Representation of Books and Libraries in the Future

Cool Sentence: "Almost all of them [librarian authors] envision a library that plays multiple roles as part of its status as a cultural center. Being a book repository is often the least of its purposes" (Pennavaria, 240).

I guess I have been spending a little too much time thinking about Double Fold as I think about these articles once again. So often science fiction ends up reflecting future truths. That has me frightened of clinging to my notion that the book itself will make a comeback within the context of libraries. One sci-fi librarian pictured a "'utopian universal catalog'" (I guess that's right). Another librarian predicted that future libraries would have a more open space plan with fewer permanent walls. I suppose that is true, too. Perhaps Philip McDevitt's prediction that the librarian "'will be a person of greatly enhanced status'" in the future gives my depository dreams some hope as of yet.

This article also details the now famous Memex as detailed by Vannevar Bush (another of this week's authors). The imaginary Memex desk that never came to be is now seen as the great-grandaddy of what we now know as the Internet. Granted, I should reiterate that the Memex was a strictly imaginary idea, but it is one of the first times the ideas of information trails and linking come into play in the library lexicon.

As for what the future thinks of us? It is obviously best not to think about it. After all, such perceptions seem to always be serendipitous in nature. Otherwise, why would Vannevar Bush be so often remembered while Paul Otlet is relegated to obscurity?