I have had the opportunity to contribute a chapter titled “The Public Library in 2020” to a book edited by Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School. The book collects a number of visions or speculations about how libraries will change in the next few years; working with Joe on this was a delight. My chapter is available at
https://www.cni.org/publications/cliffs-pubs/public-library-2020/
Two comments.
First, this should be seen as only one possible future for public libraries; and perhaps a rather conservative one. For example, it doesn’t discuss Makerspaces, which may be a very important development for our society broadly, and one that may well have an interesting developing relationship with public libraries.
Second, for more on the issue of mass market e-books and how they relate to the evolution of public libraries, my recent piece for American Libraries (available at https://www.cni.org/publications/cliffs-pubs/ebooks-2013-promises-broken-kept-faustian-bargains/) may be of interest as a complement.
Information on the full book — available both as an e-book and a printed book, which is titled “Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library”, is available from the publisher at
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810887145
There is a very nice interview with Joe Janes about the book overall that ran very recently in Publisher’s Weekly, this is at
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI