The Future of Libraries
I’m lucky enough to have children who are way smarter than me- seriously.
My middle daughter and I, the real Leigh, recently drove around New England looking at Universities that she’d like to attend in the fall of 2016.
When she asked if I’d take her on this little tour I agreed, but only if we could check out the libraries of each school after we toured. This was a joke, but she agreed.
On our list we had Harvard, Boston College, Brown, Yale, Tufts, and Dartmouth among others.
I think my eyes grew four times in size every time I opened the door to one of these amazing school libraries.
I know my brain did.
What is it about these places that make you smarter for having set foot inside?
I saw rare book collections that literally blew my mind.
Did you know Dr. Seuss went to Dartmouth?
But how do these bastions of the written word keep up the work they do now that the world is turning digital?
I had a fascinating conversation with a professor on the sidelines of a field hockey practice in which he brought up this very question. .
What is the future of our libraries?
How do we archive the written word when everything we do these days is no longer on paper?
Electronic media is so transitional.
Even something as simple as the art of handwriting has almost disappeared.
It’s stunning to me.
I still write in a journal every night. The notebook sits by my bed, but my handwriting stinks compared to the penmanship of my predecessors, which makes me very sad.
So make sure you and everyone you know keep writing by hand to keep up this waning tradition. Handwritten thank you cards and journals may be the only thing our libraries have left.
Letters are obsolete. Books, even those in print, are written on our computers. So few are actually even printed.
Don’t let our libraries die.
Take out your pencil and write something today!
Happy Reading- Stacey
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