In a library not far from here…
A young and eager learner enters a public library in the not-so-distant future.
“Welcome to Wellbridgefield Town library. Do you want a coffee?”
“No, I’ve just had one in the car park. Then I was offered one in the bakers. And the bookshop, the record shop, the betting shop and the shoe shop. I’m fine for coffee.”
The learner starts wandering around the library and eventually approaches the desk.
“Hi,” the friendly librarian starts. “I’m your digital knowledge navigator today.”
“Err, hi. I’d like to read about Moses Maimonides. You know, the philosopher?”
“Sure thing. If you go over to that terminal, you can use one of our many online services to learn about that.”
“What? You mean, use the Internet?”
“Yeah. You heard of it?”
“I looked up everything on the Internet before I came here. I thought there would be books.”
“Oh no. We removed them all back when some social media consultants and tech geeks told us they had been made obselete by the Apple iPad and the Kindle.”
“You haven’t got any books?”
“No. They’re so old tech, and lo-fi.”
“But what if I want to learn about Moses Maimonides?”
“Well, you can use one of our many exciting digital service offerings.”
“You said. So, what you are telling me is that the library has nothing more on offer to the reader than what they can get on the Internet.”
“Well, that’s not the most charitable way of putting it. We do serve coffee! And we’re a real living room-in-the-city - a place where people can get away from the hustle and bustle of consumerism, sit back, enjoy a latte and peruse our many wonderful online services while listening to the piped music we’ve plumbed in.”
“You’ve got what?”
“Piped music. Yes. The social media consultant told us to install it. People like it. There’s even a hashtag for it on Twitter and it is all driven by a shared, collaborative Spotify playlist. And we’ve done a deal with Spotify - they cut is in on the advertising revenue!”
“Adverts? What the—? Do you find people get irritated by the noise?”
“Oh no. People love it. That is what the marketing department says, anyway.”
“You’ve got a marketing department?”
“They aren’t so much a marketing department as a rough gang of consultants we’ve drafted to hang out on Twitter. We really need it - to help people learn all about our wonderful digital services.”
“Which is basically just Google, right?”
“Haven’t you heard? The Internet has everything!”
“But if you want to know about something that isn’t on the Internet, you come to the library and there aren’t any books - but you’ll sell me coffee so I can use Google to look up more information about what I already know because I looked it up on Google when I was at home. Are you going to help me buy carbon credits for this pointless journey to this souped-up coffee shop?”
“Well, we are here to help and guide you.”
“You are?”
“Yes, we’re digital knowledge navigators.”
“How do you help me navigate digital knowledge?”
“Well, we can look over your shoulder occasionally and say ‘oh, you shouldn’t trust that!’”
“Is that very difficult?”
“Yes. It’s a really tough skill. I mean, if you are trying to find out about Moses Maimonides, you should probably trust pages on plato.stanford.edu pretty highly. And the entry on Wikipedia is probably okay too.”
“That’s really useful. I could never figure out that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was a trustworthy source of philosophy information while some random blog on the Internet probably isn’t. However would I survive without a digital knowledge navigator?”
“I told you we are useful. Really, we’re the elite in knowledge navigation. As well as pointing out that encyclopedias written by subject area experts are more useful as sources than random blogs, we are fully trained in the the intricacies of Google’s Advanced Search page.”
“But I really need a book for this. The material just doesn’t seem to be online.”
“Have you tried Waterstones? I hear they still stock books as well as coffee.”
Inspired by Subnormality - Down at the Library and Seth Godin’s recent post about libraries - see my earlier response, and these responses to Seth. Also see my previous posts How to destroy a library and More library faffery.
