Cuyahoga County Public Library Board wants to spend $12.6 million of your money to build an obsolescent building.

While citing the need for a true 21st century library to replace the existing Telling Mansion, the Cuyahoga County Public Library Board and the County Executive’s Office, both have a distorted and uninformed view of contemporary technology specifications.

They have, on more than several occasions, bandied about the idea that providing 60 desktop computers is a good idea and will bring the new library into the 21st century.

They also report that this would be impossible to do at the Telling Mansion branch.

Well yes, but why would anyone want to?

If you know anything about today’s technology, you know that desktops, and even laptops, are becoming more or less obsolete. These technologies are rapidly being replaced by smart phones and smart pads/tablets. The keyboard and mouse are losing ground to touch, voice, and gesture.

So why is the CCPLB spending our money on obsolete technology? This certainly is not helping us to move toward the 21st century library they are so anxious to advocate for. 

We should invest in technologies that are truly emerging which, by the way, can be comfortably accommodated in the existing Telling library. 

Let’s keep Telling as our library and provide modern technologies there.

(This blog post was written by Mace Mentch, PhD)