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What the Library of the Future Will Look Like. Forget what you know about the library of the 20th century. You know, those dark places with clunky microform machines fossilizing in the basement and with rows of encyclopedias standing, perfectly alphabetized, in denial of their obsolescence. Forget all of that: The library as a warehouse of information is an outdated concept. The library of the 21st century is a community workshop, a hub filled with the tools of the knowledge economy.

"If we can't shine in this environment, in this economy, shame on us," says Corinne Hill, the director of library system in Chattanooga, Tenn. —a system that has thoroughly migrated into the current era. "We're trying to do is acknowledge that access to the commons is no longer a read-only environment. " The library of the 21st century still has books, but it also has 3-D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and spaces for conducting business meetings.

People go to the public library for Grisham, not Hume, after all. That's why libraries need to adapt. Ranganathan Killed the Library Theorist | A Blog on LIST. I have been thinking a lot about the philosophical underpinnings of librarianship lately and recently reread Andre Cossette’s essay: Humanism and Libraries: An Essay on the Philosophy of Librarianship, (1976) which was recently translated from French by Rory Litwin, and is available from Litwin’s Library Juice Press.

This essay illustrates the lack of philosophical and theoretical thinking in librarianship that has been troubling me as of late, and lays out a “philosophy of librarianship” grounded in the humanist/realist schools of thought that I feel could bring about a renaissance to our profession and pull us out of the malaise that we are currently mired in professionally. I’ll write more about this in a later post, but I want to focus for a moment on why we are currently in this state in the profession.

There is no doubt that S. R. Ranganathan is one of the greats in the field of library science and in the profession of librarianship. Cossette, A. (2009). Hunt, S. Ranganathan, S. #Newlib, CT, & Bias (with tweets) · jacobsberg. More Thoughts on New Librarianship, Weeks 2-3: Bias in Librarianship. In weeks two and three of R. David Lankes' MOOC on new librarianship, the course shifts from theory to practice, though the former informs the latter in at least two ways.

First, librarians as facilitators, and second, libraries as platforms. We are given conversation theory, and as such, it is the job of librarians to facilitate and participate in conversations among and between communities. I have never thought of myself as a facilitator, and it will be interesting to see if this changes as a result of the course. The issues of power and activism beg questions in both the traditional and modern senses of the term: Does librarianship have a left-wing bias?

Here's what Lankes says: Now, one can be a radical change agent without being liberal, but I am hard-pressed to find an example of a conservative change agent librarian in this course or The Atlas of New Librarianship. So, to the self-identified conservative and/or Republican librarians I know, and yes, they exist, congrats. New Librarianship and open questions | Sense & Reference.

By Unnamed WPA photographer (WPA photo Via [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons A couple of years ago, Dave Lankes published his Atlas of New Librarianship to widespread acclaim. Motivated by the accelerating pace of change in the field, Lankes asked, “What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings, and committees?” The answer, he contends, can be found in a new mission for librarians: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities.

Lankes’ book is insightful, thought-provoking, and a testament to his passion for librarianship. I also happen to find New Librarianship a very problematic framework for the profession. At the time the book came out, I criticized it for it’s social constructionism and I argued that the “Conversation Theory” of knowledge at the heart of New Librarianship impedes learning, disenfranchises minority voices, and works against the idea of the library as a valuable social institution. Like this: