[Web4lib] Future of libraries

[Chris Strauber]

As I recall the solution in Groundhog Day was to embrace the possibilities
of whatever present you currently have access to. Would that the present I
walk into on Monday were so predictable.

To pick up Joyce's point on objectives, I think my job is to provide
information for my patrons and to help them use it (as it always has been),
but I expect to be talking about what to provide and how to provide it for
my entire career--say, the next thirty years.

The conversation about change in libraries may be old, but the details of
what's possible today have changed significantly in the last decade...and
will change some more tomorrow and every day after that.

Chris Strauber
Reference and Web Services Librarian
Wofford College


On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Joyce Latham <jmlatham at onlib.org> wrote:

> Indeed, I think we've become so focused on discussing the future of
> libraries that we are not engaging with the present tense of libraries, and
> the answer to the question of the future is inherent in the choices we make
> now ... if our current choices are focused on the correct objectives, I
> think the future will be assured, because it will flow out of what we
> already understand .... how's that for getting meta-physical?
>
> Sadly, it seems very few of us realize that we've been living the same day
> over and over again for what must be decades by now.
>
> Nancy E. Sosna Bohm
> Reference Librarian
> Lake Forest College
>
>