Libraries Must Go With Digital Flow

Imagine the wonder and trepidation that surged through every European monastery scriptorium in the late Middle Ages when news reached them that some German fellow had discovered movable type! The arduous task of handwriting manuscripts was coming to an end.

Suddenly and irrevocably the written word, once the jealously guarded province of an ordained few, was now the printed word available to great numbers of people.

Technology altered the rules of the game. Soon, there followed the Renaissance, the writing and publication of books and a quantum leap into the first Information Age.

Now imagine the wonder and trepidation that surge through every book lover in the late 20th century as we come to understand that books and libraries are about to meet the same fate as those medieval manuscripts and scriptoria.

Suddenly and irrevocably, the printed word, once the jealously guarded province of the literati, has become part of a digital deluge. Once again technology has altered the rules of the game.

Enter the second Information Age.

We may gnash our teeth, go wailing into the streets and even offer resistance, but we must recognize that we are at the very beginning of an information transition that will eventually replace books as we know and love them.

Our home interiors will be redesigned to accommodate stackable CD-ROMs, and our collectible rare books will be tastefully displayed on the wall next to those beautifully handwritten medieval vellum manuscripts.

Similarly, our public libraries--the great repositories of our culture--will become quaint, arcane places of limited value like the monastery scriptoria. Unless we rediscover and reinvent them.

A recent survey conducted by the American Library Assn. reports that 25% of the public saw libraries as irrelevant! The digital Information Age has begun to diminish the perceived value of libraries and more importantly the “idea” of public libraries in a democratic society.

The “idea” of public libraries has two parts. The first has to do with open, free and equitable access to information. The second has do to with context. Both offer good reasons to preserve, protect and advance our libraries.

Firstly, there is a wealth of information available to us with the new technology. However, access to it is dollar-dependent in the digital Information Age. It is the mission of the public library in our democracy to assure open, free and equitable access to information, including the new technology. To not do so would be to invite a volatile class distinction of information “haves” and “have-nots” with disastrous consequences.

Secondly, libraries are more than the sum of their informational resources. They are places where our culture is presented in context. Context enables us to study and understand ourselves and our universe in relationship to all that has gone before us and all that lies ahead. Digital information, although remarkable and important, is basically devoid of context, preferring the here and now of disembodied factoids with little regard for the before and after of our culture.

The future of public libraries requires that new information technology be incorporated into its repertoire, both to guard the public interest and to give this new Information Age a little culture.