Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Here's a link to my article, "Do We Need Dewey"....

http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/system/newsletters/southeast10112007.pdf

Format Follows Fashion ?

Seeing Xerox's wonderful "Brother Dominic" add from the '70's-(you can view it here:
http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgH2M02xek) caused me to ask-Does anyone else out there think we are focusing on the wrong ideas when we debate the future of books and format diversity in libraries ?

Brother Dominic demonstrates, in his charmingly anachronistic way, that the need and desire for content eventually forces the evolution of information delivery systems. The Library of Alexandria did not exist primarily to show off its impressive collection of papyrus. Medieval scriptoria were not established solely to apply ink to vellum. Guttenberg didn't start printing Bibles just because he had a lot of empty shelf space. These technologies-writing on papyrus scrolls, illuminating manuscripts, making books on a printing press-were all means to an end-that of collecting, preserving and disseminating information. If the librarians at Alexandria, or real-life Brother Dominics had possessed a better way to pass along knowledge to future generations, is there any doubt that they would have gladly used it ?

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't do most of your reading from scrolls, or illuminated texts (apologies to any Egyptologists or medieval scholars out there). When was the last time you picked up a copy of the latest Stephen King novel on cuneiform tablet ? How luxurious it would seem to people even one hundred years ago to have all the choices we lucky moderns have in how we get our words delivered to us. We can listen to CD's, download audiobooks onto our MP3 players, read e-books on our laptops, or go old-school and grab something printed on actual paper. If we could go back in time and demonstrate these wonders to the keepers of ancient libraries, would they turn to their colleagues and begin a heated debate about "The Death of Papyrus" or "The End of the Clay Tablet" ?

Opponents of non-print media in libraries often mention that books will remain relevant because the equipment needed to unlock their content is not likely to go out of production anytime soon, (and, besides, it needs fewer software upgrades.) They have a very valid point, and for that reason alone, we can safely say that the book as we know it will continue to exist and find an audience for many years to come. Just because books will endure, however, doesn't mean we should demonize and banish other, newer formats from our libraries. Yes, there is always the chance that any particular data delivery method may eventually go the way of the quill pen. I'll bet there were plenty of people who said Guttenberg's big, ugly machine was just a fad, too, and look how that turned out.

Is anyone out there REALLY mourning the loss of reel-to-reel tape, or the 5¼-inch floppy-disk ? Are there librarians somewhere huddling in backrooms, weeping over the last batch of beta tapes they have been forced to withdraw due to really, really low circulation ? What we should be arguing about is how and what information we can and should be preserving. How will we pay for it, what will the preferred method of storage be, and how will future generations access it ? Let us not be slaves to format, but champions of content. Like Brother Dominic, we must never lose sight of the value of knowledge, but always be open to new ways of delivering it. Certainly, not everything we might try will join the book as a quintessential form of data storage, but some of it may be very useful for a very long time. And who can say-there may be some discovery yet to come that will seem to us like...a miracle !