Blog December Post 5 - Future vs Reality

So I really did post yesterday's post before reading the latest issue of Incite.

If you haven't read it yet, it discusses the future of libraries.

In the Opinion piece, Seth Godin says: The next library is a place, still.  A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together.

My question back would be, what happens to all the libraries that exist that do not have the space to be a place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects?  I have branch libraries that you can barely swing a cat around in - and I can't really believe that the book collection will shrink so much that we can remove the shelves and become a space.

Who will fund the new furniture and technology required to become this.  With local, state and federal budgets being so tight and libraries being at the end of the priority line - where will the money come from to create these spaces??

While I do see new libraries moving this way - what happens to the old?  Do those communities miss out because of lack of funding?

Or in my case we have youth hubs popping up that are providing those spaces for the youth - what of the library?

And then I go back to looking at my libraries and I don't see people using the library space as a space they come together to work.  I see the library space where people use the public computers, sit and read the paper but the majority come in, choose their books and leave.

Another article mentions offering programs.  What of the one person library?  I have a branch where I can't even offer storytime because we don't have the funding to provide an extra staff member for an hour a week to provide this service.

I've been told to use volunteers but we have tried this in the past and it is not sustainable as the volunteer eventually moves on or wants to be paid.

I don't mean to be negative, and I'm happy for people to come back at me with "buts" and suggestions.  Today I just have an issue with looking past the reality of our situation.  And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I am optimistic that one day the funding will rain on us and we will build new buildings enabling us to be creating spaces and have more than one staff working.

But unfortunately, today the realist in me spoke!!