Thing #15, Library 2.0

I read Rick Anderson's "Away from the 'Icebergs'," which discussed certain things libraries can do to keep up with the influx of information becoming available to people. I was a little disappointed to look at the three things libraries can do, because it just made me depressed. The first one was to get rid of your older collection so you're not wasting space, because people are going to find what they're looking for online. Part of me does agree, but at the same time, I keep imagining those paranoid movies about the future where the computer rules and books are forbidden. To me, print is something physical, that is hard to get rid of, and can continually be found and referred to. Something online is changing, and consists of 1's and 0's, so it can be easily discarded or lost. The fact that information can be so easily gotten rid of like that is scary to me. And where are the people getting the information from to put online? From books, in my mind. I was also a bit skeptical about the "Bring the library to you" approach. Libraries are places where people meet and talk and ideas are exchanged in person! To take that away from people just seems scary.