What Makes a Library Important?

This is an article I have been intending on sharing and reflecting on for a while.

Beyond the Bullet Points: New Years Resolution, by Dave Lankes

Dr. Lankes points out that in order to help retain funding, as well as keep the library’s importance and impact at the forefront of people’s minds, we should make this the “year of the librarian.” Not quite like this, though:































I think, though, Dr. Lankes makes a great point - it is librarians, and not the collections and resources they steward that make the difference. How much good does having all those items do if no one knows how to find them, how to search them, or how to use them? Librarians make the difference between having a bunch of stuff and having a library.

I think for many people library is a bit of a loaded term. They think of the library as a place filled with books and quiet voices. I say library means those things, but also means that it is a place where people find the information they need (in any form or capacity) not just in a book, or the latest issue of Scientific American. That might mean connecting them with resources to start a business, go back to school, or just read the latest Dan Brown thriller (in any format of the patron’s choosing - Kindle, iPad, e-book online, or a book). People can interact in the library, meet in the library, study in the library. Use the videoconferencing software to interview for a position. Have a movie festival with lectures and discussions. Really, the library can be pretty much what its patrons want it to be, but the library has to be attuned to those needs.

On this same point, let me throw another link at you.

New Libraries Revitalize Cities, by Jonathan Lerner

That link points out what libraries can do, they can be what their patrons want them to be. They use Rem Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library as an example of that - which is a building I love. Then, Mr. Lerner starts talking about libraries with pools and clinics. This I disagree with, One of the threads I have discovered in the course of writing the Library Design posts is that all good libraries are clearly libraries, as evidenced by their design and their visual cues. The library can be an element in a larger community construction project that includes separate pools and clinics, but the library must be an entity unto its own.

What do you all think? Should the library be defined by items, or by the people? What should the library “of the future” look like? Besides the flying cars, of course!