Week 16 Prompt

From the time I was born, my parents were huge advocates of the public library, as both worked for the Allen County Public Library Main Branch located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I like to say that I practically grew up in that library, as my grandmother would always take us there when we were waiting for my parents to get off work. I may have been young, but to this day, I cite this as the moment I knew I wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. The staff of ACPL were my second family, and just seeing all of those books available at my fingertips seemed magical. At that point, my world was surrounded by physical books, I am sure that eBooks and audiobooks were starting to become more popular, but they were nowhere near my radar.

The love for literature continued through my education, reading anything and everything that I could get my hands on. The library became a place of solace for me, tucked away reading about the far way fantasy worlds that my books took me to. It was not until college that my notion of the book began to be challenged. Often after hours of reading for classes and textbook materials, there was no desire to read anything else, even for pleasure. Even if I wanted to, there was no more room for me to carry around pleasure reading. This is where my love for eBooks and audiobooks were born. Where I once listened to music on my way to class, I found a love for listening to my books on those long walks, and if I felt like actually reading, my nook provided thousands of books at my fingertips at a fraction of the weight of a traditional book. Although I will always love the feel, weight, smell, etc. of a traditional physical book, there is no beating the convenience that eBooks and audiobooks provide at times. It was also around this time that my reading preferences in concern to topic and genre began to evolve. In high school and back, I read almost exclusively fiction, but now I still read nearly every fiction genre, but also a heavy amount of non-fiction, specifically biographies.

As far as the future of books, publishing, and reading, I do not see the most fundamental elements changing. Yes, we will have a surge of electronic format books, but this does not mean that there will no longer be people that love to read and have a physical book in their hands. I truly believe that the multiple formats of books can co-exist, and if anything, electronic formats will allow a library to expand their collections in a way that previously strictly physical book collections were not able to because of budget constraints.

Regardless of whether it is electronic format or physical, I believe that we will have the same challenges with getting kids to read and find interest in books. Just because a format changes, I do not believe that that changes innately whether or not a child enjoys reading, and whether that child will eventually become an adult reader. If anything, perhaps the interactive capabilities of electronic books will appeal to those child readers that struggle with liking physical books. As a society, I hope that we will always continue to value education and knowledge, but does the format that this comes in really matter. As librarians and educators, it is our job to find the in with our patrons, and help them find a topic or resource that interests them or that they need, so nothing should change if we also simply help them find a format that they enjoy and are comfortable with.

Finally, as far as publishing, I believe that we will continue to see a surge in self-publishing and vanity publishers, but nothing will change for librarians or readers. They will have more material to select from, but librarians will still use the same criteria for collection development, and readers will still have the right to select the information they consume. Furthermore, writers will still have the rights to tackle hefty topics or focus on creating stories, regardless of what format they are publishing in.