Public libraries were central to my developement. I'd go down every single shelf, picking out books to skim for utterly subjective reasons. The green and red Loeb Classics for example will be in my heavenly library, just because of the Greek or Latin text directly opposite the translation. Anyway it's been decades since I've been in a UK pubic library, so I sidled warily into John Harvard Library (Harvard's founder grew up in Southwark) with a bookish and be-scootered young lady from New Jersey. A few impressions:
1. Staff were helpful, smiley, bright and willing.
2. Enrolment was a doddle.
3. 15 books per member! No call to liberate any folio'd friends.
4. Computerised self-withdrawal system was almost excellent. Just a couple of glitches for 'differently' catalogued items.
5. It was child-friendly up the wazoo! loads of noise, relaxed atmosphere, bright light. That's at odds with my idea of a library as a place of study, but has its plusses.
6. There just aren't that many books.
7. The children's section is passable.
8. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender section is in the Adult section for now and apparently exists due to public demand (I enquired). The demand must be superb since LGBT shelf space = the whole of Science, Technology and Natural History.
9. The public demand for Black History must be even more superb, since that subject's shelf space is 2x the size of the whole of Science, Technology and Natural History.
10. The public demand for Social Science must be superbly superb, since that subject's shelf space is 5x the size of the whole of Science, Technology and Natural History.
11. I couldn't find the Loeb Classics.
I guess I just wasn't made for these times, but a black sense of humour does help along with whisky and Frank Zappa to which and to whom I reach for consolation. I suspect John Harvard would feel the same.
Mick intones: I live about twenty minutes from one of the top ten libraries in the United States (Ranked #1 in 2004, #4 in 2007 by Princeton Review...). I visit regularly and am struck by how much of what the library does contain is obsolete and often irrelevant.
Truly current and relevant information is held in the minds of leading-edge professionals and secondarily on web pages. By the time it gets to a library shelf, its essentially historical.
Its not apparent yet, although I know from personal conversations with people in the loop, that universities, public schools and libraries are an endangered species much in the same way dead-tree newspapers and network television is. The only thing a university can offer you that you can't get yourself for free, is a certification. That's not much of a foundation for the future.
The left's ability to promulgate their silly, yet harmful propaganda is at severe risk and the only thing that stands in the way are teacher's unions and other recalcitrant institutions determined to protect their sinecures. There are in fact on-line elementary, middle and public schools right now who are serving hundreds of thousands of students in those states where the legislatures haven't been bought an paid for.
The real worry?
Google's very close relationship with the Democrat party.
From his denunciations of Wall Street greed to his critiques of the auto manufacturers, Obama and his team have done little to disguise their mistrust of big business -- except when it comes to one very large, very influential technology company.
Read the whole thing.
The wingnuts are essentially stupid people, but those that throw around the levers of power understand how the internet is going to disrupt their stranglehold and they know they have to coopt the infrastructure in order to control the content.
Google may or may not be evil yet, but they will be. Its inevitable.
