Libraries and Information Users

"Weinberger writes on page 14 that the digital world allows us to transcend the fundamental rule of everything having its place because things can now be assigned multiple places simultaneously. This speaks to the very core of library current and continuing existence. What are libraries doing and/or need to do to transcend this fundamental rule in order to stay relevant to information users? Do libraries need to do anything at all?"

Yes, they need to do something! And they are doing things.

What is the basic definition of a library? A collection of data (traditionally in monograph form), hopefully organized for easy access, and hopefully available to the public. That's a library, right? There is, actually, no hard-and-set rule that the data has to be in book form, or that it has to be free to the public, or that it has to be organized. Those are all cultural concepts that evolved through common sense and/or law.

With the advent of the digital revolution, libraries began to overlap databases (an IT concept that is basically the same thing as the above-stated definition of library). Both contain data; both are organized.

Now, libraries need to merge with the database concept - or, in other words, information (the data in libraries) and IT (digital organization available to the public - ie the internet) must merge into one fundamental source. The line between digital information/IT and libraries/librarians (the People Who Know Where Everything Is) has to go, because outside of the brick-and-mortar library, it has already gone. The next generation, born digital, has no such line in their brains; they already use their smart phones and the internet for research on any topic, far more often than they go to the library.

In order to stay relevant - even to exist at all - libraries must become digital. I'm not saying they have to burn their books, or close their doors and become one giant, dark room with a server; I'm just saying that they need to be digitizing what parts of their collections are unique to them (not already on the internet), and providing the same services that commercial vendors do, but free. That's going to keep them alive.