of transmission that’s important- which is only as good as it’s content. Sure, perhaps you like the feel or smell of the book and it’s pages over a device- but don’t you like the story or knowledge ultimately more? Sure, i might be upset if the next generation doesn’t know what it feels like to read a paperback on the beach- sand between the pages and all- but i’m sure my mom isn’t distraught that i have no idea what an 8 track feels like or sounds like.

Perhaps you argue that we’ll be leaving people behind because not everyone will be able to afford an e-reader- well, you’re right. But I’d like to remind you that no matter how fast things seem to go- a 5000 year old technology is going to take a little more time than overnight to disappear- if it ever does. We will always have books- even if they’re in the archives and 100 years old instead of the library for circulation. If the world’s new normal are reading devices that aren’t today’s “book”, libraries will just change their model and loan e-readers. Because in a world of e-readers and no printed materials, e-readers are cheap like books and we wouldn’t care if they’re lost, stolen, or smeared with jelly.

That’s the point, though, isn’t it?- libraries provide ACCESS and COMMUNITY to those who want it. And neither of those things, along with learning, are dependent on a technology, a medium, or a casing. Yes, the hundred-year stereotype of the library is “book”- but that’s just because a book was the primary source of entertainment and education for so, so long. If our current and modern conception of a “book” truly does go away, i’m not worried- I know that society will still thrive on the transmission, creation, and sharing of ideas, facts, stories, and more. And Libraries will always have a place in that world.

e- or not.

==================

Additional Readings:

Bold Prediction: Why e-books will never replace real books. Jan Swafford, Slate.
Books versus documents: what’s wrong with so-called “e-books.” Jon Stokes, ArsTechnica
Buyers of E-Books Still Like Print Too, Survey Shows. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Wall Street Journal.
Will E-Books Really Destroy Libraries?. Charlotte Abbott, Follow the Reader.
The future of libraries, with or without books. John D. Sutter, CNN
Welcome to the library. Say goodbye to the books: Cushing Academy embraces a digital future. David Abel, boston.com

Footnotes

*first heard at #ALA10 as said by Dr. Marie Radford

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1. “the knowledge moved”
2. try again, buddy. a note on libraries and books

interesting

to see

our community’s

library usage

in 3D?

In his blog, Doug McCune shared his 3D renderings of crime stats for San Fransisco.
Seeing data in this way can help us make decisions. (Like what neighborhoods to avoid).

Seeing our library usage data could help us see where we need to market ourselves more.

Where are your library card holders?
How often do people visit your libraries?
How does the world look?

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2. September 10th: Slam the Boards Day!

(via Librarian by Day)

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2. the future of the library

Also check out Library101 on boingboing.net!

And be sure to check out the essays and the 101 Resources and Things to Know (and add your own)!

Keep your eyes peeled for the next DLKMP production! “We want YOU to know!”

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2. 23 things: week 6, thing 13 & 14 (tagging)