“Libraries make no sense in the future,” publishing consultant and futurist Mike Shatzkin recently said. “There is no need for a building.”

The building in which he made this pronouncement happened, unfortunately, to be a library. Obviously he was joking, but given the state of terror in which today’s librarians live, he didn’t exactly leave ‘em rolling in the aisles.

He subsequently felt compelled to amplify in all seriousness in a blog entitled It Will Be Hard to Find a Public Library 15 Years from Now, which I urge everyone connected to libraries – that means everyone, period – to read.

Poor librarians. They seem to be the victims of ham-fisted wisecrackers. I know because I made the same feeble attempt at wit several years ago at the dawn of the digital era. It was in the New York Public Library, and, like Shatzkin, there was a serious message beneath the kidding. Here’s what I wrote about that occasion.

Richard Curtis

***************************

I take pride in my sense of humor, but sometimes it can get rather heavy-handed. That was demonstrated about ten years ago when I was invited to the New York Public Library to give a talk to librarians about the future of books.

The venue was the Map Room, an exquisite gilded salon that epitomized an age that revered the printed book. The attendees, solemn acolytes of the Dewey Decimal System, fit perfectly into the decor. My subject, you will not be surprised to hear, was the digital revolution, and to illustrate it I brought with me some CD-ROM discs. On the podium I had piled a large number of impressively thick tomes. I then produced the discs and declared that all the content of those books and more could fit onto a few of the slim shiny objects I held before them. I declared that a day would come when brick and mortar institutions known as libraries might become irrelevant. Whereupon I gestured broadly at the magnificent building and said, “I’ll bet this joint would make a great condo.”

One hundred librarians volubly sucked in their breath and gaped at me as I had torn a page out of Audobon’s Birds of America and blown my nose in it.

“Just kidding, folks,” I said sheepishly.

Actually, I wasn’t. As print media – newspapers and magazines and books – enter the endangered lists, so do the brick and mortar venues that service them: magazine stores, book shops – and libraries. The contents and catalogues of most libraries are accessible online from practically anywhere in the civilized world. The only reason patrons must go them is to check out and return their physical books. But as libraries acquire e-books, even that function becomes irrelevant. As I recently wrote, E-libraries don’t have a locus. Their patrons have no loyalty to a specific branch; they can traverse cyberspace to locate and download the e-book they wish to “borrow”. Yes, libraries (like bookstores) have managed to remain relevant in the digital age by offering a warm and vibrant social center for scholars, students and book lovers. And many provide computers for patrons to search the Worldwide Web even though they could do as much from their home, office, or a café in Paris.

These ruminations are reinforced in Millions of Books, but No Card Catalog, a New York Times article by Noam Cohen describing the recent legal settlement of the lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and a publishers group against Google, which since 2002 has been scanning millions of books into its colossal digital archive. Cohen suggest that “digitization of books is ending the distinction between circulating libraries, meant for public readers, and research libraries, meant for scholars.”

Cohen’s article ends on a hopeful note: “The digital-rights class-action agreement has the potential to make physical libraries newly relevant. Each public library will have one computer with complete access to Google Book Search, a service that normally would come as part of a paid subscription.” He cites an NYU professor, Thomas Augst, as asserting that Google is “creating a new reason to go to public libraries, which I think is fantastic. Public libraries have a communal function, a symbolic function that can only happen if people are there.”

Okay, you can hold up on the wrecking ball for now. But I have dibs on that 44th floor penthouse on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

RC

The New York Observer has picked up on a story broken by E-Reads a month ago speculating on why the New York Public Library was not carrying Rogue’s Gallery, a recently published book by Michael Gross. Rogue’s Gallery is a provocative look at the Metropolitan Museum and contains some observations critical of a leading socialite supporter, Annette de la Renta, who happens to be on the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library.

Now, New York Observer reporter Reid Pillifant asks, Why Is Gross’ Museum Expose Missing From NYPL Stacks? Pillifant writes,

“When literary agent Richard Curtis and his wife, Leslie, heard about journalist Michael Gross’ unauthorized Metropolitan Museum exposé Rogues’ Gallery, they wanted to check it out. Literally! So they searched the online catalog of the New York Public Library. But the book wasn’t listed. Then they called the library and got ‘kind of a vague answer,’ Mr. Curtis said.

“Then he remembered Rogues’ Gallery had stirred up some controversy regarding Annette de la Renta, who is a trustee of both the Met and the NYPL.”

Here’s an excerpt from our story.

Gross’s book has been widely ignored in the media, and Kornbluth suggests that a sort of Gentleman’s Agreement among heavy-hitter members of de la Renta’s august social circle is the reason why. “I am not a conspiracy theorist,” writes Kornbluth, “but the media coverage — or lack thereof — of this dustup and of ‘Rogues’ Gallery’ could certainly make me think of becoming one.” You can read all about it in Kornbluth’s blog as well as Gross’s own account of the sordid maneuvers to chill his book.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist either, but what started as a routine inquiry about the availability of the book in the New York Public Library system has definitely pushed me several notches closer to paranoia. It seems that the book is simply not there. You can see for yourself by calling your local librarian or visiting the Library’s website and entering the title and author into the Search box.

We’re not the only ones to smell something fishy. Here’s an excerpt from a blog by New York Social Diary‘s Patrick David Columbia:

So what’s the problem? It seems difficult to determine. Some tell Michael he’s being “paranoid.” I’d tell Michael he’s onto something although where it might take him may not be worth the trip.

It is true that there are people in this town who have what is generally recognized as power. Can they kill people? I don’t know about that. Maybe with kindess or a harsh Fifth Avenue froideur.

Annette de la Renta is the name that comes up first and foremost in the Michael Gross/Met biography business.

As of this writing, as confirmed by the Observer‘s Pillifant, there are still no copies available in Manhattan libraries. But I managed to secure a copy anyway, using an ancient but tried and true technique: I bought a copy at a bookstore. Pillifant expresses my dismay at having to resort to a commercial transaction: “As for Mr. Curtis? ‘I paid retail for it, which, for a professional literary agent, is scandalous.’”

My advice? Support the book, the author, and bookstores: do the same. But let your local library know you expect it to carry Rogue’s Gallery.

Richard Curtis

“Can a socialite kill a book?”

That’s the question that journalist Jesse Kornbluth asked on Huffington Post in a chilling look at the campaign waged by socialite Annette de la Renta and her white-shoe law firm (“sending threatening letters on 60-pound bond”) to have Michael Gross’s provocative book about the Metropolitan Museum of Art “removed from circulation and corrected.” The “corrected” refers to descriptions in Gross’s book of de la Renta who, Kornbluth asserts, is “generally regarded as Brooke Astor’s successor as the Social Empress of New York. She’s Blue Blood and Old Money. Her husband is a fashion designer who specializes in First Ladies and Ladies Who Lunch. She serves on the most prestigious board of trustees in New York, that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

Gross’s book has been widely ignored in the media, and Kornbluth suggests that a sort of Gentleman’s Agreement among heavy-hitter members of de la Renta’s august social circle is the reason why. “I am not a conspiracy theorist,” writes Kornbluth, “but the media coverage — or lack thereof — of this dustup and of ‘Rogues’ Gallery’ could certainly make me think of becoming one.” You can read all about it in Kornbluth’s blog as well as Gross’s own account of the sordid maneuvers to chill his book.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist either, but what started as a routine inquiry about the availability of the book in the New York Public Library system has definitely pushed me several notches closer to paranoia. It seems that the book is simply not there. You can see for yourself by calling your local librarian or visiting the Library’s website and entering the title and author into the Search box.

It’s interesting to note Annette de la Renta also serves on the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library.

Richard Curtis