The Really Modern Library is a project undertaken by the Institute for the Future of the Book. They are soliciting comments from all quarters, and holding meetings in Los Angeles, London, and New York, in order to define how our analog libraries can and will fit into the digital world that is increasingly becoming a reality. This will potentially lead to “outlining plans for a major international design competition calling for proposals, sketches, and prototypes for a hypothetical ‘really modern library.'”
This sounds like the genesis of a library X-Prize, and it may just be the shot in the arm we need to focus on the future. We have come a long way, but oftentimes it seems that we use up our energy and resources on a) talking about the future, and b) sticking with the previous generation of technology because it is what every other “one-step-behind” library is doing.
And so I challenge you: think about your job, your library, libraries in general. What does the future look like? What do we need to build that bridge, to let human beings, books, and digitization co-exist in a complementary way? Let them know… it is as simple as leaving a comment on their blog.
I’ve left a comment suggesting that granularity and structure is the key to online data… make it as easy for people to get to the information and present it in various ways. Our current generation of OPACs are very nearly the opposite of that philosophy, even though our catalogs contain some of the richest data in all of cyberspace.
Thanks to Eric Lease Morgan for posting this to the NGC4Lib listserv
