Texts like this boggle the imagination, and I tend to think that Science Fiction here may-be goes too far to be really interesting.
On the other hand, if you look up the word “may-be” in Google, the system will retrieve - in a split second - more than 1.8 billion occurrences.
So may-be anything IS possible.
7. The eternal librarian
Basically, the task of librarians is twofold: firstly they have to organise knowledge systems, whatever the type, and secondly they have to organise access for users.
These two functions will be necessary in any future, too, also when printed books have disappeared from libraries and with them the libraries themselves.
In this context it may be difficult to retain the title
“librarian”.
I notice, though, that certain very advanced information consumers like astrophysicists have now left print and print-libraries behind, but they are still fond of the concept of “library” to designate an organised set of texts.
Any which way, librarians will turn out to be, I think, a long-lived race, though they may not in the end be entirely human. Nobody will probably notice the difference anyway.
Let is see what Star Wars has to say about the library of the Jedi:
Film clip 8: Star Wars (0:58)
There are a couple of interesting things in this sequence:
Firstly: the format of the traditional library has been
retained by the Jedi. Actually Christian from our group has found that the Jedi library is patterned on Trinity College Library in Dublin.
Slide: Jedi Library and Trinity College Library juxtaposed
This probably just goes to show that the Jedi knights are an anachronistic organisation of oldtimers who have not
really understood what happens in the universe but stubbornly believe that FORCE is everything.
Secondly: and most importantly, the librarian is still there.
And not only is she there: she has the audacity to claim that “if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist!” You only exist, if you have been catalogued by a librarian …
It is certainly not enough to have been imagined by a science fiction author!
A question: is the Jedi librarian truly human or is she a Jedi robot?
I think her way of walking seemed a little robot-like, but Christian from our group thinks she simply has a typical librarians’ gait.
And why was she cranky? Because she was old? Or because the designers had given the robot those traits
In another movie there is no doubt: the librarian is not a human but an avatar of the artificial intelligence, which is the knowledge hub of the world.
We give you two sequences from Time machine. The first one is from the year 2030, that is 22 years from now.
Film clip 9: Time machine (3:21)
The second clip is from the very far future, or more precisely the year 802.701.
Film clip 10: Time machine (1:07)
Worlds will pass, civilisations collapse, mankind may return to the caves - but the librarian will stay on as the battered, yet indefatigable information specialist entrusted with that eternal task of helping users to find information.
8. Go boldly!
There are three basic conclusions from this – admittedly very selective – survey of libraries in Science Fiction.
The first one is:
Print will disappear from academic libraries within a generation.
This is definitely not the shocker it would have been 20 years ago, but that momentous date does keep moving closer, a little too close for comfort, I personally think.
But nonetheless: I am myself, as a library director, today making strategy decisions based on this perception of things.
The second conclusion is that:
Academic libraries will survive the disappearance of the printed book.
Today, it may be safely predicted that their task will be
to organise the digital knowledge resources of the university, including access
to provide specialist assistance to scholars and students in information retrieval,
to be a partner in the dissemination of the research product of the university,
to teach information competence to students,
to support teaching through courscustomised e-resource collections,
and to maintain a study environment for students with single and group study places as well as lounge environments and all that.
They will have other roles too, of course, depending on local circumstances and inventiveness.
The third conclusion is that:
The librarian will survive the library.
The job profile and the title will change, but the librarian will survive in future reincarnations – or avatars – as an organiser of knowledge and of access to knowledge, who is necessary for the world in order to cope with that fabulous increase in available information and data to which Google is only a primitive beginning.
For, Google in its present form will not be able to cope:
the renaissance of specialised systems is fast approaching.
You may object that Science Fiction authors have already thought the intelligent world hub, in the sense of the conscious, artificial intelligence which organises
everything, including knowledge resources and knowledge access, so that man is totally free to play and be creative.
In that particular future, there will not be a librarian, unless they make old-fashioned libraries for fun, but anyway it is so far out that I do not really bother.
There are conditions for the survival of librarians.
One of them is a keen sense of basic identity.
Let us hear what the heroine of The Mummy has to say about that:
Film clip 10: The Mummy(0:26)
A touching scene!
However, there is some inconsistency here.
On the one hand, our heroine quite admirably insists on her identity as a librarian.
On the other hand, she quite mysteriously opposes it to being an intrepid explorer or adventurer, whereas that is exactly what she is herself in the movie.
So we should do what she does, not what she says: we should be adventurous explorer-librarians.
In conclusion, I give you the prologue from the first Star
Our continuing mission is:
To explore strange new worlds.
To seek out new libraries and new civilizations.
To boldly go where no librarian has gone before The only baggage we need is
a sense of identity,
a sense of basic information values and skills,
a sense of newness, and …
a sense of fun!