16 1.The physical library. Schools will be made of bricks and mortar for as long as they are expected to provide not just educational, but custodial services by the public. While home schooling and virtual schooling are growing, both serve a small fraction of the total PK-12 population. Most families will expect schools to contain and shelter their children as well as educate them. But will the library itself remain a physical entity when all the resources of today’s library and more are accessible via an affordable, practical e-book?

17  The library should house the infrastructure technologies needed to insure that e-books connect to each other and the rest of the world. It is also the logical place to house the technical staff where one of our tasks will be help them prioritize their tasks and possibly supervise. A production lab containing computers with massive processing power used to do high-end image and video processing and number crunching will be a part of tomorrow’s media center.

18  The library will remain a physical learning space if we begin creating facilities and environments where kids and teachers want to be. The library must have comfortable chairs, a pleasant ambiance, and a friendly, low-stress, safe, and forgiving atmosphere. (12) It must contain flexible spaces that can be used by individuals, small groups, and whole classes. Physical books that still have value but are not yet digitized, may still be present, but will eventually be sent to historical society or university archives where they can be better preserved. Security systems will be a thing of the past since there will be no “books” to steal.

19  Collaborative learning and the need for social interaction will require our libraries are places of active learning. While the e-book will make virtual communication readily available, providing a place for face-to-face interaction is role the library can fill. I personally hope that storytelling, puppetry, live debates and demonstrations will be part of every child’s education. And while most of a child’s education will be highly individualized to meet specific learning goals and styles, interpersonal and collaborative skills will also be a part of the curriculum.

20  As librarians, we will need to compete for patrons using our space. Since we are no longer the only game in town for information, it will be our skills, especially our interpersonal skills, to which patrons will be drawn. The librarian needs to be a good reason to go to the library rather than to avoid the library if we are to exist. (13)

21  If the library is not a wonderful place to be to learn, to socialize and to relax, students and teachers will use their e-books in places that are.

22  2.Resources. The librarian, of course, will be selecting commercial digital materials to be made available to students and to staff. While it may mean continuing to purchase some single titles of resources, it will more likely be the librarian’s job to purchase access to collections of digital materials. (14) These collections will need to complement and supplement state-provided resources (15), the commercial Internet, and materials that come standard (dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, etc.) on e-books designed for school use. And of course, it will be librarian’s job to budget for, acquire, and track the licenses needed to use these products.

23  Materials will need to be even more carefully chosen to support the curriculum and specific instructional needs of teachers. With so much information available, maintaining a highly useable library webpage tailored specifically to meet the needs of the individual school’s curriculum will be a primary job of the librarian.

24  The librarian’s expertise, available online and accessible through e-books, may be the single most valuable “resource” the library will offer.  The questions will be difficult and we will need to not only have expertise ourselves in locating specific materials, resources and information, but be able to use expert systems that rely on artificial intelligence as well. (16)

25  3.Jobs. Teachers and administrators must come to us for help with problems only we can solve. As printed textbooks become obsolete, librarians will use the experiences and skills learned creating pages of selected web sites and webquests to assist teachers in building individualized (to the student) e-textbooks accessed and read on e-books. We will still need to be experts in children’s and young adult materials – regardless of their format – to meet the needs of both the struggling and advanced learners. And we will continue to provide staff development opportunities in information technologies.

26  Classroom teachers will continue to send kids to the library only if the librarian is better at helping them find information or complete a task than the teacher himself. We also need to have responsibility for teaching an identified set of skills, virtually and in person, which no one can teach better. (Might the very best teacher-librarians free-lance to schools willing to pay for their teaching talents?)

27  Information-literacy skills will be more important to student’s future success than ever. Because of the growing glut of information, we will to increasingly focus on helping students: