Boarking has elements of the old fuddy duddy about him. Fifteen years back he envisioned a career amongst musty tomes, of silence, of whispers, of scholars, of glorious inefficiency.
RIP, my Library1.0 dreaming.
Instead, life out in working-class-battler-surburbia public library1.4, involves problematic technology trouble-shooting, enough teen and pre-teen nutters to make Boarking glad he didn't become a teacher, and more noise, noise, noise, than he ever thought a library was about.
But he tries to be excited about Library2.0beta: interactive library catalogue, no cataloguer, fewer books, more online facilitation, more information, less organisation, everybody everything always.
Very exciting.
Now if I may look into the future... In a century or so, after the droughts and the floods, the ice sheets melting, and the resource wars; library0.01 will be a rare tribal elder who can decipher the word symbols of the Old People. But the tribe won't be listening, too much hunting & gathering to be doing.
But he tries to be excited about Library2.0beta: interactive library catalogue, no cataloguer, fewer books, more online facilitation, more information, less organisation, everybody everything always.
Very exciting.
Now if I may look into the future... In a century or so, after the droughts and the floods, the ice sheets melting, and the resource wars; library0.01 will be a rare tribal elder who can decipher the word symbols of the Old People. But the tribe won't be listening, too much hunting & gathering to be doing.
... sitting naked, beard grown to the knees, amongst his musty tomes. Sagely consulting and conferring with Mercury...
ReplyDelete... or, thou shalt be the interface between the THEN and the NOW, the avatar of the impermanent informative byte.