I am a Library Director in rural northeastern Montana. I found your articles researching libraries and visions for the future. We have been working ln a library building project for roughly 10 years…seriously space planning now. This information confirms to me that the space planning figures being used today are incorrect..or not realistic. If in the nexy fifty years our collections become mostly all digital…how do we design our building now? Include current book numbers and then make the design so flexible that the book stack spaces become people spaces and technology labs for public to collaborate…designed in such a way that the home business worker can come in and the library is their office, student does distance learning? I am wondering how quickly the book will morph to e-books. There is so much going on as far as digital rights. Even when we buy a digital book…we really don’t actually own it… if the company were to go defunct we would lose our books. And now the company wants to put a limit on the number of checkouts a digital book can be loaned…says real books wear out…so, in essenence publishing companies want their books to wear out so people have to purchase more. But if you have some advice or where I could go for further information on building design and space planning for a library of the future. Our resources are limited and we’ll need to get this right (as much as we can) and get our community to see the vision as well. Thanks
Renee Goss

Thanks for your kind words. The current education system has tremendous inertia, even though it is woefully out of touch with the technologies and lifestyles of today’s young people.

That said, you may find inspiration in Chris Anderson’s concept of “crowd accelerated innovation.” Check out the following video and article.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_tedvideos/ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Zo53M0lcY

Please remember, we only value that which we struggle to achieve. There is great value in the struggle.

I wish you the best my friend,

Tom

I am in the process of setting up a new school to put into practice my ideals of education. I left the education system after my headmaster and mentor told me that the system is just not ready for what I was proposing. I wanted the school to become a shareware portal. To cut a long story short I decided to go alone and 7 years down the track I ended up with a successful education business but totally missed my goals of affecting young people. In short I have now gone back to basics. I have moved my family to a rural part of New Zealand and along with my wife we are setting up a centre that will have an ipad for every student and will encourage students to engage with their learning and also create their own learning. I have been following your blogs for a longtime now and felt reassured that there was somebody out there with similar thoughts.

The reason I have now decided to write a reply is that your discussion on libraries has completed the picture for me. I have always pondered the reality of where will my students meet to research and create information. They will have a classroom with everything on hand but I want the classroom to remain minimal. I would also like to get to the stage where the classroom disappears and just becomes a meeting place to monitor progess.

We have a good local library and on Monday I am going to pay them a visit to find out if they are prepared to become a good future library.

Many thanks for your inspiration

Peter

Ida Tomshinsky
ITT Tech Miami
LRC, Library Director

Thanks for the kind words. I give talks to many libraries groups around the world about what the future may hold, and have several more short papers on library-related topics in various stages of completion. My goal is to complete one per week, so stay tuned.

Also, I hope to visit the new library in Berlin in person sometime soon. The pictures are beautiful.

Tom