Onthecommons | "The word 'public' has been removed from the name of the Fort Worth Library. Why? Simply put, to keep up with the times." From the Media release on the rebranding of the Fort Worth LibraryFort Worth, you leave me speechless. You’re certainly correct about one thing. The public library is indeed an institution that has not kept up with the times. But given what has happened to our times, why do you see that as unhealthy? In an age of greed and selfishness, the public library stands as an enduring monument to the values of cooperation and sharing. In an age where global corporations stride the earth, the public library remains firmly rooted in the local community. In an age of widespread cynicism and distrust of government, the 100 percent tax supported public library has virtually unanimous and enthusiastic support.
This is not the time to take the word “public” out of the public library. It is time to put it in capitals.
The public library is a singularly American invention. Europeans had subscription libraries for 100 years before the United States was born. But on a chilly day in April 1833 the good citizens of Peterborough, New Hampshire created a radical new concept—a truly PUBLIC library. All town residents, regardless of income, had the right to freely share the community’s stored knowledge. Their only obligation was to return the information on time and in good condition, allowing others to exercise that same right.
By the 1870s 11 states boasted 188 public libraries. By 1910 all states had them. Today 9,000 central buildings plus about 7500 branches have made public libraries one of the most ubiquitous of all American institutions, exceeding Starbucks and McDonalds.
Almost two thirds of us carry library cards. At least once a year, about half of us visit a public library, many more than once. Library use varies by class and race and by age and educational level. But the majority of blacks and Latinos as well as whites, old as well as young, poor as well as rich, high school dropouts as well as university graduates, use the public library.
17 comments:
So what would happen if we created a 100 gigabyte standard data block of public domain information?
Netbooks come with 250 gigabyte drives now. Everybody could have a damn good library in their homes and even carry it around. How much would they even need the Internet. The Internet involves spending too much time filtering out incorrect and unimportant information even about things that should be well known.
How many sites claim to explain computers but then do not mention von Neumann machines? That applies to books also. Millions of people are trying to make money on shallow information. So computers could create a
Cybernetic TransPlosion
More people could know lots more but vastly less megabytes of so called info could be moved around. The problem is filtering out all of the infodreck.
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This kind of thing sounds useful, but how can it be made better than Wikipedia? Wikipedia warts & all sure is better than the encyclopedias of my kiddie days, and it's free. Or there's the Khan Academy, chalk talks that (from the few I've looked at) seem to be solid.
umbra: More people could know lots more but vastly less megabytes of so called info could be moved around. The problem is filtering out all of the infodreck.
Right and wrong. Who would define what is dreck and what is not? What if something seems like dreck at first but after years of study provides truth? What if the dreck got you to the right place anyway? What if the dreck was needed to get to the right place? All the info seems useless and superfluous, but ultimately it is an incredibly resilient system and just like a good estimation algorithm, it converges on truth.
Rather than provide a pre-filter on the internet, each and every human should be learning HOW to filter.
The internet is our collective consciousness.
http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2011/05/tv-ownership-in-the-us-is-down-says-nielsen.html
You may have a good business plan - how to filter, like how we taught how to research and purview info quickly.
Off of the classic Edutainment album
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5mFoLYNsWQ&feature=fvst
I used to see a lot of kids in the library just to escape the summer heat.
While there most would read a book or watch a movie.
The town in which I currently live has closed it's main library and has reduced the hours at it's hood branches.
The Internet is fine but I prefer the more tactile experience of reading a book.
Ditto.
It's just the opposite here, with access being exponentially increased and a push on to instigate increased interest and use as a brick and mortar hub of social networking centered on reading, learning, and love of the same.
Well by observation, it looks like the ladies are reading off their Kindle, one smart idea by Amazon. It is the women who do the reading. I used to have mucho books and CD’s, had a fire and realized that the bourgeois habit of collecting books is not the same anymore for me, though I still have some favorites left. I still order books to read – reading Wizard of the Crow – Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, time to read fictions from other cultures, especially Africa. We use our few libraries left in Brooklyn for meetings, btw, we have one of the best main libraries off of Eastern Parkway, in the country, near Grand Army Plaza.
On the children, especially boys, the Public Library needs to join the taking children outside to study nature and have a physical activity, besides sports and fighting, then return to the library and show how to attain the knowledge from the physical library as well as the growing virtual libraries. We need to be creative and not nostalgia over one approach or another. The way I see we have got to use all means to bring the loving of learning back, especially to our boys, who lose it by 11 years old now.
Since we know how animals are learning some new tricks, why not our own?
http://www.livescience.com/14009-chimpanzees-humans-awareness.html
On the children, especially boys, the Public Library needs to join the taking children outside to study nature and have a physical activity, besides sports and fighting, then return to the library and show how to attain the knowledge from the physical library as well as the growing virtual libraries. We need to be creative and not nostalgia over one approach or another. The way I see we have got to use all means to bring the loving of learning back, especially to our boys, who lose it by 11 years old now.
THAT'S what I'm talkin bout!!!
everything else is merely conversation....,
I don't even like the reading. It is the information in the words that matters. I prefer my PMA400 to a book. A book is just different technology to me.
The damn PMA does not autoscrool though. And then they make that stupid iPad with pictures of pages to be turned. That is so stupid I refuse to look at an iPad. How much unnecessary processing power does that take?
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That is exactly the problem. But I don't think all opinions are equal.
I think there are lots of people deliberately spreading bad and watered down information. I worked for the biggest computer company in the world and never saw or heard the term von Neumann machine and yet IBM hired him as a consultant in 1952.
And then it is not mentioned on LOTS of computer books. And to add insult to injury most of the books that mention it have crappy explanations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dg96tefnEU
Truly efficient information distribution would mess with too many information hiding games. But that is what the Internet is for. LOL
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I've done a little bit of amazon kindle and google books browsing on my android phone, but I'm by no means sold on this as an alternative to books (for me, creature of habit that I am)
OTOH - my children and most children I've observed and spoken with seem unencumbered by such habits and perfectly happy to use the small screen and pocket sized device as their interface to reading.
The internet is our collective consciousness.
My first read, I substituted "web" for Internet and thought, "I'm not quite sure I'd go that far given its literally shallow, web-crawling, surface information touching nature" - but on second thought, the Internet(s) are certainly as close to such a thing as we've got.
And already, robust, multi-faceted use of these Internet(s) has become a popularly obscure art...,
Quotes for Edgar from Men in Black
Edgar/Bug: Y'know, I've noticed an infestation here. Everywhere I look, in fact. Nothing but undeveloped, unevolved, barely conscious pond scum, totally convinced of their own superiority as they scurry about their short, pointless lives.
Zap-Em Man: Well, yeah. Uh... don't you want to get rid of 'em?
Edgar/Bug: Ah... in the worst way.
Which goes appropriately after:
Bug: Place your projectile weapon on the ground.
Edgar: You can have my gun, when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Bug: Your proposal is acceptable.
Then of course there's always infantile nonsense like this that purports to be critical of the expectation that folk will make efforts and use discrimination when the knowledge resources are put at their disposal.
Those who fail to make efforts to use the resources at their disposal are flatly expendable and frankly, good riddance....,
Nana - That sounds like a good idea.
One of the remaining branches in the hood is right across from a closed YMCA with a church right next door.
If these three entities could get together and work together....
One fight we had was with the Church, the African-American church began to take private over public, when we fought hard to have the Church become a place for working with youth. In 1969, we took a church over, at the end of the 1970's, the church became the rah rah for g_d loves you because you are prosperous, and then came the hot button issue of sex. Now all religions have problems which is clear now.
It is 50 years this month, 50 years folks not a 100, that our brave youth took the Freedom Riders and gave up lives. We must go back to basics, and bring back what is communal and public.
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