Frail, fatal, fundamental: The future of public libraries by Mark Norman looks at the prediction by futurists of the future of public libraries and then compares this to his own views based on his role managing Rockdale City Council’s library services. Norman’s article draws from a number of articles by futurists and their predictions into the future of public libraries with a focus on how libraries must adapt from there perceived function in the community to one where they offer valuable services to the modern community. Norman then likes to compare these futuristic predictions with his own “realist” views. Norman also touches on the “digital divide” and discusses what services and resources are needed to bridge this gap. This review will look into the discussions of Norman in relation to the digital and technological world that is facing public libraries in modern society.
Firstly Norman makes a valid point against Torrone’s view that the majority of public has the interent. Torrone in fact states “everyone already has access to the internet”. Norman’s view that internet access is ...
... E. (2011). The net delusion. The dark side of internet freedom. New York, NY, USA: PublicAffairs.
Who can resist a book with a chapter titled, "Labia Lumps, Chunky Discharge, and Other Things They Never Taught Me in Library School"? Released this past summer, Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out takes no prisoners as its contributors ponder everything from the backtracking of '60s values by ALA's baby boomers to librarian imagery in erotica. This edited volume is a sequel to a 1972 self-published book titled Revolting Librarians. The original is worth checking out for its historical value alone. The editors of the 2003 volume, Katia Roberto and Jessamyn West gathered essays from ten of the original writers from the 1972 book for this version and it is interesting to see what thirty years has done to these radical librarians.
"In the modern and technologically advanced times that we live in, access to the internet is a human right and necessity to the developed world. It often helps to promote sociopolitical awareness and understand the rights that we deserve as human beings.
In the video, on libraries in the digital age, we see exactly what Mitchell was referencing, its a world where digital media will outlive their physical counterparts to the point where libraries will be more akin to museums than places to go to discuss works of literature and pieces. As Mitchell states there no longer needs to be a place to meet physically, when scholars can meet up
There is no doubt, that literature has taken a back seat in the digital age. In a 2013 article for the Wall Street Journal, a top store executive for Barnes and Nobles revealed that the company expects to close twenty stores a year over the next decade. But Barnes and Nobles isn’t alone. Bookstore chains across the country are suffering the same losses. Consumers are choosing online book retailers like Amazon or opting out of reading altogether. These recent [trends?] are evident of a startling reality: people don’t read anymore.
I had the opportunity to interview Jennifer Ashby. She has been the director of the Asotin County Library since February of 2001. She oversees just about everything that goes on in the library. She is in charge of budgets, facilities, personnel, collections, technology, programs, services, and public relations. She gave me a lot of great information on the history and current events of the library.
Darnton, Robert. "The Library in the New Age." NYBooks.com. The New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008. Web. 6 March 2012.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of the Internet is its convenience, but Carr stresses that convenience is not everything. Instead, he argues that its pervasiveness is actually
The King County Library System is the fifth largest library system in circulation in the United States. The current director of the KCLS, Bill Ptacek, started with the organization three years ago and is in the process of working towards a new strategic plan titled "The Year 2000 Plan, which has a long-term goal of integrating all the resources of the library system equally and to coordinate all the efforts to ensure it was providing the best possible service to the community. In the three years, Ptacek worked to expand the mission to cover services for the community to include children, life-long learning, career development, and literacy (Chell, 1996, pg.2). The reworking of the mission and services of KCLS was in full swing, but there were
The article “The North West London Blues” argues that public libraries still remain an important part of the society and should be preserved. There is no doubt that she is, in fact, a part of the minority who has the same opinion due to the reason that most people tend to prefer electronics over physical copy of books, especially the younger ones. Therefore, it is important for the author to use persuasive methods to gain more support. The author, Zadie Smith, uses evidence, reasonings, and stylistic elements in order to gain support.
A library or information unit must have a dedicated plan on having an organized Collection Development Policy, represents the guideposts of all types of library institutions. Collection development is the process of planning, selecting, acquiring and evaluating the library collections’ convenience to print and electronic collection developments. Thus, it is essential to have a written collection development policy, a statement of general collection building principles with desalinating the purpose and content of a collection in terms of relevance and internal audiences (Clayton and Gorman 2007). Broadly, the international and local libraries have sketched written collection development policies which they are aware of its uses. Recently, the written policies consistently renewed with the rise of digital collections. However, the value of the written collection development plan shakes with the complexity of managing electronic resources, funding and time considerations, criticism on how it written and also its inflexibility. This essay will examine the arguments for having the advantages of the written collection development policy (CDP) and the issues evolve which against the latter.
Libraries are essential to a community especially in difficult times. Due to rising costs and job losses, patrons may have had to cut their own expenses such as buying books or cancelling their internet service. In order to continue to have access to these materials, patrons turn to their libraries. However, libraries are often the first to get cut in budget reforms. A library can survive a budget crisis by making cuts, fundraising, developing trust, and media exposure.
In 2012 the United Nations released a report declaring the internet access as a human right (United Nations, 2012). The way people use the internet today across the world makes it an extraordinary force. We can see its
Reading – we do it every day. In almost every aspect of our lives and often take it for granted. Reading is essential for human communication and increasing knowledge. However, because reading is so important even a small change can have a significantly large impact on our modern society. We are currently in a midst of a cultural revolution. In which the printed word is being transformed by the digital.
Print publishing has been credited for the long standing preservation of literary works of numerous authors, both past and present. This system of preserving the intellectual nuances of personages, customarily through books, is what affords for the realization by future generations of what the past looked like, in terms of the events and people that characterized it. In essence, books, according to Dixon-Fyle, link the idea or sentiments of authors to certain fundamental cultural and societal practices that enunciate the background of a particular civilization over time. However, the recent spate of technology that announced the entry of the digital age has cast a dingy decadence on the future of printed books, and the whole conventional practice of print publishing. The question that many academicians, librarians and other relevant stakeholders have constantly barraged themselves with is; will the digital age render print books obsolete?