I wasn’t one of those kids that spent lots of time in the library. I loved to read but hated searching for books. Yes, I was lazy. But the coffee shop reference in this post (excerpt below) by Seth Godin gave me a nice warm glow. Most Saturday mornings, a few of us get together at the Coffee Zone and trade info bits.
“The next library is 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 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.
Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousands things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.”
You know, before I started working at a library I didn’t know much about what a library does. Of course I knew about the books on the shelves.
As a person who is the next generation of library worker I do agree that the Library needs to go from the server of goods to a service operation. Instead of giving books out for a month, have honest to goodness homework help for kids who need it. Instead of having dusty old magazines, have an internet saftey course for parents who are concerned with what their kids can find on the internet. Don’t know where to get started on a term paper? There is someone that can point in the right direction as a starting off point.
The library I work in serves the reference needs for state government. We buy thousands of dollars of books a year that just sit on the shelf. We buy hard to use electronic resources that also just sit on a virtual shelf. We are stuck in the old world of library science because the leaders of our library are the older generation. They are great people but they are stuck in the paper world.
I do love the idea of the library turning into a Co-Working place where people can invent new ideas as Seth said. I can invision a place where people can come work with eachother and not have to feel guilted into buying a coffee every 2 hours.
Alas, I don’t think any of these changes will ever happen because when my generation takes over the library world there will be something diffrent that we need. Unless we are open to it, we’ll never adapt.