OK, I realise I'm boring everyone here ;)
Commentary: Technological and economic shifts have only made libraries more valuable
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110507361.html
"Libraries are not just about books. The great library of Alexandria didn’t contain books as we know it. They didn’t exist. It contained scrolls, and tablets. Libraries move with the times, and so have evolved to offer information and entertainment in different media as time goes on."
http://belleadonna.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/library-an-unquiet-history-by-matthew-battles/
The context of libraries today.
Reflecting on the trend to dumb down the skills of library staff and put self-service machines in staffless libraries, and given the above context, the words 'proactive' and 'reactive' from my days reading time management surfaced into mind:
"While the proactive approach talks about creating and starting a trend or idea, the reactive approach believes in following a new trend"
I think as long as public sector administrators realise that when they economise in this way with libraries the libraries then lose their proactive capacity -- and just at a point when society needs to be taking a proactive approach to the application of new technologies (which I think the theory is we apply until all the possibilities are exhausted). It's a creative age, specifically a communication and information technologies age, therefore it is time for libraries to take the stage. I think libraries have a research role and a practical role at the moment. Researching the potential benefits to society of the information technology age we live in, but also we are twenty years into that age, and libraries are needed on the ground (it's a myth I think that the library's role can be replaced by the Internet - e-books that are turning into luxury items, or webpages otherwise - the web I think can more correctly be interpreted as a layer on top of books and the libraries in the intellectual infrastructure of the nation in the information economy we now live in - it's a myth also I think that everyone will soon have their own computer and so the computer suites can be left to run down).
I'll rephrase the question I started this thread with.
I've essentially asked the question which is more important to a community:
1) The community library manager/librarian
2) The manager running council frontline services
Evidently it would appear the latter.
(Apols for monopolising the list at this point - but I haven't seen these arguments elsewhere, and they do seem important at this point in time, so maybe I can be excused :)
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