Here's to musty books

Web 2.0, Library 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, n.0. Great. Whatever. Call it what you like. Ben the Libraryman says it well: no matter what we call it or what form it takes, it's still a library as long as it offers the same core services to patrons: reading material, research services, and encouragement to read.

Are we still even encouraging people to read anymore? Write? Think? Are these no longer goals of libraries, to encourage learning? I hope they still are. But sometimes I wonder in the midst of all the buzz I hear about embracing new technologies if we've all but forgotten about libraries' role in being a resource for learning. Are all the teens that we lure in with gaming really coming back to the library to read a book at some point, or are they just coming back to play? We all hope it's the former, but perhaps we need to make sure that we are equally promoting good old-fashioned reading along with gaming and learning new technologies.

Dr. Wendy Schultz reminds us that even as patrons become more active in their participation in libraries, they still need librarians with their expertise to guide them. Users bring a wealth of knowledge to the library and to the internet; but they are not always experts. Nor do the more vocal or actively participating users represent the needs of all library users.

I guess my fear in all of this focus on Web 2.0 and revolutionizing libraries is that we will forget some of the core reasons why libraries are here. We're not just here to dish out what is popular. Plenty of entities, most of them corporate, do that already and will continue to do so. Libraries should make sure that not just the most popular, trendy materials and technologies are available, but that hard-to-find, not so popular paper and electronic material is also made available. You can get a copy of a bestseller anywhere, download popular movies and mp3s in minutes from your home pc. But where can you find that out of print book that you can't find on Amazon or the independent movie that you won't see in the theater at the strip mall? What about the researcher who needs to find the exact volume of a specific scientific journal? And how about those of us who just want a good old-fashioned hardback book to hold and read?

So in other words, yes, get users involved in the selection process and the categorization of materials. But make sure that all users' needs are met--not just the technophiles and the young and trendy. Your uncle who has never heard of Facebook and still needs your help to program the vcr (yes, vcr) needs the library, too.

Trends are just that--trends. They wax and wane in popularity. They give way to new trends. And as much as we like to think that we can predict trends, it is rare that we can really tell the future with lots of accuracy.

There seems to be a lot of projecting into the future about how increasingly "virtual" our realities will become over the next several decades. And yet with the world being at or painfully near peak oil production, our dreams of more and more advanced technology may come to a screeching halt, and this may happen much sooner than most of us are expecting. If we continue at our current rate of consumption of fossil fuels, we are in for a very rude awakening, and our dreams of further advances in technology will go up in smoke.

I don't think it's time to throw out all the paper materials just yet. Let's tackle our real world issues before we try to tackle all the virtual ones.