A Harvard Magazine’s May/June feature is titled, “Gutenberg 2.0
Harvard’s libraries deal with disruptive change.” This article is lengthy, so I’ll summarize. Shaw discusses Harvard libraries massive digitization project, and asks what this means for the role of librarians. The answer: we should no longer be the gatekeepers of a physical space, but “information brokers” of the digital realm.

Folks in the library industry have heard that before, but to my library student ears, this logic seems a bit too simple for such a complicated time. Books go digital; librarians go digital. How should librarians follow books into the digital realm?

Librarians are pretty good at organizing huge collections of books. Of course, the patrons have no clue how to find them. Now, when we organize digital information like we organize physical books, often in a very ugly and complicated way, and patrons are going to Google. As for this fantasy of becoming information brokers — if the digital content is difficult to find and patrons consistently need human assistance, then librarians aren’t good at organizing retrievable information for the 21st century; Google is. And I know I know, Google doesn’t find everything…but someday it will.

One of my favorite library reads this month was Aaron Schmidt’s Helsinki’s Library 10 & Meetingpoint. Here’s a little excerpt:

“The libraries I saw [in Helsinki] have overcome their addiction to circulating content. Now they’re all about doing, making, publishing, working, and experiences revolving around content. People are still getting print books and CDs for the library, sure, but other stuff seems more important.”

I haven’t been able to get this out of my mind — we’re all addicted to circulating content! I didn’t know this two weeks ago, but I’m a circulation addict who wants to moderate her habit. Maybe if we are entering a purely digital age, we should reconsider our mission to allow for innovation. I like to think that the bottom line of our profession is to empower people. Can we empower people with circulated content? Should we?

Photograph by Jim Harrison
Library assistant Carl Wood reshelves books in the 30-foot-high, 200-foot-long stacks.