Unsettling view of the future

You may be getting tired of reading articles about the future of reading--one of the favorite topics of librarians, teachers, and critics--but there is more to say. John Green's article in the January issue of School Library Journal, however, opens new vistas of possible futures for young young people and the adults who choose their books. Conventional publishing for adults and increasingly for children focuses on blockbuster novels that appeal to a wide reading base. This is what Green calls the Wal-Mart approach to selling books, choosing a few titles with broad appeal, in contrast to the Amazon.com approach which offers a wide range of titles each of which only has to be sold to a limited number of people to generate a profit. Librarians can purchase from either source and make them available. On the other hand, librarians could encourage authors to seek other formats for distributing their work, probably online. Books could be downloaded in any library and read on a mobile device. These books would not be limited entirely to words; illustrations, videos or audiofiles could be integrated. Just think how the librarian's job would change. Recommending, indexing, making available would still be our task, but eventually any library could offer almost any book in any language. Is this a possible future? Who knows? At least read the article and start thinking about the new world to come. Changing formats will challenge us, but the work we do is still vital.