$node.absurl

$node.contribution("Title")

$node.absurl

Internet Librarian

By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist

Associate dean, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle
intlib@ischool.washington.edu

June/July 2007

What Wonders May Come

A look forward to the marvels of the 20th century

Editor’s note: In plowing through our files, we found this remarkably prescient column which, although apparently written for the conference issue of 1907, never actually appeared. In celebration of American Libraries’ centennial, we run it now.

I am deeply honored to have been asked to write this series of regular articles for the new Bulletin of the American Library Association, and even more pleased to know that our Association is so forward-thinking.  I hope that in the months and years to come I can use this opportunity to discuss and present tools and techniques that librarians can to use to make their work better and easier.

There are many examples of tools that are currently available which might have great impact on library work. Typewriters, of course, can make many tasks less burdensome, although I doubt they will ever fully replace the beautiful library hand for the creation of catalog cards.  There has been discussion of machines that will automatically make photographic copies of documents and pages; much good could be made of these as well. Gramophone recordings and even moving pictures could be used to record the great musical and dramatic works for the masses.

Techniques for communication across great distances are also developing quickly.  The telephone seems likely to make its way into libraries as it will into offices and homes, allowing us to reach out as others reach in. Hardly a week goes by without seeing exciting new advances in the radiotelegraph, and now it seems that even voices can be sent through the ether via radio.
In thinking about how technical developments of all kinds might affect librarianship in the 20th century, I found myself musing thus:  Imagine libraries that had tools and devices permitting them to amass and store large quantities of information in small spaces, and to search those stores with ease and accuracy.

Magical devices

Will we have ways to see and hear and experience the lives and ideas of others, across the land and over the seas?  Will we have a way for people to quickly find exactly what they want in a vast sea of information of all types?  Such devices would appear to be magical; but if so, they would allow us to be in greater communication and concord with peoples around the world. What a tremendous force that would be for peace and understanding! 

I fear I have now devolved into the realm of the fantastic; perhaps Mr. H. G. Wells might find these ideas amusing and write a story about future libraries.

Obviously, we don’t know what other tools will come, and what uses we and our successors will make of them, good and bad.  The only thing we can be sure of is that they will continue to arrive, no doubt faster and faster, as this still-new century rushes on.  If these words survive for, say, 100 years, who knows what libraries will look like and what they will do?

It does seem clear, though, that the quiet and isolated libraries of the century past seem almost inevitably to be giving way to something more, something greater
and better.  We seem poised on the cusp of so much change; we will all have to discover ways to still be the librarians we always wanted to be when entering this great profession. 

I think we can, with many more tools and techniques—even those we cannot even dream of, at our disposal—to serve people yet unborn.  I look forward to meeting with colleagues at the Annual Conference in Asheville to learn more . . . and that will be another story.