Libraries as Smart Investments
Michael Connelly, best-selling author of The Fifth Witness, calls libraries “a societal tent pole. There are lots of ideas under it. Knock out the pole and the tent comes down.”
The tent is a little shaky. At least for now, it’s still standing.
Although our library system is fiscally in good shape, reports from libraries around the country are increasingly bleak. Time magazine published an article detailing the celebration of American institutions -- the land-grant university, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Carnegie libraries. Noted in the article were the challenges that face such institutions, all-too familiar during the recession: staff, budget, and materials cuts.
Are there truly more public libraries in the United States than there are McDonalds restaurants, as stated by the CEO of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library? If so, what’s being offered by the latter is definitely healthier than that found at the former: lectures, computer classes, music performances, debates, film screenings, book clubs, plays, etc. The library as an institution keeps a tenuous hold on its role as an educational institution for the community while desperately trying to adapt to technological changes and remain relevant.
This is not easy to do. It takes willpower, innovation, and determination to challenge the status quo. But there are libraries which have done it, breaking free of traditional roles and reinventing themselves.
It’s easy to feel defensive when asked, for the hundredth time, “Why use a library when I can use Google?” As Anthony Marx, president of the NY Public Library, has said, “You cannot have a functioning democracy if you do not have innovation. You cannot have a functioning democracy if you cannot have the citizenry able to inform itself.”
What makes a library a library? If we move from housing books to housing learning in whatever technology has become most popular, are we still a library? (Is a Bookless Library Still a Library?)
What types of innovative service must we offer in order for the public to view us not as a luxury but as a “sacred component of American education and American democracy”?
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Here is an interesting and rather chilling article about some of the ways libraries have tried (and largely failed) to innovate and "play a more pivotal role in the digital revolution":
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr12/Coffman--The-Decline-and-Fall-of...
The author's conclusion suggests possibly turning away from "the electronic library that others have built and focus(ing) on the real books and buildings that made us what we were to begin with."
There's an article in the Aug/Sep issue of Internet Genealogy titled It's Your Library: Use it, or Lose It!! while the author, David Obee, is talking about the use of the library for genealogy research it struck me how right he was about the library in general. Read it and give me your opinions.