Just as the prognosticators 40 years ago predicted the death of the movie theater industry, prognosticators are currently predicting the death of the library. Until recently, the same voices were predicting the death of the book, but the reversal of fortune of the eBook industry has quieted those calls. The book and the library will survive into the foreseeable future, but both will experience continued and rapid changes. The historical interplay between the book and the library will continue and will be subjected to change at an increasingly rapid rate in their coexistence. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. The same interplay between technology and human institutions is occurring throughout the industrial and information-based society.
http://publications.drdo.gov.in/gsdl/collect/dbit/index/assoc/HASH0129/f4427ca5.dir/dbit2301007.pdf
If there is a rapid expanding of the number of publishing operations, the work of a bibliographer and/or acquisition librarian will be more involved in identifying works and acquiring them. Most new markets experience a profusion of producers in the early stages, followed by a gradual reduction in the numbers of players through attrition and consolidation. Initially, there may be a barrage of content from different producers, but this will likely narrow as librarians identify the most reliable participants in the market.
Much time is spent on the historical production methods of books in education of librarians. An examination of my own library, finds shelf after shelf of works concerned with the history of book production prior to the 1850s, and usually prior to 1700. Few librarians are trained or become knowledgeably familiar with the current and developing printing technologies that are fundamental to their work. The consequences of this lack of awareness are difficult to gauge. As book-printing technologies continue to change at a faster and faster rate, it is incumbent upon librarians to understand the printing methodologies (in physical and electronic form) and the market forces that determine how information is published. With this understanding, librarians will be able to either influence these trends or, at minimum, use this knowledge to select the material formats that best suit the constraints of their budgets and needs of their library’s users.
Just as the prognosticators’ in my employer’s trade magazines 40 years ago predicted the death of the movie theater industry, prognosticators are currently predicting the death of the library. Until recently, the same voices were predicting the death of the book, but the reversal of fortune of the eBook industry has quieted those calls. The book and the library will survive into the foreseeable future, but both will experience continued and rapid changes. The historical interplay between the book and the library will continue and will be subjected to change at an increasingly rapid rate in their coexistence. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. The same interplay between technology and human institutions is occurring throughout the industrial and information-based society.