Being analog: creating tomorrow’s libraries / Walt Crawford. – Chicago and London: 
American Library Association, 1999. – 245p. – ISBN 0-8389-0754-7.

Program, 34, 4, October 2000, pp. 442-443. 


For me, Being analog was largely a frustrating read. It is so full of provocative assertions 
that I often wished I had Walt Crawford there in front of me so that I could argue with 
him. Maybe that was the intention. Perhaps Crawford just wanted to get people thinking 
and debating the issues surrounding the future of libraries. If he did, then in some 
respects the book is successful. But in other ways, it is rather unsatisfying.

Being analog is a polemic throughout. Crawford uses many of the tools of rhetoric – 
arguing by analogy, quoting anecdotal evidence, engaging his audience directly with first 
and second person pronouns – to make his case. His case is that the future successful 
library will be the “complex library”, one which provides access to a variety of media – 
printed and electronic. The all-digital library is unrealistic, Crawford argues, except in 
specialised circumstances. “I will assert,” he says, “with near certainty that the future mix 
of digital and analog media is unpredictable, but that it will continue to be a mix rather 
than a uniform digital landscape.” This is a general thesis with which few librarians 
would quarrel. Since this book (published by the ALA) is most likely to be read by 
librarians, it is sometimes difficult to see who Crawford is arguing against on this general 
point. Perhaps he is trying to equip librarians to argue against the “all digital brigade”. 
But if this is the case, it would have been better had he assembled significant amounts of 
data which could be used by librarians to fight their corner. This he fails to do.

Many of Crawford’s detailed arguments are long on assertion and short on evidence. 
Often his evidence is anecdotal. Phrases such as “I’ve known several librarians who...” 
are rather too common. When he does quote the work of others, Crawford does not often 
provide a citation. Just looking at one opening at random. On page 102, he says “Ken 
Friedman of the Norwegian School of Management did a worldwide survey of faculty 
members using the Web in October 1995...”. Which survey? Where was it published? 
Crawford does not say. On the next page, he says, “Recently, the Association of Research 
Libraries has begun to disseminate some usage statistics for very large libraries in its 
membership.” Where are these statistics? Where are they published? We are not told. 
There are no notes at the end of this particular chapter and nothing about these pieces of 
information is included in the bibliography (which is itself composed of only ten items).

All of this is a pity, since Crawford has some good ideas. His points on a number of 
issues, ranging from the importance of library publicity to the role of metadata and 
cataloguing, are good ones. In particular, his observations on technological obsolescence 
are useful. We all need reminding  from time to time of the danger of investing in the 
‘Betamax technologies’. And Crawford is well placed to make these assessments. He has 
been involved in developing IT applications for libraries for many years. In his current 
role at the Research Libraries Group of America, he led developments on the Eureka 
database. He is also a former chair of the Library and Information Technology 
Association, a group of the ALA. In view of this, his healthy scepticism about IT is in 
some ways refreshing. It is just that it is too often expressed in a rather idiosyncratic and 
unconvincing way.

One thing to be said in its favour is that Being analog does not descend into unnecessary 
technical jargon or acronyms. In fact, it is not a technical book at all, concentrating more 
on the impact of technology rather than on the technology itself. It does, however, 
consider its impact very much on the US scene. This, of course, does not normally make 
much difference to the non-American reader, as many of the issues discussed do not 
know national borders. But occasionally, it is difficult to see a connection. I doubt, for 
example, there is much danger in the UK at least of public libraries overdoing IT at 
present. Crawford says in the US this is a real danger. He says there have been “one or 
two recent cases” of this, but does not say what they are.

The role of IT in library services continues to be debated. Crawford has added to the 
debate. His contribution is at times interesting and always provocative, but overall it is 
not as useful as it might have been.

Stephen Pinfield
Academic Services Librarian, University of Nottingham