There are shelves of books at the local library but it seems the books are increasingly becoming an afterthought. A good deal of space formerly used for book shelves is being re-allocated for things like community rooms, DVD and CD collections, snack bars, and other non-book related activities. I doubt the internet will ever entirely eliminate the need for all librarians, but we can already see it reducing their numbers and changing their role.
What role/function do you foresee libraries fulfilling in 20 years? Will universities even offer library science degrees, or would such a degree programs assume a similar character to what Cistercian/monastic studies enjoy today?
My local library has books, but also has an extensive DVD collection. Libraries have long had audio and visual items, they’re just becoming more and more prominent.
Around here they’re becoming more and more community centers, with rooms for meetings and clubs, internet access, and so forth. I think they’ll survive, but in a changed form.
I’m seeing the same thing although I think books will remain a big part at least in the larger libraries; just more in rare and closed stacks collections and less in the public areas.
I’m a Friend of the Library volunteer. Sure, you can still get books there, and probably always will, but like Kopek said, they are changing to accommodate the needs of the community.
Other items I’ve heard of (and seen) that you can check out from the library:
Fishing poles
Museum passes
Tools
Decorative cake pans (most require a deposit, which is returned if it’s brought back clean)
I’ve also seen boxes at the library where people leave, and take as needed, coupons and seeds.
One of the neighborhood libraries in my city is indeed to some degree a daytime homeless shelter, and people are allowed to stay there as long as they want if they follow the rules. However, the library in my old town would put out a message before every school vacation stating that they are not a free babysitting service. Yeah, you guessed it - some parents would drop their kids off in the morning and pick them up at the end of the day! Anyone who was caught doing this would get CPS called on them.
Two of the libraries in my area have operating cafes; both were opened by people who had experience in the restaurant business, and they are also in more affluent neighborhoods and do catering on top of it. One entrepreneur tried opening cafes in two branches in less prosperous areas, and found herself bringing in something like an average of $20 a week. :eek: The employees weren’t even patronizing it.
One cafe was converted to the FOL bookstore I volunteer at (it isn’t staffed, and has a drop box for payments - we average a couple hundred dollars a week ) and the other is used as a meeting room.
They’ve been shelters for people with no place to go during the day (homeless, disturbed, kicked-out, bored, jobless, carless) ever since they’ve been public-access buildings without entrance fees and dress codes.
And libraries in most communities were the place to go to GET internet access when it was first becoming available. My piss-poor deep south hometown bookmobile had a computer catalog machine in the early nineties, and even before that, our dinky one-room community library building had “programming” classes offered on their bulky giant-ass beige monster that had to be run off of a series of disks and was slower to search than the catalog card file next to it. (they were teaching DOS? I think?)
Mine is lending Rokus which is kind of cool (though unnecessary for me).
Anyway, stuff like internet access, movies, music, etc all fall under the same “transmission of thoughts/culture/information” that books do, only we have other ways these days besides scribbling on paper. Any decent sized municipal library I’ve seen has always had some sort of meeting room and the cafes are to get people in or keep them once they’re there. I think the core purpose is there, they’re just not as stuffy and academic about it as when I was a kid.
Ours seem to be rapidly morphing into DVDs and children’s books only. The adult collection seems to be stagnant, with the exception of blockbuster novels. The non-fiction collection seems to be shrinking at the exact rate it’s lost, stolen, or damaged.
If it’s any consolation, the libraries in South Jersey (particularly the one where I work) aren’t hurting for book circulation, not even among kids, and DEFINITELY not in the summer.
Don’t forget about maker spaces. A lot of libraries around here have 3D printers, now, and a few have 3D scanners, laser cutters, vinyl cutters, and even sewing machines.
But I don’t view the core purpose of a library as having changed. When I was a youth, they were wizards’ towers where anyone could go for wondrous things, and that’s still what they are. It’s just that nowadays, books aren’t the only wondrous things available to the public any more.
There are very few standalone libraries here; almost all are part of a larger community center. My eldest daughter does gymnastics at a municipal building that includes, in addition to the library, two ice rinks, a gym, a pool, a basketball court, squash courts, a baseball diamond, tennis courts and some other things I haven’t even explored. Nearer our house is the building with a library, art center, performing arts center, and a bigger pool.
The libraries seem to do a booming business. Being combined with other municipal services certainly must help. It’s a one stop shop.
Got my FOL quarterly newsletter today, and they have an estimated “value” for each item they check out. Their table indicated that they had a 250% return on investment.
Most of the items were books (separate categories for adults and children), and included DVDs, CDs, interlibrary loans for all sorts of items, and a miscellaneous category that included museum passes, electronic devices, and board games.
And the FOL group raised about $34,000, which was about 1.5% of their budget, as of when the newsletter was printed. This will allow them to purchase things that weren’t in the original budget.
) and the other is used as a meeting room.
This will allow them to purchase things that weren’t in the original budget.