Libraries & the New Role of the Librarian

I have always had a sense of reverence for libraries. When you walk into a library, the atmosphere is always calm, quiet, and peaceful. People are serious. There is always some hardcore learning going on. That, or there are strange young women crawling around on the floor making messes. Okay, so that was just me. I used to sit in the stacks in the top floor of Gordon B. Olson Library and just pull down book after book about anything that looked interesting. I spent hours in there, not even doing research, just plopped down there, mesmerized by the information in those books. And it's not like I'm old; I've grown up with Google, but there was something about physically being in the stacks, the stink/perfume of the pages, and the weight of the books in my hands.

Of course, there was also a computer lab in the basement of the library where I spent a ridiculous amount of time typing papers. It was nice to have spaces to do my research and then to type my paper all in one setting (not that I ever researched, drafted, and edited any papers in just one day).

Yes, I loooooove good old fashioned libraries and the clunky books inside of them, but I think that libraries are changing, and I'm a little nervous. I know that the change is good and I realize it won't happen overnight, but I'm so used to books that I'm scared. How are all of those stacks going to be replaced by tablets and lap tops? I don't understand? How do I check out my books? Do they just put them on my tablet? What about people who don't have tablets? I probably need to do some more research on this and it might put my mind at ease, but for now, I'm going to be cautious. I (and I think a lot of people) need to be coaxed into this idea. Let's try some of the procedures out before we chuck all of those beautiful, smelly, and heavy hardbacks.

One more note on e-books: I don't mind reading on my tablet, and I'm not against buying online and storing my books, music, and movies in the cloud, but dangit, I love to loan out books to friends. How do I do that with an e-book? Yeah, yeah, I can loan it to one person, but how about my favorite book that I've loaned out roughly 15 times? That's important to me. I guess that's getting off topic of the whole library thing. That's