What's a Library to Do When People Don't Read
Dear Diary: Let's do a little catch-up so as to not leave people (as if anyone actually reads this) hanging in suspense over things I've mentioned in the past.
First, shortly after we spent $110 for a County building permit, the fine folks from Sheds USA brought and assembled our 8x12 foot Cedar Shed. It Has Been Decided that the outside will be left to weather on its own, but I decided that since it's just much too dark and gloomy inside due to the tiny little windows, I would paint the interior white. Due in part to the fact that I didn't feel much like spending more than an hour or two per day painting it, and also because the wood is so thirsty, it took me about five days to complete the job.
Now it's a lot easier to see things, and to provide illumination in all weather and without needing to get another permit (and pay an electrician) to run AC power out to the shed, I sent off for some Sylvania® Solar DOT-it® Lights. These work as advertised and I am so please with the product that I recommend that one should be hanging in the window of every car and truck to provide maintenance-free emergency lighting.
Even though this shed wasn't built from scratch by Yours Truly, any shed worthy of the name must of course become a Manly Project if only for a short time, and so I may just have to spend some time with power tools and shelving kits in order to get it organized the way I prefer.
Secondly, the unrelenting Freak Show and Welcome Wagon and Walking Tour of Weirdos and Wackos has relented somewhat, or perhaps it's more the case that I hardly ever come out of the house unless I can avoid it; either way, I'm hearing less audible evidence of the simmering stew of stalkers and snitches circulating slander. (I do believe that sentence constitutes use of "consonance".)
This is not to be understood by the Astute Reader to mean that scheming scoundrels no longer sneak and plot -- and it's always a toss-up as to whether this goes on because reasonable people think there's a problem, or because some people's mentality warps them to need to declare victims and organize some "cause stalking" by rumormongering whatever they think will best gain them followers, or because this is what people do when they're bored half to death and are most easily amused by bothering other people for no good reason -- but rather the Astute Reader should understand from this that I'm not hearing it so much. I'm sure that it may be widely understood that when stupid stuff is happening and it seems to be directed at me in whole or in part, I do bitch about it and bitch about it relentlessly and won't shut up about it until something is done; that might mean that people might still be out there fucking with anyone they can get to, but are leaving me out of the targeting because they don't want my bitching to spoil all of their fun. I'm leaning towards the latter as an explanation, people being people and the County's public mental healthcare system being both broken and underfunded as well as not quite comprehending of the scale, scope, and magnitude of the problems they really need to address, and by means other than throwing prescriptions at people who prefer to be assholes.
Third, whether it was someone at County Council reading this and prodding those responsible, or if it was me sending multiple notifications via the County website to PEPCO, the streetlight at my corner seems to no longer be cycling on and off. Yay for our tax and utility dollars at work to promote public safety! Now I can go back to sleeping in instead of having to get up early to keep an eye on the bus-stop.
At my recent ill-fated first-time visit to a meeting of the Aspen Hill Library Advisory Committee, I heard a lot of things.
Those in attendance probably mostly think I talk too much, especially for someone who is just a mere citizen and not one of the membership of that august and publicly-elected body. Yet in between running my mouth, I have large ears that work well and I also know how to listen, as I am in fact a practitioner of that sadly demoted art.
Among other concerns was what ever would become of "the library as we know it", speaking less of the Aspen Hill branch and more of the institution itself.
Librarians, in general, have long been a bit curious -- not to mention rather concerned -- about the future of books. This opinion was voiced at this meeting by branch chief librarian Edward "Ed" Trever, and in one of my excessive spiels of unwarranted eruptions of verbiage, I managed to note in passing that for most people, they might tend to be supplanted by such things as the Amazon Kindle electronic book.
Librarians -- as well as their clientele -- have been quick to adopt non-book media such as film, audio and video tapes, and multimedia in other formats such as CDROM and DVD. Still, their primary media type is the printed word in bound paper, what most people call "books".
I do know something about libraries. I don't have a degree, but from the day the Aspen Hill library opened, I was a frequent visitor, and for several years running, I was in there most of the day during summertime, and for probably an hour or so a day at least every other day when school was in session. You see, I love to read, and back then, I really loved to read Science Fiction, and the Aspen Hill Library had a good SF section.
I think I read everything by Asimov, by Clarke, and by Heinlein. And therein lay the rub, to paraphrase Shakespeare. When Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land became circulated to the branch, I sat in the library and read about half of it, and then tried to check it out. The librarian balked.
This was adult fiction, and probably the most "adult" of anything circulating in the County libraries at the time. Hey, it had a Man from Mars being abducted from "protective custody" and given a bath by one of his kidnappers, who happened to be a nurse. Having never before seen a human female, he is fascinated by breasts and cops a feel. And that's just the beginning of racy escapades that were more than a bit risque for the 1960s, much less for the Montgomery County libraries, much less in a branch mostly serving blue-collar families from conservative religious traditions.
Since I was only about 10 years old, I didn't give a rat's ass about sexual content or how it might warp my fragile little mind:
All I cared about was that it had Martians.
That the novel was radically iconoclastic and from one of the most gifted if slightly-fascistic (in a very patriotic American way) writers of the middle 20th century, and that the novel was pretty much taking on organized religion, political institutions great and small, the way people perceive reality and are limited by it, and how humanity might be viewed with some concern by exceptionally powerful and utterly inhuman extraterrestrials, that didn't quite penetrate.
All I knew was that I had recently tested as reading at the same level of comprehension as a college freshman (by 1968 standards) at about 800 words a minute, and if I could read like an adult, I ought to be allowed to check out adult books.
The ensuing semi-legal policy battle dragged in all sorts of people, ending with me in the position of having to argue with higher-ups in the library system, aided in part by some of the librarians as well as my parents, who pretty much repeated my arguments to the higher-ups since the higher-ups declared that since I was a child they didn't have to listen to me and refused to do so.
At the age of 10 or 11 or so, I found myself making the argument that the Constitution's First Amendment rights to "freedom of the press" ought not to be curtailed by limiting access to printed materials. "Denial of access to the products of the press is no less odious than denial of the operation of the presses," was my argument. It carried.
I got to check out adult books from that time on, with my parents' approval and without much restriction at all from the librarians. You see, I was always one of their best customers; what they were "selling" was a marketplace of ideas in a storehouse of knowledge, and even when there was nobody else in the library besides the librarians, I was always -- or almost always -- there. Reading.
And how strange it is that in the modern day, if people think I'm so smart now, I was that smart when I was 10 or 11 and had to badger appointed officials with the Bill of Rights and was able to do so, just because I wanted to read about how a man might view the world, if they were seeing it for the first time after being raised to adulthood by Martians.
In a lot of ways, that's a story I can relate to, so to speak.
And in the end, I know and I know deeply -- having lived it -- what Libraries are for... and why.
To understand the library of the future, it's necessary to understand the library of the past.
To understand why we need libraries, I have to discuss concrete.
The Romans used a concrete back around 300 BC which is still with us today, and it's a more durable and weather-resistant form of concrete than anything we've had before 1995 or so. Sometime during the Dark Ages which began after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the secret of such concrete was lost until the mid-1700s, and it wasn't until 1824 that comparable cements were developed by John Smeaton, who gave us Portland Cement, to which aggregates were added to form modern concretes.
So how is it, that for more than a thousand years, nobody knew how to make concrete?
It's simple, really: the people who built things did not read, and if they read, had no access to libraries; those who had access to libraries and could and did read, had no interest in, or contact with, building and builders.
The builders of the Dark Ages and the early Enlightenment had cement of a sort, and concrete of a sort, but it was nothing like the Portland Cements of today, or the Roman cements of ages past. Probably this was because their trade secrets were passed down through the Guild, and these secrets were guarded jealously, and in the absence of sharing and peer review, secrets were lost and no progress was made.
If only they had libraries where anyone could walk in and research how the Romans made their strong and durable concrete, how much earlier might have come the Enlightenment?
When libraries are lost, with the books they contain, how much else is lost?
And how much might be lost, if we abandon paper books altogether, when electronically stored materials, or materials readable only with high levels of electronic technology, become useless after an EMP, an ElectroMagnetic Pulse?
These are the technologies
That will withstand
Electromagnetic pulse:
A lawn-mower engine, if
Magneto fired
A bicycle generator
If so desired
A wire-spring rat trap
Is guaranteed, but
The rest of civilization's
Gonna be on its knees
Of course, everyone who has heard of Jessica Alba remembers that electromagnetic pulse effectively destroyed western civilization (at least in North America) in her series "Dark Angel":
Ah, Miss Alba, giving new meaning to the phrase "be kind to your neighbors, even though they be Transgenic Chimerae."
I have a library, myself.
You may wish to see a photo of the science-fiction paperback section.
The thing about my little science fiction paperback section is this: a lot of those books contain stories about how, after the collapse of civilization, intrepid barbarians (who just happen to be able to read a little) stumble across one of the few remaining libraries.
Armed with superior knowledge -- acquired after mere months of reading encyclopedias and other references -- they develop technology and strategy and tactics superior to their competitors, and promptly become victors, warlords, kings, and founders of Civilization Version 2.0.
The Aspen Hill Library -- and most any other library -- has shelf after shelf full of books telling them about the future of libraries. Hint: go look in the science-fiction section.
This may be one of the most demonstrative cases of "all of the answers to the question of what the libraries have been, are, should be, and will likely be, are already on the shelves of the libraries". Yet a lot of the people looking for answers to "what shall become of the libraries?" aren't even aware of what they have on their own shelves: the answers to their question.
Inquiring minds want to know: how is it that I know in which of the library's books are the answers to the questions of what shall become of the library? And how is it that the librarians do not?
Perhaps encouraging people to roust me out of the library isn't such a good idea, after all.
Ultimately, the library will be what you are using to read this blog: networked information systems and data retrieval devices.
But is that the real library?
Let's say that I have a set of CDROMs that contain the whole of the latest Encyclopedia Britannica.
It's much more voluminous, much more comprehensive, and far more filled with useful information than would be any paper encyclopedia, unless perhaps you wanted a paper encyclopedia that filled up most of a library reference section and required three to five bound volumes for each letter of the alphabet.
Let's say that I have a 20-volume set of the 1956 "American People's Encyclopedia".
The "AEP" is 50 years out of date; it's older than I am. It's paper, it's not electronically searchable, and there are whole townships within 20 miles of me which do not exist on its atlas maps.
It barely has the concept of "computer", and has only a two-paragraph article on the "transistor" along with a picture of a human hand holding a germanium crystal. By contrast, the central-processing chip of the computer reading that "EB on DVD" encyclopedia has about 80-million transistors on a chip too small for the human hand to handle. Yet the AEP has about ten pages of detail on the manufacture and use of vacuum tubes in electronics, and many more pages on the math underlying the manufacture and use of vacuum tubes.
Electromagnetic pulse is exceptionally damaging to transistors. The more and smaller the transistors, the greater the damage. And while it is possible for a competent hobbyist to make their own vacuum tubes -- a lot of musicians were reduced to that when they needed replacement parts for older amplifiers, after the western world stopped manufacturing vacuum tubes -- it isn't possible to repair high-density integrated circuits. Robots had to make smaller robots which made smaller robots which made robots small enough to manufacture the high-density ICs.
Should the library continue to expend large amounts of money modernizing, moving ever more deeply into a system utterly dependent on really rather delicate technologies that will all be junk after an electromagnetic pulse?
Of course they should! It's what people want, what people need, it's competitive, and failure to adopt and deploy it makes for an uncompetitive environment.
But let's not go throwing out all of the paper books...
Because when the light go out all across the country and stay inoperable for perhaps years at a time, it would be nice to have something to read by candlelight, assuming that one survives the total collapse of the computer-driven logistical systems which alone enable just-in-time shipment of food stocks and other non-durable goods.
The Encyclopedia Britannica on DVD might have the sum-total of the world's knowledge onboard, but if you can't read the information because you have no working computers on your continent, that's really not very helpful, now is it.
I thus propose that future library planning be split into two tracks.
The first track will continue along the lines of modernization, with the goal of being the most helpful to the most people in the way that is most useful to them: developing strategies whereby the library can offer the same sorts of information and content as are delivered by such things as the Amazon Kindle and comparable technologies which may be expected to emerge along a fairly consistent and predictable curve of technological advance and deployment.
The library can't easily beat the cost and access of home-based or even txting-cellphone internet. Nor should the library try to get into a price-point competition with such entities as Amazon or comparable content marketers. However, the library system may very well already have the beginnings of a powerful niche service; the "ask a librarian" program could be extended to Twitter or comparable txt-based networks and modes.
The second track for the libraries must be Durable Accessible Archiving and Indexing.
DAAI libraries will be something that the general public will almost certainly never see, except perhaps on the equivalent of school field-trips to the museum.
Extremely well-constructed and nearly maintenance-free buildings should be constructed on sites which are centrally located but not in the center of the markets, in much the same way that Armories used to be constructed three blocks out and over from city-center crossroads.
These buildings should be designed with the idea that they need to be functional with no electricity, at least during daylight hours. They need to be extremely defensible, at least against small arms. We should all pray that nobody ever sees the day when one of the most damaging strategic actions against an opponent would be denial of information through destruction of libraries, but it has happened before and might conceivably happen again.
Sites should be chosen above the 100 (or even 500 or 1000) year flood plain, yet also be situated so that wind-powered or even human-powered pumping can fill cisterns which should be kept full for purposes of fire-control should that become necessary.
All planning along this second track must operate under the slogan, "Libraries are, and should be, forever for posterity".
There should be overlapping and redundant collections which have a focus on establishing and fostering literacy, on elaborating a bottom-up progression of technology from the basics of smelting upwards to the technology of the 1950s/1960s before we became utterly dependent on technology that can be eliminated wholesale by easy-to-make EMP bombs, on the rediscovery of science and medicine made easy for people who have none.
It must be noted that it is quite possible, and probably very sensible, to move forward on both tracks at various single sites, although Track One may become much more deployed through data/voice networks and internet than by physical site development, though some physical site development is almost inevitable, for example to serve persons with disabilities, and to provide many of the social connections functions currently seen in the "old fashioned" sort of libraries and many of the modern libraries.
Track One (technology forward) libraries should also explore technical syntheses of internet and computational facilities with the traditional social modes of library usage. An example may be seen in the UK's University of Nottingham, Communications Research Group's decade-old and well-developed concept of Virtual Reality and Populated Information Terrains.
Visualizations of such populate information terrains are also to be found here.
That a lot of books floating in VR space, arranged by accuracy matches along three axes of search terms.
And a big shout-out to Dave Snowdon, PhD, a good online friend for the last decade.
Obviously, the present location of the Aspen Hill Library, with its endless water problems and open airy architecture and layout, will not be suitable for an archiving library.
However, Aspen Hill does have a perfect site for both a new and reconstructed Track One facility as well as a Track Two Durable Accessible Archiving and Indexing facility.
If anyone wants to discuss this with me after the Monday, October 26 2009 meeting of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., general membership meeting to be held at 7:30 in the Scary Basement Dungeon ahem Meeting Room at the Aspen Hill Library, just pop on over and leave me your card and we can take it to e-mail, because after all, babbling delusional autistics such as myself should be seen and not heard, at least in places of such dignity as the public library and in situations where my clear and unquestioned and highly-informed betters confer on matters of pomp and circumstance.
More to come?
