My dream job – so I claim – is developing software for the public library. I said so several days ago to some friends of mine and tried describing the kind of interface I would want to create but had trouble recalling a coherent vision for it. I resorted to restating my general claim: there is so much potential for digital systems and interfaces for interacting with books, things inside them and things about them. I was disappointed I couldn’t give a good example.

I came up with one a few minutes ago. Sitting alone in my mother’s living room, reading Crying in H-Mart, mind wandering, thinking about how my mom would respond to the book, then thinking about my wife Z’s new book club, who had gathered in our new patio to discuss their first book, then thinking how insufficient to have just one discussion after finishing the whole book, but then how awkward and impractical it would be to meet multiple times over the course of reading. Then into my head popped the image of separate group chats for every chapter. Whenever somebody finishes a chapter and has something to say about it they could send a message in that corresponding group chat and wait for others to finish the chapter and respond. Others would see that messages about a certain chapter awaited them and feel motivated to catch up so they could respond. Thoughts and observations normally long forgotten by the end of the book would be discussed along the way.

A separate group chat for each chapter is a bit ridiculous, what if the library offered software specifically for this purpose? Each group chat would get automatically created for each chapter of the book, and they could be much more than a private chat: they could offer opinions from librarians as well, and if the particular book club agrees, their discussion could be shared with other book clubs too, anonymously or not. Libraries could offer programs for joining book clubs with neighbors as a way of bringing together likeminded people in nearby communities. Join alone, join with a friend, read at your own pace, get matched with people reading at your pace.

Whenever I get ideas like these I get excited and start fantasizing about making them happen. In my daydreams I wonder: how could I pitch to city government to found a Software & Technology branch of the Public Library? No doubt this kind of software engineering job would pay poorly compared to corporate ones. What if the permanent, senior positions were kept to a minimum and co-op students routinely hired? The program would double as a public service and an educational service. What if it were open source and developed together by public libraries across the world? During this particular daydream, another funding model – if it can even be called that – occurred to me. The software could be developed in one city and fund itself by leasing out to other public libraries across the province, across the country, beyond?