I've been following some of the local Minneapolis races for public office, now that I have some spare time, and I've taken special notice of both the Park Board races (see my past post) and the Library Board. The library races have become of particular interest to me of late after attending a lecture by Jason Pontin of Technology Review. Minneapolis has done a lot of crowing over the building of our new library, and many people point to it as a sign of achievement. I tend to look at it as a sign of failure. Utne magazine recently did a piece suggesting that the modern library has sold out and is intended to be a showpiece rather than a useful tool for residents to do research. The Minneapolis Public Library is featured prominently as offering more problems than solutions. Aside from the challenges of centralizing a building at a time when most of the commercial and creative energy is now being focused in neighborhoods, our society is on the cusp of a transformation. Mr. Pontin opened the discussion talking about new forms of research and knowledge acquisition. In an age when The New York Times is having trouble verifying stories young consumers are now turning to different forms of information authority. For example, del.icio.us is a site that allows bloggers, of whom there are now 10 million and growing, to select their own forms of trusted information, and share these with a social network. As Mr. Pontin pointed out, the danger lay in consumers choosing their information flow rather than allowing an expert as himself to expose them to new ideas. Libraries are full of old school information and new consumers are rejecting these forms as unreliable or tainted. If you're having trouble doing research on blogs, go to technorati to find out what is available and customize your news inputs. RSS allows individuals to become independent syndicates of information, bypassing the old information authorities such as the AP and Reuters. Every bit as interesting is the development in South Korea of an entirely new form of newspaper. The largest daily newspaper in South Korea doesn't have journalists in the traditional sense. Oh My News publishes submissions from anyone interested in submitting a story. Authenticity of “man on the street” journalism has been taken to new levels. Now, folks will still argue, what about the books. E-Ink goes into production next year. It's a flexible computer screen with wireless capability. Need a book? Download Moby Dick from Project Gutenberg and you're off to the races. Google is also beginning to get into the act. I once heard Joe Erickson of the Minneapolis School Board say that the challenge of the new millennium is to get people to think about bytes instead of atoms. Information is now everywhere, and accessing it is only a matter of platform. Big buildings are now financial fiascos that pay tribute to a world that no longer exists at the expense of things we need. First, more branch libraries with wireless Internet. Second, more librarians, especially those trained in search. Third, start storing money, because a guy named Negroponte is going to unleash his $100 lap top on the market before long, and this is all anyone will every need. To put this into context, instead of issuing library cards, we could issue every resident of Minneapolis a Negroponte laptop or E-Ink reader for about $38,200,000. We raised $130,000,000 for the new library that is soon to be proven dated. When evaluating your library candidates, ask yourself who understands the future rather than whom you like, or whom you think is well liked. Ask yourself who gets the future, because there are library candidates who are doing well right now who represent the failure that is dated thinking because they don't get the future.
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