Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)

KÖNYVTÁR ÉS HAGYOMÁNY – LIBRARY AND TRADITION

T. Kabdebo 76 years old, since the depots of parchments, papyrus rolls, and clay tablets were the prototypes of both libraries and archives. The non-moribund libraries of today are once again multimedia; print, micro, computer workstations, A.V. paraphernalia, discs and reams of tape of every kind are assembled in quasi logical (or mutually complimentary) order for the user. Up to date induction is also a teaching of rudimentary skills in using the above weapons in the fight against ignorance i.e. in the conquest of islands of knowledge. Playing with the computer is great fun and the video is ever so much more evocative than trekking through a bulky book. May I compare this with a varied sporting life? In the olden days of print only, it was like a large cross country race, in which everybody had to participate. Today, some may run, others do the hurdles or jump, or alternate at all the three, and reach the same goal. Thinking along these lines, would it be conceivable that we needed no more athletic tracks because lone jogging had also been invented? The library of the future will indeed be different from the silent book temples most of us are used to and cherish. Reading a book in total silence, surrounded by other books, touching the texture of paper and the palpable pleasure of handling leather bindings, smelling fresh print and the glue of the spine are not only the perks of traditional information seeking but somehow the very milieu of bookmanship and librarianship. It is a language all savants used to speak and may still do, it is worth both preserving and rejuvenating. One cannot escape noticing the phenomenon that while public libraries are contracting, or even go out of existence, there is a huge boom of video-libraries, even small villages boost them. Yet, from the constant increase of the world's book output one should not come to the conclusion that reading has declined on a world scale. In the industrial world there is more leisure time available than before, and there are more competing pastimes for that growing stretch of leisure time than previously. The rejuvenated library is even more a depository of knowledge and an arena of pleasure reading (and connected activities) than ever before. The ideal library of the future will be a multimedia action library. At its core, or in the hub, there would still have to be quiet reading rooms lined with classics and multiple compendia. (In these rooms I would put the flickering screens behind a screen.) In the next circle, outwards, there should be a full range of I.T. services, those that the user can learn to handle, and whose costs the library would automatically bear. Beyond that, there should be text-automats, some with operators and charges. Should a user wish to have the transmitted text of a collection of Shinto prayers preserved in a Japanese library, he should have to pay the charges set thereby. "Interlibrary Loans" as we know it will whither away the BL's mighty loan empire will transform itself into a benevolent library-information-documentation commonwealth. 74 Thoughts in the library "