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Libraries in Danger

Can libraries possibly remain relevant in the digital age?

As I see it they won’t survive as repositories of books that people don’t want to own (or reference books nobody can afford). My students don’t even know what’s available in their school library, and the public librarians I’ve spoken to are telling me that patrons are mostly interested in free DVD rentals and the latest Twilight. That’s a strategy for disaster, and to think that these repositories are publicly funded and hardly used is disquieting.

But In a refreshing sense, people are taking the intellectual initiative.

The Web has turned everything upside down. Information is now free. No need to collect taxes to make reference books available in a dusty library. Ultimately I’m encouraged by how aggressive we’ve become in searching for and using information. Let’s continue to knock down the walls (barriers) to learning (and maybe a couple of those old libraries while we’re at it) while transforming our newfangled gadgets into our own personal libraries.

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Video: Will E-Readers Kill Books?

For the first time, electronic readers like the Kindle outsold printed books on Amazon.com. Some industry experts believe books are perhaps becoming a thing of the past. This Newsy video examines the issue from different perspectives. See transcript.

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Walt Whitman & Levi’s Jeans

Can you imagine that? A TV commercial for Levi’s Jeans starring. . . . Walt Whitman!

The voice heard in the commercial is from a 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman’s voice reading four lines from the poem America. When I watch this commercial, am I supposed to internalize the poem’s message that I am the mistress of my own fate? I’m just not sure if it’s okay to sell jeans using the voice of a man who spent his entire life eschewing commercialism. Sure, Whitman wore jeans, but he wore them because they were the clothes of the rebellious, not because the beautiful people wore them.

Look, I’m all for contemporary reworkings of public domain texts, images, and audio, but perhaps it would be better if the people who typically use this kind material did so outside the realm of crass commercialism. That way we won’t have to guess at hidden agendas. What’s up next? F. Scott Fitzgerald selling vodka?

For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, “The Whitman Recording,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16.

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Henry Jenkins on the role of digital media

Henry Jenkins is a USC media professor. In this video he describes the role of digital media in cultural transformation — and its profound implications for education. I agree 100% with his take that our schools are not ready for the kinds of change implicit in the new media.

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