The myth of the library

OK, so I just took one hour out of my life to talk to Laura at Dish Network who connected me to Chris, my own true love at this particular time, who guided me through approximately one hundred and fifty-two thousand feet of black cords and in whose name (he is named after St. Christopher even though he's Spanish and I'm sure very handsome) I now declare "what in hell is this one loose cord supposed to hook up to??" Technician arrives between 1 & 5 this afternoon. Too bad it can't be Chris, my own true love.

     Technology and I have a love hate affair going on that is familiar to many. I believe, however, that things will come around full circle if the world is not blown off its axis first. For instance, I just took my English 1000 students for a Library instructional period during which Wayne a friendly and smart librarian demonstrated all kinds of  technological reasons why people needn't darken the door of a real library, ever again. All one needs is a good internet connection and off she goes. Did you know that Google now has digitalized hundreds of thousands of books?! I'm talking from 5 to 95 % of the text of these books is free and open to everyone. We can print them out, these pages of text. We can also find anything about any topic for research papers in approximately five minutes--after practicing on the computer with a library's multiple database opportunities.
      BUT, I predict that sitting in front of a computer screen either to read the stuff or to find it will become warying and that the social aspect of being human will just naturally take over--sometime in the future--I'll probably be dead. People will once again want to go sit quietly in a library, fall asleep while reading--in the library, the greatest place for naps in the world, and/or whisper their way through a conversation rather than take it outside. Libraries play lots of roles in our lives and the role of "book depository" is just one. Perhaps the fact that people (students --who are people, really) don't HAVE to go to a library anymore, will work ironically in favor of --well--going to the library. No pressure. Just nice quiet, sometimes musty smelling--sometimes sweet--rooms with hundred foot high windows and ancient lattice work and solid oak and real brass and nowadays that rich coffee smell that noone can really describe with words. Yes, people will be back to libraries and I hope libraries will stay around long enough to be there for all the returnees.