'We have an obligation to imagine' …

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

Lecture for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday October 14 at the Barbican in London. The Reading Agency's annual lecture series was initiated in 2012 as a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share original, challenging ideas about reading and libraries.

The end of libraries?

Provocative piece by someone who (in my opinion!) is blinkered and out of touch with the reality of the needs of real people - particularly those who do not have the gadgets (money?) available to the 'so-called'' privileged of society.
 
Excerpt:  "...It’s almost like some people want to interpret anyone talking about the end of libraries as talking about the end of learning — and, by extension, the end of civilization. The reality is that learning has evolved. It’s now easier than ever to look something up. And the connected world has far better access to basically infinitely more information than can be found in even the largest library — or all of them combined. This is all a good thing. A very good thing. Maybe the best thing in the history of our civilization. Yet we retain this romantic notion of libraries as cultural touchstones. Without them, we’re worried we’ll be lost and everything will fall apart...."
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I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99 

 

 

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Ray Bradbury
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/library.html#rkRDqL7eZGGO6dJM.99

My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.”
― Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Isaac Asimov

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo400908.html#q64oP5OvrJAy566k.99

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Isaac Asimov

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo400908.html#q64oP5OvrJAy566k.99

Fighting back against the Big Deals: a success story from the UK

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17065291&WT.mc_id=journaltocalerts


Purpose – The paper aims to describe the development of an alternative to the Big Deals that was deployed successfully in negotiations with Elsevier and Wiley for the 2012 settlement.



Design/methodology/approach – This is a descriptive account of the alternative plan.



Findings – There is a credible alternative to the Big Deals offered by most commercial academic publishers. Even if not implemented, the model provides a very useful tool to understanding the relationship between cost per use and document supply.



Originality/value – The paper provides an account of the first time that a practical alternative to the Big Deals has been developed, leading to a successful negotiating conclusion.

YEARNING AFTER BOOKS

YEARNING AFTER BOOKS: Why are so many artists and writers
preoccupied by the so-called demise of bookish culture?
see article at: http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/10/2008101001c.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

......."The most eloquent reflection I have found on the future of books is Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night (2006), which strikes a balance between romanticism and realism, nostalgia and foresight. His reflections on books and technology emphasize complementarity rather than conflict: "The birth of a new technology need not mean the death of an earlier one: The invention of photography did not eliminate painting, it renewed it, and the screen and the codex can feed off each other and coexist amicably on the same reader's desk."
And, it may be that electronic technology is even more fragile than books. "There may come a new technique of collecting information next to which the Web will seem to us habitual and homely in its vastness," Manguel writes, "like the aged buildings that once lodged the national libraries in Paris and Buenos Aires, Beyrouth and Salamanca, London and Seoul."
We are pained by the change of familiar bookish institutions, but, before long, I expect we will begin to feel nostalgia for the microfilm and the CD-ROM and yearn for a time when the Internet was as fresh and young as our belief in its capacity to replace the printed book and the library."