They Get the Spaces In Between

The first thing that came to mind as I read the Seely Brown chapter was: if the home office revolution is so compelling and inevitable, why doesn't Google subscribe to it? After all, they certainly have the technology to support it. Instead, Google has a corporate culture that is built around an office. So even though technology can facilitate and revolutionize the way we communicate, especially across long distances, it cannot account for what I like to call "the spaces in between", that part of human interaction that takes place only in physical proximity. With the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools you could argue that physical proximity is not necessary, that technology can bridge that gap. But if there is one thing that I learned from lo, these many months of HIB theory, it is that you need to take context into consideration when dealing with human interaction. While Web 2.0 technologies have made communication easier on many levels, they do not replace face to face communication. An emoticon can represent a smiley face, but no one is going to say that it replaces actual smiling in our day to day life. So as long as people still need and thrive on actual human interaction, there is hope for a brick and mortar library. But the library's continued existence should not be taken for granted.

The computer is a tool, not the answer to every problem, and it is how libraries use that tool that will determine their future viability. As Seely Brown indicated, we sometimes expect society to adapt to changing technology, a slow and painful process, when a subtle change in point of view could have us asking how can emerging technologies facilitate our growth as a society, how do we adapt technology to our societal needs and goals, not the other way around. This can be applied in the society of libraries as well: the question isn't how are we going to adapt to all of these new technologies--wikis, websites with bells and whistles, IM, RefChat, rss feeds, MySpace, Facebook--but how can we use them to further the growth of our institutions and the growth of our communities, hopefully a growth of which the library is a vital part. So are we, libraries, to be the users or the used up? We cannot ignore technological advances, but neither can we let them dictate our mission.

Theoretically, we can make the jump from home office to home library: everyone has the power of the library right at ther fingertips, no need to have a building, pay expensive professionals, and keep up a dusty old collection, if in a few keystrokes you can call up any kind of reference you want. Well, the same arguments that Seely Brown made against the viability of the virtual office replacing the actual office can be made in defense of the brick and mortar library: technology can be frustrating--the perfect machine has yet to be invented--so people like and need support from expert users,otherwise they have to become experts themselves. Let's face it, sometimes you just want a tech to push you out of your chair and take over when the going gets rough. Often, this kind of help can only take place face to face.

So on one hand it seems that replacing brick and mortar libraries with click and mortar libraries is inevitable in the face of emerging technology, and on the other hand (like the virtual office) not so much. The question is how can libraries leverage new technologies with the "spaces in between" that they fill and become a part of the fabric of those technologies?