Future Camas Library

Newest CPL Survey

If you would like to register your opinions on some of the things the library staff has learned so far, take a short survey by clicking HERE.

Book Repository or Arbiter of Information?

 Ross Dawson's Extinction_Timeline  predicts that libraries will be insignificant beyond 2019, just 8 years from now.  What do you think after looking at his predictions?

A 2008 Slate slide show called Borrowed Time  illustrates how libraries are changing from public repositories for books to more "urban hangouts" and suggests that by doing this libraries might avoid extinction.

If so, how should the Camas Public Library start to mutate?

Read what Thomas Frey, senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute, says about the future of libraries here.  Do you agree that libraries are a life form?

A Decade of Change

Here's a link to a wonderful graphic that shows 2000 Vs. 2010: How the world has changed.

What will happen in the next 10 years and how will the changes impact public libraries?  Things like gesture computing?

Then and now and the future

I used to work in a library where then library consultant and  guru Ellsworth Mason came through to evaluate our operation and give us direction for the future.  I can't say I was impressed with the man at the time, but librarians generally believed in what he preached because  he knew what was happening in libraries.  This is what he said in a 1971 Library Journal article:

"It should be stamped out...the computer is not for library use; that all the promises offered in its name are completely fraudulent; and that not only is it extremely expensive compared to other metods at this time, but that it will become increasingly expensive in the future; that it has been wrapped so completely in a aura of unreason that fine intelligences are completely uprooted when talking about it; that its use in a library weakens the library as a whole by draining off large sums of money for a small return; and it should be stamped out."

So much for Mason's crystal ball.

Fast forward to 2010 and here's was American Library Association president Roberta Stevens had to say:

"While some believed the Internet might retire the library, the reverse has occurred. Over the past decade, libraries have embraced technology resources, and library visits and circulation have grown by 20 percent." 

In 40 years we went from an institution being told to avoid computers to an institution that couldn't run without them, and providing a myriad of services based upon them: online catalogs with keyword searching, digital database services, automated circulation, Internet, e-books and more.

What will the next few decades bring?  Will technology be able to flourish as it has when there isn't enough electrical energy to go around?  Should we save physical books to read in daylight during ubiquitious brownouts as science fiction author and futurist Robert J.  Sawyer predicts?  Will nanotechnolgy and implants render transhumans with no need for libraries in the near future?  Will humans change in ways that we can't fathom and can't plan for?

--David Zavortink

Libraries in Finland

In Finland, libraries are reinventing themselves and changing the ways they provide services.

Library 10 and Meetingpoint in Helsinki is one example of branch libraries that are not "living rooms" but "working rooms" for the community.  This Slideshare site shows more details of this library where people can create, display and publish.

The Espoo Library in the Helsinki area has been a big hit as well.   Here's a Slideshare presentation with some info on Espoo and here's some pictures of the building along with some links to interesting articles.  More pictures on Flickr here.

Help the Camas Library make informed choices.

Every five years the Camas Public Library takes a long look at its services and recharts its course for the following years.  The result is the library’s strategic plan. 

The library is working on its next plan right now and is looking for the community’s help in determining what the Camas library of the future will be.

 One of the most important ways of getting ideas from the public will be a series of focus groups to explore what people want from their library.

 Focus group meetings will be held: Monday, March 14, 6 pm, Wednesday, March 16, 11am, Friday, March 18, 4 pm, Saturday, March 19, 1 pm, Monday, March 21, noon, Tuesday, March 22, 7 pm **, Wednesday, March 23, 3 pm, and Thursday, March 24, 10:30 am.

 ** Fire Station 42.

 To spur your imagination and thinking about the possibilities, the library created this blog that will present ideas or articles or links to what some other libraries are doing.

 Also the library will be conducting a number of online and in-person surveys.  Surveys will be announced on this blog, at the library, in focus groups and at a number of meetings during March.

 This is your personal invitation to participate and inform our choices.  Please joins us!

"The Future of Reading"

The LA Times included the libraries of Rangeview, Colorado, known not as libraries, but "Anythink"  in their series on the future of reading.  What do you think about Anythink? Do you think the Dewey Decimal Classification system should be deep sixed?

Anythink was  one of five U.S. libraries to win the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation's highest honor for libraries.

Read some more about Anythink here and here.  And see some photos here and here.

Urban Media Space?

Here's a CNN story about the future of libraries and what some libraries are doing now.  Will the "Urban Media Space" be the library's replacement?  Read this and tell us what you think.

See some of the Aarhus Public Library's experiments here.

Welcome

Every five years the library Board of Trustees, staff, and interested public step back and take a long look at the library and the future, collect and analyze data, talk with experts and come up with some goals, some targets, to aim for in the near future.  It's sometimes called a "strategic plan."

 
Over the next three months this blog will be used to explore some ideas, to float some balloons, to ask and answer questions about what you think the Camas  library of tomorrow should be.  Should it be like the library of your childhood?  Should it be open more hours or days?  Should there be more creative activities?  What will broadband bring to the library and community?  Will collecting the printed book  still be our primary focus?  What role does the library play in Camas?  What have you seen in other libraries that you like?

All these topics and many more will be introduced here for discussion.

Of couse, the standard rules for posting apply.  --David Zavortink, Director