Future Shock: It takes five magazines to figure out tomorrow
RSSBy Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 01/01/2010
About a year ago, when I was at the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Denver, I joined the editors of some of the other school librarian magazines for drinks (I only had a diet Coke!) and dinner. Around the table were gathered Debbie Abilock (Knowledge Quest), Gail Dickinson (LMC, Library Media Connection), Deb Levitov (School Library Monthly), and David Loertscher and Betty Marcoux (Teacher Librarian). We try to get together at every conference.
In any other industry, we might be competitors, and, in some ways, I suppose we are. But since we’re armed with MLSs and not MBAs, our inclination is more toward collaboration and sharing. Besides, each publication is unique, offering its readers—who work in a complex, multifaceted profession—something very different.
After the usual gossiping and grousing (writers who don’t hit deadlines), we turned to the big issues. The subject of the future kept coming up, and what changes might be ahead for librarians, in general, and school librarians, in particular.
But the trouble with the future as a topic is that it’s so darn big. Someone eventually had the bright idea that maybe all of us could collaborate on a common theme, “Envision the Future of School Librarianship,” with each publication—in the same month—biting off a piece of it.
What you have in your hands (or on your screen) is the end result—or at least one-fifth of it. To complete the picture, check out Knowledge Quest for the future of authority, Library Media Connection for the future of primary learners, School Library Monthly for the future of instruction, and Teacher Librarian for the future of the curriculum.
Tackling the future was prescient, it turns out. In the last year, we’ve experienced so many changes—the sudden spurt in ebooks, the continued escalation of social networking, a high school library tossing out its book collection, the demise of institutions, like Kirkus Reviews—that it’s beginning to feel like the future is already here.
Here at SLJ, we thought we got the easy assignment—until we started to think about it. The future of reading can mean so many things, from the act of reading to where this activity takes place (the device debate) to what a book might become (will it include multimedia?) to how publishing will happen (will we still need publishers?) to who will decide what’s worth reading. Should we address just one of these issues, or survey scores of experts for their thoughts?
In the end, we decided to ask one very smart person—who we’d be excited to hear from—to share his vision of the future of reading. Lucky for us, novelist John Green was game. His feature, which begins on page 24, is one of the most interesting and entertaining pieces we’ve run (IMHO).
In his essay, Green shares some great advice (which he got from his brother Hank). “Participating in technological innovation,” he writes, “allows us to shape the change innovation makes.” In a way, that’s what these features scattered across five magazines are meant to do: encourage our readers to take part in change, so that they can help shape the future.
