In this month's NLC BookThing I Live in the Future &
Here's How it Works, Nick Bilton describes the massive technological shift that
is affecting all aspects of society, even down to the way people's brains
process information. Even the casual observer can see that just about every
traditional hardcopy media (print books and periodicals, music CDs, DVDs, etc.)
is in sharp decline, and their digital counterparts are growing explosively.
Bilton looks at how this affects the way we consume media, and how that in
turns affects the way our brains process information. Instead of reading a long
book or watching a long movie with undivided attention, people are increasingly
multitasking. The reading of an ebook might be frequently interrupted by visits
to various hyperlinked articles, videos, discussions, etc. The watching of a
movie might be punctuated with status updates, text conversations, pausing to
look things up, etc. This shift toward what some call attention deficit
disorder and Bilton calls "richochet working" has implications for
how young people about to enter the workforce will do their jobs. Likely, even
industries that aren't involved with traditional media (books, music, etc.)
will have to adapt to the changing workstyle of their employees.
Libraries are already shifting from
physical resources to virtual. This book just reinforces that we have to, if
anything, accelerate this process in order to satisfy the digital natives.
Libraries will need to integrate better with the Internet to serve our users.
Cloud-based integrated library systems might be one way of getting our services
out where our users are.
Of course, we shouldn't neglect
those patrons who are on the trailing end of this transition. A lot of people
come to the library because they don't have access to the Internet at home, and
many of them still need hardcopy resources. The book quoted William Gibson:
"The future is already here--it is just unevenly distributed."
Libraries have to bridge the gap, serving both users who are immersed in this
new Net order and users who have never touched a computer. (Yes, people like
that still exist, and they still deserve respect and high-quality service.) For
librarians, reaching both ends of the spectrum and everything in between might seem
like tightrope walking on razor wire.
