Week #7 Post #17

I posted a comment on the "Librarians Rule" blog for Week 6 #15 Library 2.0. The blogger addressed the problems with our interior architecture and space planning as we continue in Library 2.0. We need more areas for group study as well as truly private areas for the solo learner. Sound proofing the walls between Reading Rooms would be a start.



Blogging About Technology--



The advancements in technology have always been amazing to me. Twenty-five years ago, I took a job with the Tandy Corporation in Fort Worth as a writer on their TRS-80 Microcomputer News magazine. This was a pre IBM-compatible [remember that term?] environment with Model Is, Model IIs, Color Computers, Pocket Computers and dot-matrix printers that we thought were just the last word in advanced printing. The Internet was in its infancy. CompuServe and AgriStar were services on the Internet which supplied us with various databases.

The editor of the magazine and I would have some spirited conversations. My editor thought that the Internet was going to revolutionize the library world--in that libraries, as we knew them, would soon be closing. I did not hold with that opinion.

Last month I was up in Fort Worth visiting the Amon Carter and Kimbell Museums on related library business for our branch. We are preparing for the opening of the Pearl Fincher Museum and I volunteered to visit the Carter and Kimbell to gain background and purchase some items in their bookstores which would support our displays on painter Frederick Remington and art from the American West. There I sat outside the Kimbell, waiting for the museum to open at noon and for me to get a quick lunch at their fabulous buffet. Where I was sitting afforded me a great view of downtown Fort Worth and the Tandy Towers were I worked twenty-five years ago. I was on my Blackjack cell phone checking my library webmail account. How wonderful is all this!

My editor and I truly could not see twenty-five years into the future. Libraries are very much still with us. Yes we have changed and evolved. We have absorbed the technology and advanced with it for our customers. There are wrinkles, problems and etc. but how much more information can we provide than twenty-five years ago when our computer technology was so new.