Future Of Libraries Quotes & Sayings

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. Just ask Ray Bradbury. — Kami Garcia

Museums hold collections in trust for future generations. It is our responsibility to see that these objects - representing the cultural heritage of more than 8,000 years of civilization - are passed on to the next generation . . . . The next generation may choose to look at objects afresh - without our carefully collected input - and form its own opinions about their purpose, history or intended use. What is important is that future observers have at their disposal the records of what was known or believed at the time. — Holly Witchey

It is possible that librarians will be robots, controlled by Master Minds having mastery of a master computer at the Library of Congress.
Or there will be no libraries and librarians, flesh-and-blood or otherwise. The onetime library patron will press a button and turn a dial on his TV, whereupon the requested book, in the desired language, will appear on the screen, the pages turning at the designated speed. — Richard Armour

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow's book buyers for today's dollars, especially when it's obvious that the source in question doesn't have any more dollars to give you. — Courtney Milan

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries. — Carl Sagan

In the future we would have total storage, all of us would, our media libraries would dematerialise and just float above us, books would no longer sit on the shelves reminding us that we had not read them, music and TV and film formats would no longer clutter the den reminding us of all we had not yet listened to or watched. — Joshua Cohen

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.
We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside. — Neil Gaiman

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open. — Neil Gaiman

Many of the people libraries serve today are ill equipped to take advantage of all the great things about the digital present and future. Since libraries must be guided by those they serve, they will be awkwardly straddling the analog and the digital for some period of time. — John Palfrey

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man — T. S. Eliot

It would be hard for me to overestimate the importance of reading. Nothing can expand the mind and heart like the magic al world of books. ... Our libraries are an essential resource for our children, our communities, and our future. — Danielle Steel

The type of librarians who are thriving most consistently in the digital era are those who have found a way to operate as a node in a network of libraries and librarians. They are agents of change, actively creating the future instead of constantly reacting to it - — John Palfrey

The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve that freedom which is a far more important part of our lives than any ideology or orthodoxy, the freedom that dissolves orthodoxies and inspires solutions to the ever-changing challenges of the future. I hope that your library and mine will continue in this way to be dangerous for many years to come. — Edmund S. Morgan

Likewise, if you take away the librarians and the staff, but leave the books, the computers, and the architecture, you will have a fine sculpture of a library that will become a snapshot of the community's past. But, if you threw out the books and the building and left a dedicated group of library professionals, you could invite the public in a they would construct the future. — R. David Lankes

If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future. — Neil Gaiman

It is likely that libraries will carry on and survive, as long as we persist in lending words to the world that surrounds us, and storing them for future readers. — Alberto Manguel

Pride, oh pride - a friend from the past, a bodyguard of the present, and an enemy of the future. Books, oh books - a friend from the past, a soul mate of the present, and a protector of the future.
Slowly, softly, and surely through the pages of the past, I have found a new me. There were so many things to learn and so many things remaining to learn. I delight in the truth of why some books I will read, and other I will not. The truth is: I was not choosing.
In pleasing myself with books, I transform myself. And I've found sometimes the most amazing keys to unlocking a different part of me in the strangest of books. I go to libraries and there they are waiting for me. I love them, and they love me. — Mark Donnelly

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

If we didn't already have libraries, they would now have to be invented. They are the keys to American success in fully exploiting the information superhighways of the future. — James H. Billington

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario. — Seth Godin

Most people don't understand what a library does for me and I've tried to explain it to them. All I know is that I feel energized when I'm in one. My pulse quickens when I walk through the the stacks. I feel like an explorer surveying an uncharted shore. Lost worlds are here waiting to be discovered. Ancient worlds; once glorious, not crumbled. Future worlds; no more substantial than the numbers or ideas or words of those who dream them. Mythical worlds. Worlds of limitless dimensions.
Libraries are medieval forests masking opportunity and danger; every aisle is a path, every catalog reference a clue to the location of the Holy Grail. — Jack Cavanaugh

What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience. — Pete Hamill

In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future. — Bill Gates

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. — Marilyn Johnson