Fact or fiction? Libraries can thrive in the Digital Age

Walk through the doors of a school library that has successfully navigated the shift to a modern, physical, and virtual learning commons, and things will look different from what adults remember from their school days. Today’s school library uses an increasing number of digital resources to supplement a print collection that is moving more toward fiction and literary nonfiction. Supplemental resources, including streaming video, online resources, subscription databases, audiobooks, e-books, and even games, round out the new collections. Despite the best efforts of even the hardest working librarians in the best-funded libraries, there are many challenges to going digital.

There can be no question: Digital is the future of information. For those bemoaning the shift, often evoking arguments centered around the smell and feel of paper tomes, be assured that your protestations are all for naught. In the end, digital content will win because it is faster, easier, more connected, and more flexible. E-books, like digital music in the early 2000s, are a disruptive technology steadily gaining in the public mindset. Disruptive technologies, initially rejected by experts as being inferior to the status quo, are embraced by the masses. The widespread adoption drives rapid development, leading to improvements that quickly overshadow the technology being replaced. Apple’s iPod, released in 2001, though not the first MP3 player, rapidly rose to prominence as the easiest way to carry around music. Audiophiles were horrified by the loss of fidelity from MP3 compression and further shocked by the mediocre earbuds included with the iPod, but, in the end, the device’s ease of use led it to market dominance. Thanks to the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad, this is the era of e-books.

Fifteen years ago, I would have agreed with anyone who said e-books were not ready for use in schools and libraries. They weren’t. Some smaller publishers, most notably Baen, which first began selling e-books in 1999, met the needs of early adopters, but there weren’t really any readers to support mass adoption. Even when the first Amazon Kindle was launched in 2007 as the first truly successful mass-market e-book reader, the technology was hardly perfect. Page turns on the older e-ink screens had a noticeable delay. The resolution and black/white contrast — dark gray on light gray if we are honest — also left much to be desired. The launch of the iPad and iBooks in 2010 brought higher resolution LCD screens, color displays, and the opportunity for either true black on white reading or rich picture books. It took a decade for e-book technology to move from a disruptive technology that was nowhere near as good as paper — though arguably more convenient with the ability to carry a library in one’s pocket — to the current situation where e-books are thriving in public and school use.