"...the hardest truth: that to be in the middle class, just working hard and playing by the rules doesn’t cut it anymore. To have a lifelong job, you need to be a lifelong learner, constantly raising your game." T. Friedman

See Mr. Friedman's OpEd here.

All change is inexorable. This change has already swept over us.

As a society we have been too slow to recognise it. Librarians have always designed spaces for people to meet, learn, research and work; for people who view the world as their home and their shared place of business as their own. 

Although Mr. Friedman's words make some of us uncomfortable and others even frightened, they are true. We have moved on. We are part of a global economy - a global web of opportunity - that we have never experienced before.

We can't go back. Our children don't want to go back. The globe, our planet is their future; their opportunities are quite literally a world beyond ours. We reside in a world where, as life-long learners already appreciate, libraries will continue to play a pivotal role.