Thomas Frey likes to talk about the future. He asks the question “how will
our lives be different in the future?” and looks for answers in many different
fields. One of these fields is Library Science, or more specifically,
libraries. Frey argues that our relationship with libraries will change. He
talks about “four fundamental crossroads of change – literacy, books, education,
and work” (Frey). Frey is right. Our relationship with
libraries is changing. But it can also be said that change is the only
real constant in any of our lives.
In the past we were taught that a literate person was someone who knew how
to read and write, and that it was a simple as that. But how many of us have
heard the phrase "computer illiterate" in the last decade? Literacy
is becoming more than the simple ability to put words on a page. To succeed in
this modern era we not only need to be traditionally literate, but computer
literate and media literate. Like traditional reading and writing skills, these
are things that modern libraries can help with. I have personal experience
doing outreach work with a public library teaching senior citizen basic
internet skills.
Frey points out that our relationship with print books is also changing.
But this is not new. For at least the last decade my teachers have been going
on and on about the difference between print sources and electronic sources for
scholarly texts. What does this mean? That we've known about this change for a
while now, and that digital media is not going away any time soon. With the
prevalence of e-readers more and more people (and library patrons) are moving
away from books entirely.
Thomas Frey talks about the availability and over saturation of information
in the future.
In his article “55 Jobs of the Future”, Frey tells us that in the future there will be
people who make their living as ‘Book-to-App Converters’ (Frey, 2011), who
would work on making what Frey refers to as a ‘Perpetual Self-Updating Book’
(Frey, 2011). A book-app hybrid would contain all of the information of
a 40 volume set of encyclopedias, constantly updating itself. In my opinion, in
Frey's world of the future, far from being obsolete librarians will be more
needed than ever.
A moderately intelligent adult of 40 years ago was perfectly capable of
walking into a library, finding an encyclopedia and looking up the one article
it would contain on any given topic, let's say F.D.R.'s presidency. A
moderately intelligent adult of today is perfectly capable of googling Franklin
Roosevelt, but will be faced with approximately 20.9 million hits (this number
can be verified with a quick trip to Google.com). Librarians are not simply
keepers of books, they are information specialists, tasked with helping
lay-people sort through the endless amounts of information that we are faced
with. How much more so in Frey's future world, when we could all have endless
amounts of information on any conceivable topic, constantly self-updating in
the palm of our hand?
The field of education has always been changing. Children used to sit in
classrooms and memorize books full of facts. Now our children are more engaged
in learning, and modern libraries are reflecting that change. Libraries of the
future might not be filled with stacks and stacks off books, but that doesn't
mean that they will bereft of educational materials. New technology, like 3D
Printers is changing the way libraries (and librarians) will be able to engage
with children.
The last point that Frey mentions, work, is an interesting topic.
Libraries have become not only a place for people to do work (who have
us hasn’t spent finals week practically living in the campus library?), but for
people to find work. In her TED talk, Pam Sandlian Smith tells the story of a
man who came into the library often, working on his resume on publicly available
computers, attending resume workshops and ultimately landed a job (TEDx, 2013).
Libraries have always been places where communities come together to support
one another, and I doubt that that is going to change at any point soon.
While I obviously agree with Frey, I don’t think that libraries are going
to change as dramatically or as quickly as he seems to think. Change is a
constant. The library of today is very different than the library of 50 years
ago, and obviously the library of 2064 will be very different from the library
of today. Will we all be working in bookless libraries 20+ years from now?
Maybe, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I’ve been hearing over and
over again over the last few weeks, being a librarian is not just about
books. We are responsible for connecting people with information, and that is
never going to change.
Frey, T. (2011, November 11). 55 Jobs of the
Future. FuturistSpeakercom A Study of Future Trends and Predictions by
Futurist Thomas Frey. Retrieved May 9, 2014, from http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2011/11/55-jobs-of-the-future/
Frey, T. (n.d.). Futurist Speaker Thomas Frey.
DaVinci Institute. Retrieved May 9, 2014, from
http://www.davinciinstitute.com/speakers/futurist-speaker-thomas-frey/?gclid=CKrb7b7846MCFUcz5wodiRoZZg#topics_future_of_libraries
Frey, T. (2011, September 23). Introducing the
Perpetual Self-Updating Book. FuturistSpeakercom A Study of Future Trends
and Predictions by Futurist Thomas Frey. Retrieved May 9, 2014, from
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2011/09/introducing-the-perpetual-self-updating-book/
TEDx Talks. (2013, December 16). What to
expect from libraries in the 21st century: Pam Sandlian Smith at TEDxMileHigh [Video
file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa6ERdxyYdo
