Scanning the Library Horizon

By Barbara Fister. It’s funny how much the popular image of libraries is highly traditional, considering how fascinated by the future librarians typically are and how quickly librarians embrace new technologies. References to shushing never seem to go away, and in an era when most of the library’s budget goes to licensed content, the firm belief that libraries are still mostly about books is hard to shake. We could fold into this the gendered nature of the image of librarians, who are imagined to be prim women of a certain age who wear buns and sensible shoes while doing hyper-clerical work whereas IT folks are inventive, adventurous young men with a deep knowledge of secret arts.  Yet despite the image (and I can’t wait to read a new book about it) librarians’ work is deeply tied to technology. Likewise, librarians seem to continually try to predict the future in terms of technological change, as they do in a special Horizon Report about library futures. Read more...