1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

New roles

“[T]he new [Salt Lake City Main] library is a secular city center where groups of all ethnicities, religions, politics and purposes feel they have a place and a stake. The library hosts classes in English as a second language, meditation and Braille, as well as discussion groups about the latest nonfiction. Organizations from Weight Watchers to the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire to No More Homeless Pets have held meetings in the building, as well as Amnesty International, Single Moms, the Hispanic Dance Alliance and the Utah Socialists. On Saturdays, a group meets to read to their dogs.”6

Among the many new roles libraries are assuming is the role of Library as community center. Not just warehouses of content, they are social assembly places, participating in their larger communities by building information commons, hosting poetry contests, digitizing city council minutes and positioning themselves as the knowledge management experts within their peer groups. In some respects, the goal of being relevant to one’s community is no different from the earlier goals of any broad-minded and sensible administrator. But, in an era when public support of institutions like the library and the local park is under scrutiny, a reliance on citizens funding an institution they may use infrequently is likely not good planning. Funding bodies demand to see tangible, measurable returns on their investments and busy libraries suggest money well spent. It makes a great deal of sense for libraries to look for new, broader service opportunities within their communities.

Here are some key points about new roles made by people OCLC interviewed:

• The library should serve as a community/civic center.
• There is an opportunity for the public library to be the aggregator of community information and partner with other local organizations to gather grey literature.
• There is demand for 24/7 access to the physical library as well as the virtual one—I call this “retail expectations.”
• Access is a form of sustainability. Content that can be accessed is valued and is more likely to be sustained by the community.
• The hard work of collection development is not with published material; it is with new formats and delivery mechanisms.
• Archives are seeing a big drop in “turnstile traffic” due to self-service via the Web.
• Mass-market materials are increasingly avoiding traditional distribution channels such as the library.
• Collections are increasingly generic—even among research libraries—as standard aggregated content is bought. There is a focus on merchandising the reading experience—book superstores introduced this and did an outstanding job. Libraries were built to accommodate materials management, not users.
• The library can be—and should be—a resource to other community agencies for information management.
• Libraries need to work with a broader group of agencies.
• Libraries need to be proactive about e-learning and not wait to be approached as a partner.

Library Landscape: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15