Filed under: School
I am intrigued by my colleague Greg Farr’s attempt at going to a paperless office. When I was thinking about this on my way to lunch today, I had a thought. What about paperless libraries? I used to kid with my librarians about books being over rated. Why would you need a book when you could just as easily look at the computer screen?
Let that sink in for a moment… no ink smudges… no paper cuts… no waiting for a book…
I know my library friends at this moment are boiling over. WHAT! NO BOOKS! ARE YOU CRAZY!?!?
Actually, I am a little bit crazy, but that is not the point. I worked for a principal once that wanted to make sure every teacher had a staff handbook. Another staff member had produced the handbook on a computer; in fact, every page was on the computer. It was so good it was made into a portion of our website. No paper cuts! No killing trees! I loved it. I’m sure that many staff members felt the same way. All the information was just a click away. You knew where to find it! Probably just as many of the staff members wanted the paper. They wanted something in their hand. They wanted to know they had it if they needed it.
Back to the paperless libraries.
I cannot imagine a world without books. I love the feel of a book in my hands. I love the smell of the pages of old books. (Don’t tell me there are bad chemicals that are killing my brain cells in that smell.) I love the texture of the pages under my fingers. I love the feeling I get when I pick the book back up. I tell my wife that the people in the book need me. They need me to finish the story. A friend of mine went on to say that you can’t take a computer and sit in the bath tub. I’m not one for bookmarks. I dog ear the pages. Margaret Coleman just yelled at me. I know she did. Damaging the books that way. I don’t dog ear books that don’t belong to me. Bookmarks fall out. Dog ears are forever.
Paperless libraries? Not a chance! You can’t dog ear computer screens.
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I did cringe at the idea of dog eared pages because books have always been mystical, magical and precious to me. Even as a small child I just couldn’t dog ear a page. Long before anyone told me they thought it was bad, I always knew instinctively–dog ears bad, books good. Having said that, I prefer to see a book read until it falls apart, dog ears and all, over one sitting pristinely unused on a shelf. A book has no life until it is read.
Although I don’t ever want to live in a world that relies only on electricity for its words. I don’t think we have to choose books or computers. That has to be the biggest misunderstanding of this decade. Literacy doesn’t live only in books, but flows outward to poetry, music, plays and computers. I’ve loved every new creative way people have discovered information and thus new literacies through new technologies.
Librarian is actually an antiquated term. There are very few librarians left on this planet although most of us kindly tolerate the appelation because so many people still want to call us this. We tolerate it and some of us are conflicted about dropping it because it engenders such warm feelings in so many of our clients. Librarians processed, cataloged, archived, checked out books and read stories to children. For more than three decades Library Media Specialists have ushered in the computer age with more enthusiasm than anyone outside the field of computer science, so I’m always amazed at the people who think we’re anti technology. There is no tug of war between books and technology in libraries. We are brokers of information from all sources.
Library Media Specialists can find information no matter where it is stored and welcome every modern automation that makes the storage and retrieval of information easier for the keepers of information and the users. We love information in every form and want to be certain we are always on the cutting edge of information specialization–and most of us are.
Paperless libraries? I hope we never completely do away with books. They have their place. Libraries with more technology and fewer books, maybe, if library media specialists are respected and allowed to apply their professionalism to designing such places. Only then will be certain a professional information specialist has taken into consideration what people need to become literate.
But for now and I suspect a very long time in the future, we want to send information into all homes, even the poorest and that still means we need lots of books. Computers are not in the majority of American homes, but we can send books there. We will continue to strive to promote literacy for every American any way we need to do so. Right now that still means we need books.
Peggy Saint-Michel, MLS
Library Media Specialist
Mullendore Elementary
Smithfield Elementary