Response to the Flat World Library Corporation Letter

Writers write, of course, because they get satisfaction from others reacting to their writing. It is especially gratifying to a writer when a highly-respected colleague takes the time to send a compliment and comment.

My friend John Royce, Library Director for the  Robert College of Istanbul, is such a colleague. He is a leader in the international school community, author and workshop leader, and I had the great good fortune to first meet him in Berlin at an ECIS Conference in 2002. Anyway, he was kind enough to send this (appearing here with his kind permission) after reading my column that had at its heart "A Letter from the Flat World Library Corporation."

 Dear Doug,
Greetings from Istanbul!

Where spring keeps threatening to be almost just around the corner, and  the March issue of Library Media Connection has just hit my desk.

As always, I turned to the back of the mag, headed straight for "Head for the Edge," and...

Many, many congratulations.  The Flat World Lib Corp article is so spot-on, every word counts.  Just love that "We can even help your  teachers design assignments and assessments, making them free to
lecture" - what a lovely throwaway thought.

It's all already here, isn't it?  What with Questia and Virtual Library  and Turnitin and ETS TOEFL assessment and Google Answers and Kasamba and any of the periodicals databases and ...  it's all already here, and it  just needs some clever marketing to bundle it all together into a single package and then some aggressive, misleading advertising (did someone say turnitin?) - and it's down to the retraining center.  Unless we can  convince our cash-strapped superintendents that the answer is NOT more technology, it's more awareness of what technology does not do, more  thought about the purpose of education...  Indispensable Librarian? 

Nobody's indispensable, not even Google (which today happily allows indispensible and no hint that it might be a misspelling).

(You know, there are some people who believe that the purpose of education is NOT just to ensure that the masses receive enough knowledge almost to survive in today's world, but never enough to question the system or the powers that be) (and if they do, it's a certain lack of Patriot Act-ism and therefore criminal) (but sometimes it seems that it is only some people, and not the "right" people, who believe it should be more...)

More power to you, Doug,

John adds in a follow-up e-mail:

I came across i-cue <http://www.i-cue.co.uk/> a few weeks back, an online bookshop which will download complete books to your mobile phone.  The examples cited included "Gulliver's travels", "The complete works of Shakespeare" and "Peter Pan" (along with a handful of in-print in-copyright texts).   On your phone!  Get a life, please. 

The Times Educational Supplement article (March 10, 2006 if you want to chase it up) goes on to cite a survey which suggests "that girls' and boys' reading improves when they use handheld devices to read e-books".  (Mmmm, as if a book was not a handheld device, as if books - and reading - don't contribute to reading improvement...)

It's a nice thought, have the library so welcoming and so evidently useful that the students - and their teachers - will keep coming in.  I'm glad I used the word "evidently" there - because Ross Todd kicked
in, and his ideas of finding and using evidence of the usefulness of the library.  And even more, of the librarian.  It's not enough to bring in the punters, you've got to have their voice saying how much they need you and the library.  There's the answer - an answer, anyway - to the penciled question at the foot of the letter, "Why should I not buy this product?" 

 First, John, thanks for the observations and insights. But thanks as well for the compliment. Even writers who have developed very thick skins enjoy one now and again.

I hope spring makes it to the Bosphorous soon.