Published on CreativeNonFiction.org in 2007, this short essay seeks to paint a bright, if not troubled view of the future of the modern library in American society. This essay seeks to make these points in response to the massive decline in the quantity of American libraries in the wake of the growth of Amazon and other alternative forms of book consumption.
Specifically, the artist's purpose behind the essay is to illustrate her hope for how the library can remain an important physical institution in our nation, as society grows increasingly digitalized. It does this by depicting the life of a young woman in the late 2020's, recalling the history of the library over the past decade or so. This is designed to imitate a common tactic favored by authors paving a bright future on their own ideals; imagining the world as they would wish for it to appear.
Specifically, the artist's purpose behind the essay is to illustrate her hope for how the library can remain an important physical institution in our nation, as society grows increasingly digitalized. It does this by depicting the life of a young woman in the late 2020's, recalling the history of the library over the past decade or so. This is designed to imitate a common tactic favored by authors paving a bright future on their own ideals; imagining the world as they would wish for it to appear.
In depicting the future of the library in this fashion, the essay evokes several important ideas, all of which are intentional. The first, and perhaps the most significant, is that it indicates the recent issue of digitalization in America. By showing the issues that arise from a completely digitalized society, including the supposed death of printed texts, and the loss of physically important national institutions such as local libraries, the author illustrates why it is important to avoid these grim views of the future while it is still well within our reach.
Overall the essay effectively achieves its purpose of offering a commentary on the optimistic future of the library, the wrongful nature of American over digitalization , and providing a unique, most likely unconsidered take on the future of the library in an increasingly non-physical society. It achieves these purposes through the use of a single rhetorical device; the authors examination of a future with and without libraries, offered for the purpose of internal self-reflection on the part of the reader. Most short essays are necessarily are brief in their textual offerings, while others rely on no words at all. This essay is effective at achieving its purpose because it allows the reader to clearly grasp so much from a series of admittedly narrow anecdotes.
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