Journal 28 June 2002 Sarah Andrews
I was not really aware that librarians in the past believed that fiction could corrupt young minds. Today some libraries are accused of harming children by allowing them access to a wide variety of books, media, and unmediated web access. But is it the librarian’s job at a public library to act as a teacher of morals? I don’t think so.
What do we Americans want a public library to be? Is it a place where group morality is enforced for the masses? Is it a place where we can only view/read/experience materials from the “right” point of view? Since libraries are usually funded with public dollars, they can be (and have been) asked to focus their collections on a specific area—such as science or technology—for the betterment of society at large.
With technology changing so rapidly, we cannot predict what a library will look like in the future. Will it be full of holographic librarians who perform better than humans as Robertson suggests may happen in the fine arts? I predict libraries will begin to provide services for virtual patrons—patrons who never enter the physical building. For example, San Jose Public (http://www.sjpl.lib.ca.us/) has a reference chat room available on the web every day. Libraries that can provide a broad spectrum of public services, and those that appear current technologically (if technology is indeed determined to be an important focus), will continue to receive funding.