CB

A good friend started a campaign about libraries recently, which is getting some international credence (all hail the power of twitter!) My own thoughts take a few more than 140 characters, hence this post.

Some people consider me to be a web 'expert'. I shy from the term, because it is subjective, though I admit to spending an unhealthy amount of time consuming and developing for the web. Recently Amazon's kindle, and the iPad profess to be the future, thousands of books portable, on a single device. Those who search for zeitgeist may agree, the death of the book has been discussed since digitisation and miniaturisation.

However, books have a proven track record. As a child, my grandfather showed me a book from the 1700's from his collection. It had outlasted generations, and wars. I have data on CD-ROMS that haven't lasted 5 years because of a child's sticky fingers. And herein lies the problem. Hard disks fail. CD's will not survive the Frisbee across a room that Tomorrows World promised us. Printing a book remains that the most stable and portable way to encode human knowledge. Encoding errors (smelling pistakes) are reduced toward zero as further editions are produced. And those books are not subject to power surges, or problems when dropped, or solar flares.

While we are distracted by the web, currently the most convenient way to get information, the library is the quiet bedrock of our knowledge, accessible to everyone, always there, and not just available to the internet savvy middle/upper classes. Government beware. Local libraries, no matter how small, are silently important. And they are defended. #SaveLibraries.