An episode of future library experience

There are two main reasons I go to a college Library: I have a specific purpose of searching certain information or I just go there to read whatever it makes me feel like reading. I can do these activities at home, but I deliberately go to the library because first, I have access to a broader variety of books and second, I like sitting in a quite and intellectual atmosphere and do my work at a specific time period. But there are few things that bother me. They require me to pass through all the entrance procedures. I understand that identification checking is important, but it is something that I do not enjoy at all.

Let’s see the first case where I go there to find specific information. First, I have to look for the information I want to find either on the web or personally. In case I search for books on the web, I have to ask the librarians to look for them. Then I have to wait for them. After 30 minutes they are in my hands; I have to verify whether the information is actually the one I am looking for. If it is so, I read it and probably I want to continue searching for further information. So I go and sit in front of the computer and do the process again. If the information is not the one I needed, I go back and sit in front of the computer to do the process, as well. I have to start from zero. The computer does not keep record of my searching records, nor does it have an application such as that of Amazon where I can find other books that have relationships with a certain part I am interested in. So, in many cases, I end up being hours at the library to find too little relevant information.

It would be ultimately amazing if the library digitized all the papers it has and offers services through digital ink based screens right ad hoc. This newly radical digital convergence will certainly revolutionize the concept that most people have about libraries.

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All the references are linked to each other, so I could cross check and research much more rapidly. Once I leave the place and revisit some time later, I could trace the search record, so I do not need to go through the search labyrinth all over again.

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I do not need to physically be at the library to read the information I need. I would have access to all the information I could find at the library through a laptop on the internet. So, my library could be at home, at the Starbucks, on my way on the subway.

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The digitized library will have a research or book reading social network system, where people with similar research focus to mine or from completely different backgrounds share opinions and understanding of specific parts of the books. It will give me a collective researching and learning experience.

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Deep in our minds, we doubt whether this will actually come true. We are quite pessimistic when it comes to changing our paradigms. But, once we retrospect and see how the world has radically changed through technology innovation in the past ten years, we can surely predict a new world of library in the very near future.