Editor, Times-Union: I remember going to the Carnegie Library in North Manchester when I was a kid and checking out books to take home and read. When I was a few years older I spent afternoons listening to classical music records upstairs in the college library. In the future, I believe libraries in many cities will be open 24 hours a day as full-service libraries. They will be large enough to have auditoriums that will become community centers where a person could go to Monday night to hear someone talk about Indiana history, Tuesday night to view a classic movie, Wednesday night to watch one-act plays, Thursday night to hear a scientist talk about space and present a video concerning advanced space travel technology, Friday night to hear a local singer in recital, Saturday night to watch a concert, and Sunday morning and night to attend services of a church that will rent the auditorium. After midnight on some days there would be talent shows and the presentation of popular movies. There would be a small diner at the libraries that would sell food and beverages to library patrons all day. If you woke up at 2 in the morning with a desire to watch Swan Lake and eat a hot sausage pizza, you could go to the library and enjoy both. Many people in the future still won’t have computers and will need to do things like write and submit resumes or submit articles to magazines via e-mail. Experiencable Program Units will allow people to experience programs, visit with friends hundreds of miles away as if they are physically with them, and tour places that could be half a world away. The EPU area of a library might be the busiest area of a library. If you like a book and wish you could keep it, the library will make a copy of it and sell it to you for less than book store prices. Multi-books that will have print, audio and video versions of books will be available. Further in the future, people will be able to experience books as observers or participants. Stories could completely change if you could interact with the characters and what happens. People may have thought computers would make libraries obsolete. In the future, computers could make libraries the vital center for communities and the places people will want to go to around the clock. Rick Badman Warsaw
