The New York Times > Books > Questions and Praise for Google Web Library
Background: Google has struck deals with major US libraries to digitize their holdings and make them available on the internet to every human being - for free! Google News Search, Google press release
This article and the people interviewed in it has a promising start but gets bogged down in short-term small-minded details - the usual luddite stuff: “oh no, what will happen to real books?” “oh no, what about librarians? regular people aren’t smart enough to find what they need on their own!” etc, etc.
It seems clear to me that the future of libraries and librarians will not be in physical book holdings. For them to survive and remain relevant and helpful, (public) libraries will have to go back to their roots - to return to the principle of universal access to information - no matter the medium.
In the medium-term future, information is progressing from physical mediums to digital. So libraries must become places where anyone can access the wealth of human information - no matter their class. If someone can’t afford a capable computer or a high-speed internet connection, they can go to a public library and have the same access as anyone else in any economic class. And everyone - no matter their economic class - will go to librarians for help finding the information they need, and sifting the reliable, relevant, and valuable information from the not.
I see this coming, and I see it happening now. Do you?
Yes, I do, and librarians are all for it, as far as I know. Even the degree in library science has been renamed information tech for some time now. The main librarian in the public high school in which I work is the technology person for the whole school. Books are still valued, bought, and promoted, but information is sought and found primarily through digital mediums.