Bottom Line on Electronic Libraries-Reply

[DEIRDRE F. WOODWARD]

There seem to be several issues conflated here, and I'd like to open them up.

First, there will never be a bottom line, and even thinking in terms of some
stable future is ludicrious.  Moreover, there is no such thing as a "library"
and thinking with that term is also ludicrious.

However, those are the terms we've inherited, from a culture which wanted
desperately to believe that we could reach a stable end where everything will
be good (not to mention democratic and American).  One of the most important 
things the Internet Revolution has taught us is that stability and definitions
are impossible, not to mention unimportant.

So, if we dispose of stability since we know that we can never attain a static
state (well we can in death, but even then we are decomposing all the time . .
.) and if we dispose of the term library since we know that what is called the
public library in one town only distantly resembles the public library in
another town (different resources, different patron base, different
specialties, different staff, different buildings, different problems,
different solutions, different policies, etc. ad nauseum) we can then take a
look at the other issues:  information.

Again, there are several issues here.  We are talking about information
retrevial, but we are also talking about retrevial education.  Also, we are
talking about *understanding* information.  Those are three different tasks. 
Do we as libraries teach our patrons how to understand the material they are
retrieving?  Sometimes.  Do we teach our patrons how to retrieve that
information?  Sometimes?  Do we provide for our patrons information to be
retrieved?  Sometimes.

So we are service providers of all three but only sometimes.   There are, as
usual, other worlds out there which are also providing, educating, and 
interpreting information for patrons who also use the public library. 

What might all *that* mean for the future of public libraries? 

Deirdre
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Deirdre F. Woodward                                     PHONE:  607/723-8236
Four County Library System                     E-MAIL: 4cty_deirdre at 4cty.org
304 Clubhouse Road                           HOME PAGE:  http://lib.4cty.org 
Vestal NY 13850
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