John Green on "The future of reading"
Today I read John Green's article for the School Library Journal, "The Future of Reading: Don't Worry. It Might Be Better Than You Think." Even though I'm not the target audience, I thought it was a good piece of general interest, that did a good job encouraging its target audience (youth librarians) about the future.
This puts me in mind to do two things. The first is to encourage others to read the article, and possibly the Q&A on John's blog (or the second Q&A). The part that had me saying "Fuck yeah!" was:
Children’s publishing is as vibrant and diverse as it is because of the strength of our institutional market. Children’s and school libraries serve, in the best sense of the word, as gatekeepers. You don’t collect only the books your kids already like; you also try to bring them to the best books. Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.
I had that happen to me when I was a kid, many times, from both librarians and ordinary concerned adults who wanted to make sure I was reading the right things. This is how I first came across the GNU Manifesto, Alan Kay's Dynabook papers, and Moretta: Dragonlady of Pern. And it still happens to me, but more rarely. These days about all I bother to read are other peoples' crullers. The Life of Pi springs to mind. So anyway, libraries and librarians are critically important, and we should all support them better in their work.
The second thing I'm in mind to do is to write about John's librarians-as-gatekeepers model as it pertains to people outside the youth collection subfield. Specifically, how John's model provides a useful way to think about the work that I do at SLAC, about initiatives like SCOAP3, and about the future of science publishing. I haven't quite organized my thoughts yet though, so I'll write something more expansive to post soon.
PS: Along with labrarians-as-gatekeepers comes libraries-as-infrastructure-providers. But those thoughts are even fuzzier.
This puts me in mind to do two things. The first is to encourage others to read the article, and possibly the Q&A on John's blog (or the second Q&A). The part that had me saying "Fuck yeah!" was:
Children’s publishing is as vibrant and diverse as it is because of the strength of our institutional market. Children’s and school libraries serve, in the best sense of the word, as gatekeepers. You don’t collect only the books your kids already like; you also try to bring them to the best books. Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.
I had that happen to me when I was a kid, many times, from both librarians and ordinary concerned adults who wanted to make sure I was reading the right things. This is how I first came across the GNU Manifesto, Alan Kay's Dynabook papers, and Moretta: Dragonlady of Pern. And it still happens to me, but more rarely. These days about all I bother to read are other peoples' crullers. The Life of Pi springs to mind. So anyway, libraries and librarians are critically important, and we should all support them better in their work.
The second thing I'm in mind to do is to write about John's librarians-as-gatekeepers model as it pertains to people outside the youth collection subfield. Specifically, how John's model provides a useful way to think about the work that I do at SLAC, about initiatives like SCOAP3, and about the future of science publishing. I haven't quite organized my thoughts yet though, so I'll write something more expansive to post soon.
PS: Along with labrarians-as-gatekeepers comes libraries-as-infrastructure-providers. But those thoughts are even fuzzier.