« Raging Beauty | Main | Nobody uses public libraries »
May 18, 2006
Public libraries in the Digital Age
So much time is spent discussing how libraries should 'adapt' to the digital age and the answer is, and always has been: "They need to improve"
Irrespective of which technology one has in mind, all the advancing technologies of the last decade (and the last thirty or three hundred years) have had a dominating effect on people's thirst for knowledge, information and particularly induced a desperate need to understand how other people cope and have coped with their lives. The growth in need for reading material is exponential- in every country. (look at magazine sales)
What does that mean for public libraries?: it means that if they are good they will be used more and more. If they are bad, however, they will be shunned as dead bodies. That's what happens
Instead of spending so much time debating this subject in weak poorly informed endless arguments and without factual material, we should get on and make our libraries good again. Quickly.
What does making a library good mean? Well, here's a fact: no person of any age or background in any country of the world, rich or poor, will say that removing books from libraries makes them better; except a few senior librarians in the UK.
Posted by Tim Coates at May 18, 2006 8:29 AM