In the Eisenhower administration some wise person noted that through history, libraries have been essential to civilization. In that wisdom-tinged era, the federal government started a program to establish in every county in the U.S. a library which would contain practical information on farming, industry, health care, and government and philosophy, so that in the event a nuclear exchange wiped out great libraries in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Los Angeles, among other places, the knowledge and wisdom needed to rebuild America would be available to people easily, locally.
It was a good idea, I think, but chiefly because of the side effect of putting good information close to people, even without nuclear destruction. I wonder whether we have strayed.
Today, libraries abandon books in favor of electronic media, film and on-line applications at a prodigious rate. Million-book libraries, once the hallmark of a good university, now represent dated data and a backwater center of scholarship, to many.
Libraries missed the first video wave. Thinking they were about books and not television presentation of information, libraries missed the opportunity to attract customers for videos. Instead, here in the U.S. a company named Blockbuster did badly (by my estimation) the promulgation and protection of culture, for profit, that libraries should have done for free. Determined not to miss the next evolution or revolution in media, libraries now plan to adopt new media when possible, and store information in new electronic formats.
In the Netherlands, libraries plan to archive local video productions and photographs, and to digitize the data to make it more widely available. Plans are to spend 173 million euro (more than $230 million U.S. at today’s exchange rate), to archive 285,000 hours of film, video and radio recordings, and nearly 3 million photos.
Will civilization survive?
Tip of the old scrub brush to If:book, from the Institute for the Future of the Book.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 