Should libraries be run by volunteers? Who would these volunteers be? When I hear that someone on full-time JSA has been forced to work in a Poundsaver rather than continue to volunteer in a museum, I can’t help but think everyone is missing a trick. Libraries would teach customer skills, for people from all walks of life. Libraries are one of the only places you are guaranteed to encounter young graduates, foreign students, the elderly, parents and their children. There is a space for everyone. Libraries mean regular access to computers, furthering rudimentary computing skills and having a chance to search for jobs in the meantime. Libraries mean social interaction and the possibility of meeting someone who could help you towards your ideal job. A librarian is helping run a business, maintain a workspace, upkeep a database, and look after extensive physical records. It is a full gamut of social and practical tasks that any jobseeker would benefit from.
The debate continues to rage over the future of libraries. Are people really harbouring that much disinterest? When I was at school, generally it was accepted that children don’t like reading, and England was forever doomed to be a race of illiterates. I had few friends, because I preferred books, and I still love books, dearly.
Within the publishing world, people have been slow to respond to e-readers. The main issue is the dramatic drop in price which the reader implies for a publication, and the fact that people are very good at getting hold of these things for free. But I don’t see how e-readers can possibly threaten books in the long run. Not everything is available on e-reader, certainly not the obscure things I occasionally decide I want. I will always relish strolling aisles and simply looking, trying to find something I haven’t seen before, or something I had forgotten I had wanted. I also love graphic novels, and an e-reader has a long way to go before it can hope to capture the brilliance of a fully-inked double-page spread by Alan Moore or Garth Ennis.
I also feel that within Universities, e-readers could be embraced as a way to cut students’ costs, by making more of the syllabus directly available on a reader. The Uni loans you the reader and so doesn’t risk its own textbooks, and you have no excuse for not owning (or doing) the reading. This is a basic idea and I have no real knowledge of whether it could be successfully implemented, but for a science student the idea could save them hundreds of pounds in textbooks they may never use again, and mean that the most recent edition was readily available.
I hear you cry, what about physical books? What about libraries as actual spaces of reverence for knowledge? What about musty old bookshops and charity shops full of books that were trendy a month ago? I still use all of those. A library is far from just a place for books, and this is what most people are really fighting against. It is a social centre, somewhere to take your children: many have coffee shops now as well as study areas, they rent DVDs and music, you can check newspaper archives, or gain access to a computer.
In people’s fear of abandoning physical books they seem to forget that the community already reading out there will never stop. I never leave my e-reader behind, but I mainly use it as a Dictionary and a study aid. I read the news on my phone. When I want to relax, I pick up a book. E-readers, like mp3 players, may be heading towards prevalence, but I don’t know many people who have one yet. At present, unless you are able to hack yours into some kind off catch-all uber-reader, they are the equivalent of a calculator for an accountant: if you really feel you need it, it’s there, but there are plenty of other options for the less fanatical.
People thought the mp3, and the piracy thereof, was going to kill music. But everyone I know owns coveted collections of tapes, CDs, or vinyl. And still buys them. And as far as I’m aware, the music industry is still doing okay. In fact last year saw the advent of such a saturation of music festivals in the UK that there weren’t enough fans to go around. Culture fluctuates with the times, but those that support it stand firm in their bewilderment at the mass-panic of the ‘death of …’. Project Gutenberg is an example of people embracing e-readers. They work to digitise books on which the copyright has run out: previously published items that may never be re-printed. Items that you might have never had a chance to see. Cruising Project Gutenberg is almost like walking through a huge antique bookshop, and the thrill of the hunt remains. As with many websites, they rely on donation from their users: this has never proved a problem.
The only way may be to embrace it. Industrialisation is inevitable, but access to literature is vital.
The debate continues to rage over the future of libraries. Are people really harbouring that much disinterest? When I was at school, generally it was accepted that children don’t like reading, and England was forever doomed to be a race of illiterates. I had few friends, because I preferred books, and I still love books, dearly.
Within the publishing world, people have been slow to respond to e-readers. The main issue is the dramatic drop in price which the reader implies for a publication, and the fact that people are very good at getting hold of these things for free. But I don’t see how e-readers can possibly threaten books in the long run. Not everything is available on e-reader, certainly not the obscure things I occasionally decide I want. I will always relish strolling aisles and simply looking, trying to find something I haven’t seen before, or something I had forgotten I had wanted. I also love graphic novels, and an e-reader has a long way to go before it can hope to capture the brilliance of a fully-inked double-page spread by Alan Moore or Garth Ennis.
I also feel that within Universities, e-readers could be embraced as a way to cut students’ costs, by making more of the syllabus directly available on a reader. The Uni loans you the reader and so doesn’t risk its own textbooks, and you have no excuse for not owning (or doing) the reading. This is a basic idea and I have no real knowledge of whether it could be successfully implemented, but for a science student the idea could save them hundreds of pounds in textbooks they may never use again, and mean that the most recent edition was readily available.
I hear you cry, what about physical books? What about libraries as actual spaces of reverence for knowledge? What about musty old bookshops and charity shops full of books that were trendy a month ago? I still use all of those. A library is far from just a place for books, and this is what most people are really fighting against. It is a social centre, somewhere to take your children: many have coffee shops now as well as study areas, they rent DVDs and music, you can check newspaper archives, or gain access to a computer.
In people’s fear of abandoning physical books they seem to forget that the community already reading out there will never stop. I never leave my e-reader behind, but I mainly use it as a Dictionary and a study aid. I read the news on my phone. When I want to relax, I pick up a book. E-readers, like mp3 players, may be heading towards prevalence, but I don’t know many people who have one yet. At present, unless you are able to hack yours into some kind off catch-all uber-reader, they are the equivalent of a calculator for an accountant: if you really feel you need it, it’s there, but there are plenty of other options for the less fanatical.
People thought the mp3, and the piracy thereof, was going to kill music. But everyone I know owns coveted collections of tapes, CDs, or vinyl. And still buys them. And as far as I’m aware, the music industry is still doing okay. In fact last year saw the advent of such a saturation of music festivals in the UK that there weren’t enough fans to go around. Culture fluctuates with the times, but those that support it stand firm in their bewilderment at the mass-panic of the ‘death of …’. Project Gutenberg is an example of people embracing e-readers. They work to digitise books on which the copyright has run out: previously published items that may never be re-printed. Items that you might have never had a chance to see. Cruising Project Gutenberg is almost like walking through a huge antique bookshop, and the thrill of the hunt remains. As with many websites, they rely on donation from their users: this has never proved a problem.
The only way may be to embrace it. Industrialisation is inevitable, but access to literature is vital.
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