The rise of Google last decade began the myth that “You can find anything on the Internet.” The reality is different. Anyone who has lived through the past twenty years of teh interwebz has seen not only how incomplete digital knowledge is but also how fragile. Works orphaned by copyright remain in limbo. Fifteen years of Geocities may disappear in an instant. The entire Google News project may be cancelled at whim. These are not isolated events.
It’s clear now that corporations cannot be trusted to do the librarians’ job, so then what are librarians to do? In this digital world, what is the function of the modern librarian? Many answers to this question appear in our weekly e-book, The Global Librarian. Librarians from around the world have contributed their thoughts and experiences.
This isn’t a book about theory. The very first section deals with practical solutions to problems. The second and third sections deal with globalization and its repercussions for library science. The final section deals with redefining librarianship for the 21st Century and beyond, especially concentrating on mobile libraries, interlibrary loans and other services that do not expect people to come to the library but rather bring the libraries to the people.
Published by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) and the New York Metropolitan Area Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL/NY), this will give a reader a good sense of the challenges and ideas that will shape humankind’s future libraries.
