Things We Can't Live Without

During the time I've been a librarian, computers and other technology have changed in unimaginable ways. It all becomes so familiar and natural, that it soon becomes impossible to imagine what we did without them.

There was a day when we had no computers on our desks! We had a dedicated OCLC terminal, but that's all you could do with it, connect to OCLC. I can't fathom now what we did all day as we're at such loose ends now when the system is down.

Next came dumb terminals. It became a challenge coaxing some of the older staff to try them out, convincing them that they wouldn't actually break it if they pressed the wrong key.

We made our first forays online. I can scarcely remember now the world before Graphical User Interfaces, when we would Telnet or FTP to sites. And remember the glossaries we had to consult to conduct proper Dialog searches?

I can remember how clumsy a mouse felt when I first needed to use one. I was sure that I would never consider that better than good old keystrokes. Now my laptop has even done away with that. I navigate my route with a finger.

Some of my first looks at Windows 3.1 and the internet came at library conferences, where it was too often the case that the presenter would have to say, "This is what you would see if we could get connected today." Now our library runs some 90 computers and we expect every one of them to be connected, smoldering with impatience if they don't respond smartly to our commands.

E-mail is a great tool, a way to keep in touch and informed, but for many people it's no longer enough. They want instant messaging and chat, carrying on multiple conversations at once. Or who needs the computer when they can text-message and search the internet on a cell phone?

We expect now when we travel that there will be wireless. It's common when you don't bring your own computer with you, that there might be one or two in the hotel lobby for you to use. We expect to be able to stop in at public libraries on the road and be able to use their computers because we need to be connected.

We expect information to be there immediately at our fingertips. Have a question? Surely, Google can give you the answer. Driving somewhere? There's a route and distances right there. Have bills to pay? Why take the time to address envelopes and drive to a mailbox? We can do so much now without even leaving our chair. But then, thanks to wireless, my favorite computer chair is the recliner on my front porch. No reason to look at a wall because I'm tethered to a wired connection.

I have gone cold turkey on my travels and not touched a computer for times that were actually longer than a week! But it's a hard, hard thing to do and my palms were itching to get back at that keyboard. I truly can not imagine any more what a library would look like with desks barren of computers. That must have left us all that time to file catalog cards and pull the old ones.