Even if we “hope” there is a will to reclaim control, who is going to lead that movement? Where are the leaders? I believe we are faced with a new paradigm of librarianship that places the emphasis on dealing with the local situation to position your library to survive, and yet that requires exceptional visionary leadership – not a common trait among the profession.

E-books were originally designed to be read on computers. The idea of a dedicated device is simply a way to marry consumers to a particular vendor. Libraries have not only bought into that dubious model, they promote it! How many libraries teach people they can read e-books without buying an e-reader?

For whatever reasons, libraries think they must rely on third parties to gain access to content. I didn’t understand that with databases (but came late to the party so I always figured something had happened that forced the lack of control or ownership of content). Now I see that it is simply the standard of operations that we operate on. We outsource, outsource, outsource and then get upset if a municipality wants to outsource the actual library to private companies.

More seriously, I like the fast food analogy a lot. The state of librarianship is not really a healthy one; there are likely a variety of ways to combat that and bring it back to vitality and health. We need to be active–to keep with the food analogy, in the words of the First Lady, we need to get moving.