I have had the opportunity to contribute a chapter titled "The Public Library in 2020" to a book edited by Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School. The book collects a number of visions or speculations about how libraries will change in the next few years; working with Joe on this was a delight. My chapter is available at

http://www.cni.org/publications/cliffs-pubs/public-library-2020/

Two comments.

First, this should be seen as only one possible future for public libraries; and perhaps a rather conservative one. For example, it doesn't discuss Makerspaces, which may be a very important development for our society broadly, and one that may well have an interesting developing relationship with public libraries.

Second, for more on the issue of mass market e-books and how they relate to the evolution of public libraries, my recent piece for American Libraries (available at http://www.cni.org/publications/cliffs-pubs/ebooks-2013-promises-broken-kept-faustian-bargains/) may be of interest as a complement.

Information on the full book -- available both as an e-book and a printed book, which is titled "Library 2020: Today's Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow's Library",  is available from the publisher at

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810887145

There is a very nice interview with Joe Janes about the book overall that ran very recently in Publisher's Weekly, this is at

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/57722-ala-2013-the-library-of-2020-will-be.html


Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI