20/20 on Libraries in 2020

Recently, I was at a job interview in which the final question from the interviewers was something like this :

“Where do you see libraries in the year 2020?”

At that moment, I gave an answer as to where I thought it would be on the basis of what I knew about the demographics of the area, the funding levels, community support, and the current trends in the public library world. It was a damn good answer (if I might be so self-assured), but in the time since the interview the question itself has been turning over and over in my head.

The more I think about it, the more I really don’t like it.

Granted, the question is a bit of a softball. No one is going to hold me to my answer and it is asked to get a better idea of my thought process as it pertains to the future. But the question feels deceptive, not on the part of the interviewer, but for the multitudes of potential answers. While I gave the one that counted then, the factors and permutations have crept in upon further thought.

Seven years is now a dinosaur-like era in a field that has ties to technology. Back in 2006, there was no Tumblr, Google Street View, Instagram, Dropbox, iPhones, or Kindles. Can we even fathom what kind of technology will exist in seven more years? I’m sure there are people within the field who would clamor to answer that question, but I’d have severe reservations about their response.

For myself, there’s a certain irony at work here. One of my early posts on LISNews that caught people’s attention was about the “Next Big Thing”. And now here I am with a half decade worth of observations and information and I’m reluctant to hazard a guess more than three years out. I have mixed feelings when I read stories and blog posts about the future of libraries, arriving as a skeptic and generally leaving unmoved.

I’d like to believe I’m on the leading edge for these kinds of developments in the field, but I have to wonder at what that really means. Is the information pointing me the right way? Is this what libraries should be doing? Are my peers that far behind? The more I hear, the more skeptical I become.

The only thing I believe about 2020 is that there will be libraries. After all, the solutions that libraries provide to their communities will not be cured in seven years. But what they will look like? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.