
Looking through my digital photos, I stumbled on this “media format tree” I created at my beloved school library where I served as librarian for 25 years. The tree branch mounted on the ceiling was from the peach tree in my yard, which provided me with many memories (and much philosophical meaning). But that’s a different story.
As media formats rapidly evolved over my career from primarily print in 1990 to primarily digital in 2015, I witnessed personally the close of the Gutenberg Parenthesis and it had a huge influence on my profession and the world. I worked during the age when book was king of the information hierarchy and I have done many presentations on the toppling of that hierarchy. Print formats are “fixed” and they do not change when you return to them again and again; yet digital content is “fluid” and seems to constantly evolve leading to sense of being washed out to sea as the next wave comes your way.
On my media tree, you may see newsprint, microfiche, CD’s and DVD’s, filmstrips, catalog cards, and floppy disks. Many of these formats are now rarely (or never) used and they remind me of the importance of archival. If we do not migrate formats they often become unusable as evidenced by the Museum of Obsolete Media.
You may also see buckets of crayons and writing materials on the library tables because I asked students to bring journals with them. Connecting literature to our lives with writing activities was a joy! (Then the digital revolution put iPads into the hands of the children and the halls and cafeteria became silent as they stared into them.) On the far right of this picture there is a tip of the hat glimpse at the fish bowl where Dewey the fish (actually Dewey 1.1, Dewey 1.2 and many more over the many years!) swam happily illustrating that a library is a living organism.
Around 2008, early one morning, I turned on all the lights as I always did- since I loved bringing the library to life before the teachers and students began to arrive- and I had this premonition. It was a sense that the space would be changing. It was such a strong feeling that, looking back, I could imagine the floor was shaking! What will happen to this space? I thought. I jumped ahead as an early adopter of the metaverse because I wanted to explore best practices before the children arrived. And they did. They are greatly in need of some metaphorical boats to help navigate the constant sea of information chaos.