“The New Library: Making it Without Books”

I like books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, maps, and the other assorted objects in the library.  Working at George Latimer Central Library, I'm surrounded by an overwhelming number of things, to the point where I'm not sure what can and should be done with it all.  Collection development was a much simpler thing in a small library, although it was rarely the focus of my day, since my job was frequently best described as "Behavior Control Technician."



Now I have the time to deal with the collection, but not the ability to cope with the scale of it.  Part of my issue is the disheartening fact that the value of the printed word has plummeted, along with the perception of the librarian as an important source of information.  As a result, public libraries have been struggling to find an identity for quite awhile now, and I've been struggling to see a positive future for my career.  How do you proceed when you lack a clear mission?  Popularity favors integrating makerspace tools and activities into the library setting, and while I admire my colleagues' enthusiasm for this change, I haven't been particularly supportive of it, primarily because it feels like dabbling in something that we have little expertise in, which in my mind is likely to further devalue the library and the librarian.  Lowertown already has CoCo for creative professionals, a crowd that we are unlikely to attract.  It took this short article from Wired for me to realize the obvious, that "[m]any people don't have access to classic hacker spaces, are intimidated by them, or can't afford them."  Ah.  Ah-ha!  This intrigues me, because it also takes the library beyond the role of collector/distributor of information and into the business of creating knowledge.  That is where I want to be.