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The future of the library: From electric media to digital media

By Robert K. Logan with Marshall McLuhan. Peter Lang, New York, 2016, Understanding Media Ecology series, vol. 3. ISBN 978-1-4331-3264-3 (pbk), ISBN 978-1-4539-1770-1 (e-book)

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Notes

  1. McLuhan, M. & Logan, R. K. (1997). The future of the library: An old figure in a new ground. Unpublished manuscript, kept at the National Archive of Canada until revived by Robert Logan in 2015.

  2. The library’s “ground” is its physical structure and its political, economic, technical, social and cultural context. Its “figure” is the content which fills it, including its books and other holdings/resources – and its users.

  3. McLuhan died in 1980, soon after the original Future of the library manuscript had been completed. The preface to this updated version contains a fascinating account of how Logan and McLuhan came to work together on their “library project”.

  4. The digital media are defined as the personal computer, the Internet, the Worldwide Web, the highly portable notebook computer, the smartphone, the tablet, and the plenitude of Internet and Web applications now available, such as email, websites, search engines, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook and Wikipedia. During McLuhan’s lifetime, only mainframe and mini computers existed.

  5. See pp. 91–92, on “The impact of electricity”.

  6. See Spangenberg, G. (1996). Even anchors need lifelines: Public libraries in adult literacy. New York: Spangenberg Learning Resources. Available at http://www.caalusa.org/anchorswhole.pdf [accessed 3 May 2017].

  7. See Logan and McLuhan 2016, pp. 133ff. Also see “City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito joins New York Public Library officials to launch second round of Wi-Fi hot spot lending” (New York Public Library webnews 23 April 2015), at https://www.nypl.org/press/press-release/april-23-2015/city-council-speaker-melissa-mark-viverito-joins-new-york-public [accessed 3 May 2017].

  8. See p. 174, the chapter on “The future of the book”.

  9. See p. 5, the chapter titled “The physical extension of man’s memory”.

  10. Palfrey, J. (2015). BiblioTech: Why libraries matter more than ever in the age of Google, New York: Basic Books.

  11. See p. 202, “Library futures: summing up”. Also see Amien Essif’s review of John Palfrey’s book BiblioTech: Essif, A. (2015). Why libraries matter more than ever in the age of Google, AlterNet [online news magazine], 23 May. Retrieved 2 May 2017 from http://www.alternet.org/books/why-libraries-matter-more-ever-age-google.

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  1. National Council for Adult Learning, New York, NY, USA

    Gail Spangenberg

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  1. Gail Spangenberg
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Correspondence to Gail Spangenberg.

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Spangenberg, G. The future of the library: From electric media to digital media. Int Rev Educ 63, 619–622 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-017-9642-5

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