Week 16 Prompt

Obviously, books and the publishing market has changed quite a bit since I was a child.  My mom was in charge of the children's section at a bookstore just a block from the library where I work.  Some of my earliest memories as a 4-year old was spending the morning at the bookstore going through all the new books with her. I remember a picture dictionary that I especially coveted and I remember her teaching me how to take care of books because books are our friends.  I have always loved books, my parents always spoiled my by buying rather than borrowing books, and I've considered books my only friends at times.

Books are an emotional subject for me.

Over the decades, I've seen the children's and teen book market explode with more options than I could have ever imagined.  The growth in teen reading gives me a lot of hope for our future.  I remember losing interest in reading for a short period in high school because all of the teen fiction was formulaic series with no real meat to them. Not until Harry Potter hit the mainstream and I started my job as a shelver did books pull me back in for the second time.  I found myself reflected in Hermione, down to her love-and-war relationship with that adorably frustrating ginger Ron Weasley (I had my own red-headed high school crush -- now my husband).  Harry Potter provided my bridge into adult works and I found romantic suspense and mysteries completely enthralling.  I read through the entire catalog of V.C. Andrews in just a few short month's time and my mom had long, intense talks about the characters and the dysfunctional families in the book that made our own look like child's play.

Perhaps the biggest change I've seen has been the rise in eBooks. I held out for quite awhile before trying eBooks.  Now I enjoy eBooks before bedtime, but I still love holding a book in my hands with my toes in the sand.  My mother who swore up and down she'd never stop buying print books for her bursting bookshelves has now gone through our library's entire catalog of romance books on her Kindle Fire.

I believe that, despite contrary belief, books are not going to die out anytime soon, just like libraries are not going to fade into oblivion.  I feel that eBooks will continue to grow in popularity and libraries may reduce their print collections to encourage more space for socializing and programming, yet helping patrons find books and research material will still maintain a top priority.  A Huffington Post article from 2014 notes that "in San Antonio, Texas the first-ever bookless library in the country opened.  The library is full of iMacs, tablets and iPads cost a whopping 2.3 million. The library offers around 10,000 e-books" (Convissar). This vision of a library does not appeal to me, but the idea of a library that can offer the best of both worlds and appeal to patrons' multiple preferences prevents an intriguing mental picture.

I also see more and more authors breaking away from the confines of publishers and self-publishing.  This may present a challenge to libraries in the beginning, but libraries have a way of overcoming problems with integrity and ingenuity.  Teen blogger Sarah Convissar sums up my main worry best, noting that "It is up to us to find a balance between technology and sustaining human values and interactions" (2014).  Libraries can be that balancing beam.  Libraries are more than walls.  Books, whether print or data files, are the glue that binds us to the community and the community to the world.

Works Cited

Convissar, Sarah. "Is This the Future?"  The Blog: Huff Post Teen.  Huffington Post, 6 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.