What about textbooks?

One of the many blogs that librarians in both public and school libraries will find useful is the one posted by David Warlick in which he covers new trends and ideas in education. Recently he has posted two takes on what textbooks will be like in the future. He proposes that they will be far more interactive than current textbooks. No longer will they strive to be "Centrally-Authoritative" and error free but will accept the fact that errors occur and will be self-correcting through social interaction. It's worth looking at the posting for June 26, which lists the characteristics of old and new textbooks. Now, some librarians may be shrugging off the idea of changes in textbooks as having any relevance to library books for children, but I think they are wrong. As the idea of interactivity--the importance of looking at books and other media as joint productions of writers and readers--grows, the changes will affect trade books as well as textbooks. And they will especially affect librarians who are the mediators between trade books and children just as teachers are the mediators between textbooks and children. As children become used to sharing ideas and giving input into their digital (surely these new textbooks will have to be digital) textbooks, they will want to have the same input into the books they read for pleasure. The importance of forums where children can react to their reading, post their responses, share opinions, and ask questions should not be underestimated. More and more libraries are moving into the 21st century as hubs of interaction rather than collections of static materials. Instead of seeing ourselves as offering objects to children, we will see ourselves as sharing with children the imaginative offerings of authors and illustrators. It's an exciting prospect and both adults and children will change and grow in the exchange.