![]() Sure, but it will be funded by corporations. “The next big innovation in knowledge management should come out of the world of libraries,” he asserts. “The risk of a small number of technically savvy, for-profit companies determining the bulk of what we read and how we read it is enormous,” he warns. But Palfrey has faith that libraries can rise to the challenge, if only because he is so freaked out by the alternative. “Funded by ambitious venture capitalists and pursued relentlessly by entrepreneurial CEOs and their programming teams, the startup scene has been cranking out successful new information-related projects for decades.” Next to Google’s search engine, Amazon’s Kindle, Facebook, Twitter and Apple’s apps platform, he asks, “what is the biggest innovation to emerge from libraries in the digital age?” “Most of the innovation in how we create and use knowledge is occurring in the private, for-profit sector,” Palfrey admits. Still, none of this compares to the transformations underway in the business world. Palfrey also highlights efforts in South Korea, Singapore and across Europe that are further along in making disparate holdings available across national borders. Among these efforts is the Digital Public Library of America, a nexus of state- and university-based collections that seeks to digitize their holdings and make them available to the public. Palfrey points to some libraries and initiatives, and even to specific small-town librarians, that are starting down this path. Think of a virtual, turbo-charged interlibrary loan system. Libraries must operate more as “nodes in a larger network” of organizations and must move toward “the digital, networked, mobile, and cloud-based library.” We must “hack” libraries, he urges, and find ways of distributing their traditional tasks - gathering, sorting and safeguarding physical materials, and helping people access them - among the members of a network, leaving more time for staffers to focus on helping users access the array of works available throughout these linked institutions. Now, they need to “recast themselves as platforms rather than storehouses.” This transition won’t be easy, he cautions, and will require giving up lots of old, bad habits.īut Palfrey is somewhat vague about how to get there. “For centuries, libraries have remained essentially separate, even competing with one another to establish and maintain the greatest collection,” Palfrey writes. ![]() … When it comes to the cultural, historical, political, and scientific record of a society, however, the public sector needs to play a leading role.”īut when Google is America’s reference librarian and Starbucks its ISP, what’s the role for your local library? “BiblioTech” serves as an extended mission statement for libraries’ continued relevance. “The private sector has been wildly successful in digital innovation. Palfrey’s main concern seems to be not that people will be cut off from information but that the main conduits for that information will be private companies rather than public libraries. You don’t really have to believe that the fate of the republic hangs in the balance to recognize that libraries are facing unique challenges wrought by changing technology and consumer habits. Our economy will suffer, and our democracy will be put at unnecessary risk.” “If we do not have libraries, if we lose the notion of free access to most information, the world of the haves and the have-nots will grow further and further apart. All that’s at stake, Palfrey argues, is America’s experiment in self-government. Libraries are in peril, he writes, facing budget cuts and a growing perception that technology has rendered them less necessary. Palfrey, the former head of the Harvard Law Library and the founding chairman of the Digital Public Library of America, wants a library revolution, one that remakes the institution’s technology, goals and training. “Thinking of libraries as they were ages ago and wanting them to remain the same is the last thing we should want for them.” In an era when search engines, online retailers and social media are overtaking some of libraries’ essential tasks, “nostalgia can actually be dangerous,” Palfrey warns. After all, fond recollections of pleasant reading rooms can cloud our judgment of what libraries offer us - and need from us - today. John Palfrey shares these memories, but he is also wary of them. Libraries are repositories of books, music and documents, but above all of nostalgia: the musty stacks, the unexpected finds, the safety and pleasure of a place that welcomes and shelters unconditionally. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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