Thomas Frey, famous futurist,  presented recently for the American Library Association at an event at the  Library of Congress about the Future of Libraries. Nothing like a futurist to get the creative juices flowing, and I found his blog post about library as “liquid network”, a breeding ground for future ideas, to be fascinating. I don’t have the logistics figured out, but as all types of librarians grapple with the role of the library in the future, this idea is novel. I think many of us can agree that libraries will certainly not be about warehousing books (they already are not).

Did you know that the Library of Congress has been archiving Twitter since 2010 and has more than 600 billion tweets to date? That seems a bit extreme, but what if libraries provided a “stable storehouse” of space  to gather creative ideas? And as Frey says, “It’s far less about where ideas come from and far more about where they go as they enter into our emerging ‘liquid networks’ ecosystem.” And as Frey points out, as we allow others to see cool ideas, it could spark new epiphanies otherwise never imagined! This idea would squarely position the library as catalyst in these liquid networks. What do you think, could it work?

See Thomas Frey’s post…..The Future Library–A Liquid Network for Ideas to read in deeper detail.

Image: Some rights reserved by Valerie Everett