Instead of becoming obsolete or extinct, local libraries should become portals to the global catalogue – a place where every conceivable text is directly obtainable. Instead of a library card, I might have a portable PC tablet that I use for all my e-texts, and I could plug into the stacks to download or search material. In this way, each library is every library.
But community libraries shouldn’t simply be a node on the larger network. They should cultivate their unique geographical and cultural situation and build themselves into repositories of local knowledge. By being freed, literally, of the weight of general print collections, local branches could really focus on cultivating rich, site-specific resources and multimedia archives of the surrounding environment.
In Salinas, for example, there are two bookshelves of Chicano literature at the Cesar Chavez Library – a precious, unique resource that will soon be inaccessible as libraries close to solve the city’s budget crisis. With all library collections digitized, you wouldn’t have to physically be in Salinas to access the Chicano shelves, but Salinas would remain the place where the major archival work is conducted, and where the storehouse of material artifacts is located.
It would be a shame for libraries to lose their local character, or for knowledge to become standardized because of big equalizers like Google. But when federal and municipal money is so tight that libraries are actually closing down, can we really expect the digitization of libraries to be achieved by anyone but the big commercial entities (like Google)? And if they’re the ones in charge, can we really count on getting the kind of access to books that libraries once provided? (image: Cesar Chavez Library, Salinas)