36 Quotes by John Palfrey

Television didn't transform education. Neither will the internet. But it will be another tool for teachers to use in their effort to reach students in the classroom. It will also be a means by which students learn outside the classroom

It’s not about being digital. It’s about students who are born digital.

Our studies have shown that China’s online censorship systems are by far the most sophisticated and extensive in the world.

Television didn’t transform education. Neither will the internet. But it will be another tool for teachers to use in their effort to reach students in the classroom. It will also be a means by which students learn outside the classroom.

There’s no question that libraries are wonderful, but nostalgia is too thin a reed for librarians to cling to in a time of such transition. Nostalgia can actually be dangerous. For one thing, thinking of libraries as they were ages ago and wanting them to remain the same is the last thing we should want for them. For another, our nostalgic view doesn’t give libraries enough credit. Libraries offer a whole slew of services that we ignore when we just focus on pleasant reading rooms.

The independence of libraries matters because it means that our attention cannot be bought and sold in a library.

There is a long standing tradition of using code to evade censorship in China, so that goes on. The trouble is the Chinese government has created the world’s most sophisticated censorship machine.

The most successful students are those who know that they can do better than grasp at the closest source of information. Reference librarians, who spend their days learning what is available in a broad range of fields and how to search for it, provide a great service for students and other library patrons.

Many of the people libraries serve today are ill equipped to take advantage of all the great things about the digital present and future. Since libraries must be guided by those they serve, they will be awkwardly straddling the analog and the digital for some period of time.