Is the Library an insect incapacitated by a Web? Or is the Library the spider?

I tried to be judicious and read the entire OCLC Next Space Newsletter. A few of the perspectives were more intelligible than the others, and some were more interesting and readable.

Rick Anderson writes: "[...] If our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." I like this sentiment. I agree with it. I consider Pamunkey's typically helpful and well-intentioned classes for the public on all sorts of topics--and even Pamunkey's own staff training--and am left wondering how far over we need to bend to serve our patrons. Libraries are supposed to provide access to information, and if we can't provide straight-forward, self-explanatory online resources and databases for our patrons, what does that say about us? Fortunately, I think most of the electronic resources that PRL uses are very easy to understand and manipulate. At times, I wonder why we put forth such a massive effort to teach people how to use them. (Psst... Go to the site: follow the directions. The end.) But then, I also worry about the people who can't even use a computer. How are these people supposed to keep up with Library 2.0? These are the people who come to the library looking for books and books alone--or who never come to the library, because they feel daunted by the presence of so much technology. And these aren't just the elderly. Are we supposed to believe that further alienating them is fine, as long as it's in the name of progress? I'm not hesitant about the future just because it's the future; I'm hesitant because I think we're going to lose a lot of people along the way if we keep going at our current unyielding pace.

Dr. Wendy Schultz writes: "[...] As more information becomes more accessible, people will still need experienced tour guides—Amazon’s customer recommendations are notoriously open to manipulation; tagclouds offer diverse connections, not focussed expertise." This sheds light on one of the main problems I see with the libraries venturing into a future world mandated by the web, connected by common people with PCs and Internet connections and, with that, the self-delusion of authority--that online resources are not always reliable. That's not to say that books are entirely trustworthy--consider the works of any medieval court historian, and even the recent hullabaloo over A Million Little Pieces. But I've always believed in the value of the printed word and have grown up in the age that saw Wikipedia stumble at the hands of practical jokers, and yet you'll still get Wikipedia entries among the first ten results of almost any Google search. There's some reassurance of truth when you pick up a book that has been written, selected for publication by a third party, edited by someone, reviewed publicly by other established authors, and then carried by a vendor. There's even more of such reassurance when people who have been trained to gather and evaluate information (i.e., librarians) have deemed the book worthy of their collections. Readers are conditioned to be wary of self-publishing authors, but why does everyone willingly believe in the Great Truth of the Internet?! I trust books that come from libraries far more than I trust things I find on the Internet. Maybe this is naïve and too 1950s of me, but that's the way I feel. I think Schultz recognizes this problem and is challenging tomorrow's librarians to steer the public in the right direction, electronically. I think we have tried to do this--that we are doing this--but even our noblest efforts can't stop the flow of all the other crap that's out there.

And so I don't know about the place of libraries in a world becoming increasingly digital. If human society survives for another two hundred years, what will people say when they look back at our ideas of what libraries should be? "Books! Think of all that wasted paper!" will they scoff? "They had computers, and networks, and the know-how to do it, but they still opted to print and mass-produce their prosaic novels and travelogues and cookbooks and bind the pages together? What a waste of technology! Did they think books would last forever?" Sadly, I fear I can hear my descendants chiding me already.