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Libraries in the 21st Century:
In light of the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information available to anyone, anywhere, at any time, lets consider the traditional role of libraries. Public and university libraries were created mainly in response to the historical reality that only rich and highly educated members of society could afford to keep and maintain a collection of books. ... To address this social inequity and to bridge the "information gap," libraries were created to serve as repositories of the wealth of information found in books and charged with making those books available broadly to the public.
Given their primary role of collecting and distributing information to the public, it is quite natural to assume libraries will be increasingly called upon to store, process and make information available to users electronically. ... Nevertheless, as technology leads to changes in the way we store, process and distribute information, libraries will also be required to change in order to take advantage of these new mediums.
It is said in the 21st Century will be deeply engaged in the area of storing and transferring information electronically to remote users. There are still many hurdles to be overcome, however, before the virtual library of the 21st Century can become a reality. ... It is not too farfetched to imagine people in the coming century reading "virtual" books that possess the look and page turning feel of real books but are actually digital projections. ... Libraries presently enjoy the right to make the books in their collection freely available to their patrons on a borrowed basis because they are not engaged in commercial activity. ...
While it may come to pass in the distant reaches of the 21st Century that librarians will be like museum curators, tending to outmoded curios (namely, books) stored in musty rooms to be used only by musty scholars, I do not think the advent of "information technology" means libraries will go the way of the horse and buggy. The role of libraries as repositories of information will continue because the needs of society dictate that information be collected and stored systematically in public places and be made available to all for the common good. ... The library of the 21st Century may not look familiar to those of us who have grown up in the 20th Century, nonetheless, its primary functions of collecting, organizing and making information available will be even more critical in the future ensuring to libraries a vital role for generations to come.
LIBRARIES OF THE FUTURE:
Progress is a natural consequence of human endeavour, this will inevitably mean that new technologies for use in library systems will continue to evolve. ... Four basic types of library system are discussed: polymedia libraries; electronic libraries; digital libraries; and virtual libraries. ... Polymedia Libraries
The term polymedia is used to denote the use of several different independent media for the storage of information and knowledge. ... Bearing this in mind, polymedia libraries will therefore be institutions that store information and knowledge using a wide variety of different media types. Essentially, such libraries will be very similar to conventional library systems as we know them today. ...
The management and organisational processes within polymedia libraries will be much the same as they are at present within conventional libraries, that is, basically manual. The information retrieval processes used in these libraries will also be of a manual nature - based upon the use of card indexes, microfilm, microfiche, and so on. Although such libraries will contain computers (for use by users) this technology will not be used for the realisation of any form of library automation.
Because of the absence of automated processes, an important aspect of polymedia library systems will be the access they provide to human librarians. ... As is described later in this section, any movement towards automated library systems should attempt to preserve the important services and expertise provided by librarians. ... Electronic Libraries
The expression electronic library is one which has a range of different meanings associated with it. ... This will often mean that libraries of this sort will usually be involved in an active and extensive book computerisation programme. ... Although there will be extensive use of electronic media within these libraries, conventional books will still coexist alongside the electronic publications.
Within electronic libraries it will still be possible to gain access to librarians in order to seek help and assistance relating to library matters. However, attempts will often be made to computerise some of the more routine queries that librarians have to handle. ... Digital Libraries
Digital libraries differ from the two previous types of library discussed in this section because all of the information that they contain exists only in a digital electronic format. Of course, the information itself may reside on different storage media such as electronic memory or magnetic and optical disk (compare the polymedia libraries that were discussed earlier in this paper). Because of the way in which information is stored, digital libraries do not therefore contain any conventional books. ...
Of course, digital libraries are able to provide access to both read only information and the living information which has been described earlier in this paper. ... The concept of users actively and collaboratively constructing knowledge corpora for shared use is an important one which digital libraries of the future will need to accommodate. ...
Digital libraries will continue to provide users with access to librarians. ... This could be achieved through the use of electronic mail facilities and by the emulation of the behaviour of librarians using expert system technologies. ... Virtual Libraries
Virtual library systems depend for their existence upon a rapidly maturing area of technology known as virtual reality or VR. ... Currently, there is much interest in the development of virtual libraries and the use of VR within the other types of library that have been described in this section. ... Second, the creation of virtual libraries or virtual experiences - for example, the ability to browse around a library system without actually having to physically go to it. ... Such libraries can be accessed using 2-dimensional (2D) interfaces that are based upon the use of conventional computer workstations. ...
LIBRARIANS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Libraries have evolved over time from elitist institutions to providing services and access in both the public and private sectors. Librarians are still expected to analysis and interpret information, explain it to others, and organize it in a useful way. ... These days it is becoming more common for librarians to provide value added information services and products to meet identified customer needs. ... How will these changes impact the library profession overall, and more importantly, how will it impact the individual librarians job? ... However, both sides agree that librarians need to be prepared to take on a new role in the Information Age by educating and training themselves for the future. ... Third, we will discuss core skills needed for librarians for today and also into the next century. ... Even from the beginning, people like Dewey seemed to vacillate on this issue by focusing educational goals around "practical" training of librarians.
Approximate Word count = 5807
Approximate Pages = 23.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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