The National Library Week for 2024 was held from April 7 – 13. The American Library Association themed it “Ready, Set, Library!”
The State of Arizona has over 200 public libraries and branches. There are college libraries as well as several private libraries available for public use.
A path for libraries in Arizona that could kickoff a national and global trend is book flipping. This means that registered members of the libraries are assigned shelves or sections, where they would have to flip the books in a time frame, say a month, a quarter or a semester.
The purpose is that while flipping, whatever they find fascinating, they note and then submit at the end of the interval. The objectives are to sputter natural intelligence and to sustain mental health.
Library shelves are often in sections, with books of related subjects. There are others too where arrangements are mixed. There are several library users who have acknowledged serendipity—or chance encounters of books after random checks—finding sources that became pivotal to understanding and careers.
This would be organizing serendipity, not only in a way to benefit the user, but to excavate knowledge that is hidden away, to be made available for more people, within The Grand Canyon State and beyond.
Several libraries have large volumes that have been untouched for years. Many of these volumes have knowledge that would be relevant to purposes as well as to make correlations towards finding answers and solutions. The flip would be a way to conscript library users for a new era to boost natural intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is already sweeping a vast swath of domains—digitally, that was in the province of humans. AI can teach people now, accurately, and as simply as possible across subject areas, in what used to be by human tutors—or experts online.
There are expectations that AI may affect jobs, with alternatives uncertain. One approach that may work for some to develop their own observation and analysis could be this book flipping, where they can also find ways to present things that AI may not currently have, boosting abilities and employability.
It is also a way to bolster mental health, where there would be the experience to have new information to keep the mind moving, with several, interesting and engaging enough, to remove the mind from destinations that may lead to worries, anxiety and so forth. This would add something new to do at the library, making it an option across communities for people seeking things to do with time.
How?
Due to the different structures of libraries, it is likely that a new library management software would be necessary for this, where shelf numbers are possibly divided by member numbers, as well as intervals and options.
Say, section A1, for user B2, in time T3, for notes only summaries, N4. There would be an agreement not to flip loudly, to avoid disturbing others. There would be caution not to rush, as it does not matter if one person finishes the section, others would take it up from where the person stopped. Writing materials may be provided. For some people, they may choose to note digitally, on personal devices, but they have to send to a given email.
For parts they find fascinating but too lengthy to note, they may reference the page or header, then describe what it is about. It could also be an image. Just anything fascinating. For some of these submissions, they may be checked and added to new resources of interesting stuff, as there would be people to consume what others find interesting.
It could become another kind of purposeful project, getting lots of people engaged, furthering human enlightenment and resetting some of what was lost by outsourcing knowledge to digital, to stoking additional natural intelligence.
A private initiative could work on the software, which will include flipping and divisions for digital editions of library books. Some libraries could pay for it in installments or licenses could be purchased in bulk, for counties. The data could also become more useful, aside from others—using it to learn. It may be used to train a large language model, which can be something that those who participate can access for free, while others pay—to support the resources necessary to keep it running. The software would also provide options, to save space and energy, where some notes about highlights would be provided in the books, so that those who use it next could find what is fascinating there first, rather than the necessity for new stacks or digital memory. It may also be possible that only certain grades of highlights are available in the new fascinating repository. Sorting can also be done by the software.
Libraries may also hold the key to some of the proposals like universal basic income, where, if AI displaced jobs, people may still have things dignifying to do—tied meaningfully to human intelligence. Libraries may become a new channel for knowledge with this—as well as to help people back away from compulsive use of devices.
College libraries can use the software to divide sections for some students, per semester, as an extracurricular activity then, use the summaries provided to help the student body prepare for the industry, as more knowledge is now needed since corporations are all in on AI, in disadvantage to several entry-level jobs that can be done digitally.