I was just thinking about DC comics idea to reboot all of their comics back to Issue number one. As part of the news they are also reissuing all of the #52 comics in the reboot in digital format starting with Justice League. Now, I was a HUGE comic book fan when I was kid, and my super hero of choice was Firestorm (also by DC comics), so this whole idea got me thinking about this concept for libraries.
What you have to remember is that, while they are starting the comics at number 1, they are not republishing the first comics. They are retelling the stories in different ways. There will be new storylines, new ideas, and bigger and better concepts. Or, as DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio told USA Today;
“We really want to inject new life in our characters and line. This was a chance to start, not at the beginning, but at a point where our characters are younger and the stories are being told for today’s audience.”
So basically, they are not doing away with the core of their product. They are not changing Superman’s powers, or the speed of The Flash, they are just re-examining the story that they are telling.
What if we could reboot libraries back to issue #1? What would we change about our story now? If we could rewrite our library’s stories for today’s audience and inject new life into our characters what would we say?
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Computer skills, ESL, job readiness courses that build in the role of social networking, and of course since of course we’re in the worst recession of our generation, More strategic leveraging of relationships with non profits… Just thinking out loud here
HA! Thanks Lydia. We have a ton of partnerships with non-profits. Libraries are here to serve non-profits, for profits, and everyone else too!
Two words: information access. It’s a digital information age and libraries would need to reflect that in an Issue#1 kind of way. It’s a matter of bridging the digital divide.