For thing 17, I listened to the podcast from Q, the Read on Libraries - is this the end of Libraries as we know them? (the podcasts listed in the Booklist webinar archive seemed to be missing except for the 3 most recent)
I found that although I could understand the argument of John about the potential that the libraries might be giving up their collections in order to provide more social space, I don't agree with his fears that the library will become nothing more than a hyped up Internet café. I don't think that libraries see the issue as being Internet vs. Books, or Social space vs. Research Library. It seems that, at least in this situation with the New York library and other American libraries, the issue is with membership and usage of the libraries, and keeping funding. Although moving 2 million books into storage seems shocking to some people, what I'm wondering is what type of situation it really is. Will there be electronic scans done of the stored books to provide access to them? Can a patron order the books from storage in order to use them? Which books are being moved? Is the storage location meant to be permanent, or will the collection be eventually moved again to another research library? In the podcast John seemed to have this fear that books were being threatened, like in Fahrenheit 451 perhaps? I think the discussion was very good, though Chris and Jian Ghomeshi did not seem to address the underlying issue that seemed to concern John. Chris's view that making libraries more accessible and welcoming to patrons will increase library usage is a very good point, but I think he probably did not see books as being the most important carrier of information that John seemed to. In any case, it was a very interesting debate, and if I have time I will look for further debates on the subject.
For thing 16, here is a video on the origins of the words geek and nerd. I thought it was interesting, though I'm not sure which category I would fall into :).
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