Published by Benton Foundation
Funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Libraries with and without walls
The library as a provider and protector of equal access and equal opportunity
The library as community builder, civic integrator, and community activist in a digital world
The library as a definer of American culture
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The private interviews also raised issues -- and anxieties -- not addressed in the formal vision statements. These included the degree to which libraries need to carve out a competitive niche in the exploding information marketplace, the extent to which the public will continue to provide political and budgetary support, and the possibility of alliances with other information providers, such as schools, local governments, and other public service media. Not surprisingly, given the digital revolution's enormous impact on information production and retrieval, the library leaders failed to agree on many key issues.
Many library leaders see libraries as the natural jumping off point for the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Building the NII around libraries expands and enhances an already-existing information infrastructure. It eliminates the need to create an entirely new one. Most librarians want to marry the explosion of digital resources to traditional library values: service to people, education to meet information needs, broad access to library resources for all, the provision of quality information and knowledge, and building and inculcating democratic values and American history.
The electronic age will allow libraries of varying types, serving varying populations, to link together and even merge. Thus, say some library leaders, the local public library and the university library will merge, electronically, into a single entity. The links will extend to form a worldwide digital library, making the library a bulwark of the global community and potentially serving a worldwide audience.
Library leaders emphasize that libraries are places that acquire, catalog, preserve, and disseminate collections. Many leaders now expand that vision to include "virtual collections" of digitized information. This vision implies a fundamentally different relationship between libraries and "their" collections: libraries will have access to vast collections but may not actually control them.
Some library leaders assert that libraries in the digital age will create, publish, and manipulate information. This vision transforms libraries from collectors and disseminators to actual information creators. Other library leaders say libraries' core mission is to maintain and distribute collections.
While some library leaders envision the book and other print publications as playing an increasingly marginal role, others anticipate a "hybrid" library -- one that combines traditional print publications and new digitized information. Few look forward to a time when the book and other traditional print publications will cease to be a fundamental cornerstone of library collections. Most library leaders acknowledge, however, that room must be made on the library "shelf" for digital information sources.
Libraries will continue their roles as lenders of information and as facilities for browsing. Some fear that the digital explosion could undermine libraries' lending role because individuals will be able to easily replicate (and therefore "own") any online document. But the digital library also greatly extends the traditional idea of "browsing" into the boundless archives of cyberspace.
Library leaders are struggling to find a place in the digital age for the physical building most Americans traditionally associate with the library. Most library leaders say without hesitation that libraries constitute a physical space that holds collections. Libraries are also a space for learning and reflection -- a public space that brings together diverse populations into one community to learn, gather information, and reflect.
Traditionally, libraries have been collections of items stored in a site-specific facility. Access is limited to those who can travel to the library site or can arrange a loan. Thus time and space define the nature of the library as physical space.
With the onset of the digital age, many library leaders say libraries must expand beyond the confines of the traditional library building. Because of the electronic revolution, libraries now can embrace government archives, business databases, and electronic sound and film collections that previously were not considered part of the libraries' own collections.
Some carry this notion one step further. They say libraries need to evolve into entirely new organizational forms that take into account the digital library-without-walls and that acknowledge that information today can be gathered, disseminated, and created at any time in any place. The digital library reduces -- even eliminates -- geographic and temporal barriers. Libraries, which traditionally have provided links to additional information through connections to other branches and library systems, will now be providing links through cyberspace.
Your computer is a library, say those who carry this concept the furthest. It is outside library walls, but it can take you deep into library and other information collections.
But others still see a role for the library "place" in a digital world. The notion that you can get any information from a desktop computer threatens the communal nature of the library, which is rooted in its physical space.
Providing equal access for all Americans to library resources is a bedrock value. The free-flow of information to all who desire it, regardless of race, income, or other factors, is vital to the functioning of a free society. Libraries should act as an information safety net for the information have-nots, especially as Americans move into the digital age.
A vision subscribed to by all the library leaders is that underserved communities must have free and unfettered access to libraries, including traditional and digital collections.
Public libraries are uniquely suited to provide equal access gateways onto the NII, connecting people in underserved urban and rural areas to information resources. The digital age merely extends the traditional notion of the library as "the people's university."
Libraries should provide training, equipment, and information to the information have-nots. Information -- or lack of access to it -- should not become a new barrier to achievement and social mobility, keeping some individuals from realizing their fullest potential as wage earners, parents, and responsible citizens.
Library leaders are nearly unanimous in their belief that libraries, along with schools and the courts, are among our fundamental civic institutions.
Libraries are civic integrators. They are community nerve centers. They constitute, along with other vital local institutions, the basis of civic life. They provide a forum through which community members interact with each other, both through the use of meeting space and through the collection, dissemination, and implementation of information. They offer programs, services, and collections that support direct civic participation.
Libraries draw the community in through literacy, after-school, preschool, and other programs. Some library leaders stress that libraries and library users should play an active role in community revitalization. Libraries should become intervenors and activists in the communities they serve, especially in low-income and other underserved communities. Whether they are offering online job services, after-school programs, links among community activists, access to government information, or literacy programs, libraries must be forces for positive social change in their communities.
Libraries are directly tied to a community's quality of life. If libraries are weakened or fail because of budgetary or other constraints, the community's quality of life depreciates.
The digital library can be an extension of the traditional communal library. It is a new expression of the old American idea of providing the widest possible access to knowledge to the community.
But some library leaders add a cautionary note. The digital library -- and the digital age -- can undermine the notion of the library as a community institution and a building block of American culture. If the cost of technology becomes a barrier, entire segments of the community may be left out. If the desktop computer replaces the library as a community "place," the library's community functions may wither, and its traditional function as an identifier and shaper of the American experience may start to decline.
Libraries must continue their tradition of providing a window onto American culture, values, and traditions. They do this through open access to all -- any citizen can acquire the knowledge he or she needs to function effectively in a democratic society.
Some librarians believe that the digital library can enhance this traditional function. The digital library preserves and makes broadly available original icons of American history. No longer will Americans have to travel to specific locations to view important American historical documents and artifacts. They will be available through a computer terminal.
Some library leaders see a basic redefinition of the librarian's role. Instead of being caretakers of materials, they will become information navigators, aiding users to tap more effectively the resources of the Internet and other digitized collections. Librarians will become coaches rather than information authorities. They can become trusted guides for a person who knows what he or she needs but is unsure how to find it. They can point to electronic tools and resources as well as to card catalogs and other traditional information repositories.
Other library leaders try to marry a more traditional view of librarianship with the exigencies of the digital age. They want to join together the basic values of librarianship -- service to people, education to meet information needs, broad access to library resources for all, the provision of quality information and knowledge, and building and inculcating democratic and American values and history -- to the NII. In fact, they view these basic values as critical adjuncts to a wide-open, confusing digital age in which users will need more, not less, assistance to understand what it is they don't know and what they need to know.
Librarians are the guardians of the fundamental library principle of equal access. They can equip information have-nots with the tools and equipment to give them parity with more affluent users.
In the view of some library leaders, librarians play a critical role in ensuring that libraries become organizers and mediators of knowledge, not just purveyors of raw information. These observers fear, in fact, that the information explosion will supplant the quest for knowledge. Libraries must "rehumanize" the torrent of information flowing from the NII -- and become trusted translators, knowledge mediators.
Some observers believe that librarians must become involved in community organizations -- and network with the community to ascertain community information needs and reach out to underserved populations.
Librarians will need to be retrained. They will need new tools to search for information from digital sources. Some caution that in the process of becoming digitally fluent, librarians must not lose their humanistic origins.
The interviews captured many of the sentiments expressed in the written vision statements, and many of these areas of agreement can serve as initial areas of consensus. There was, however, some significant divergence between the vision statements and the interviews. A host of new and intriguing issues arose in the interviews that the sector may want to examine as it seeks to forge its identity in the emerging digital world.
Two key departures from the written vision statements cropped up during the series of telephone interviews, perhaps because of the direct nature of the questions asked or the less formal interview format:
The grantees, in their written statements, were enthusiastic about the role of the library as an information safety net for the information have-nots. The grantees, in their telephone interviews, expressed reservations about serving in this capacity, especially if it was the library's exclusive role. Some of those interviewed feared that if libraries serve primarily as information safety nets, they would become marginalized and lose political support from middle-class taxpayers.
The written vision statements contained several affirmations of the library's role as democratizer. Some library leaders also stated in their documents that they believed libraries should actually become intervenors and activists in the communities they serve, especially low-income communities. During the interviews with the grantees, however, these notions barely surfaced.
In contrast to the grantees' assertive written vision statements, the telephone interviews exposed a profession more tentative about its role in the digital age. The vision statements, though differing on the specifics of how libraries should envision their futures, set out bold agendas. The interviews were much more ambivalent, raising more questions than answers. Indeed, several new issues arose that were only hinted at in the written vision documents:
The degree to which libraries need to carve out a competitive niche in an exploding information marketplace. Super bookstores, such as Borders and Barnes and Noble, were viewed as posing as big a threat to libraries as an individual's ease of access to the digital information from personal computers.
The extent to which libraries will be able to ease these competitive forces by forging relationships with other information providers, including other libraries, schools, local governments, and commercial information providers.
The extent to which the public will continue to provide political and budgetary support to libraries in the wake of strong antigovernment sentiment, competition from commercial purveyors of home-use online products, digital collections not "owned" by locally supported public libraries, and public ambivalence about the significance of libraries.
The degree to which the library field has developed leaders who can "step up to the plate," as one interviewee put it, and define and assert the role of libraries in the digital future.
Many of the interviewees expressed great concern about the library's competitive niche in a marketplace of exploding information resources. One librarian suggested that libraries cannot continue to be a gateway for everyone -- that they must evaluate their roles and functions like a business, sizing up the competition and carving out niches. As one interviewee said, "We don't have the franchise anymore to be sole providers of information in our communities, and we need to stop acting as if we did."
Interestingly, the interviewees were just as worried about the super bookstores as they were about the individual surfing the Net on his or her home computer. Libraries' traditional middle- and upper-income supporters are finding it easier to purchase books at these stores than borrow them from the local public library. Moreover, many of these stores are increasingly emerging as community meeting centers -- complete with story hours -- a traditional, core role for local public libraries.
The individual clicking a mouse while sitting at his or her home computer is seen as a threat to the library's future. As one interviewee put it, "If people can get all the information they need all by themselves at home on their computer without any intervention from the library, we have a problem." Another interviewee wondered about the role of the library -- and the librarian -- in an "any time, any place" information world. Still others worried about the continuing meaning and viability of the "local" public library in a world without information boundaries.
Others were more sanguine. They envisioned the librarian-navigator as the "bait" for luring customers into the library and keeping libraries competitive in the new mix of information resources. "It will be a long time before information technology replaces the human intermediary for a lot of information retrieval, so the library building is not a place where books are, but a place where somebody is sitting," explained one librarian.
Other interviewees expressed the notion that libraries could carve out a competitive niche by becoming creators or publishers of digital information, such as local job lines and other sources of local information. Some local community information networks are not connected to the public library, however, and do not see themselves becoming so in the foreseeable future. Thus local community information networks could be a potential source of competition.
Some library leaders expressed optimism that the availability of the super bookstores would create more readers, and therefore more library customers. "It enhances . . . it gets people more excited about wanting to read stuff, instead of just watching television all the time," was one interviewee's assessment. Other library leaders suggested creating partnerships with bookstores.
In the view of some library leaders, the public even may be starting to confuse these bookstores with their public library! As one interviewee recounted: "My favorite moment at Barnes and Noble was when somebody came in with her arms full of library books and said, 'Where do I return these?'"
Also mentioned as a source of competition was the ability of individuals today to purchase collections of digital materials from companies producing online products that heretofore were available only at one's local library.
While the library leaders expressed concern about competition from various information providers, they also voiced some optimism about the possibility of collaborating with these same competitors.
Some librarians described the potential for partnerships between local public libraries and university libraries to expand collections and provide cost-sharing for expensive digital collections. Others talked about collaborations with local schools and governments -- even with bookstores. Still others looked to partnerships with high technology and other businesses. Few offered concrete steps that could start to forge these partnerships, however.
One library leader pointed out that forging alliances can come with a political downside. Cooperative agreements with businesses or educational institutions, he said, means giving up some power and control. But another pointed out that collaborations are essential because libraries can no longer rely exclusively on public funding to support themselves fully.
As most of the library leaders agreed, everyone loves their local public library. It is a "warm and comfy" place, as one put it. The library is a symbol of trust and a locus of community culture, values, and identity that even nonusers care about.
But as many of the interviewees also agreed, this idealization of the library can be as much a curse as a blessing. First, it is this traditional view of libraries that makes it difficult politically for libraries to remake their image and surge forward in the digital age. Second, this sentimental view of the library provides a shaky foundation on which to appeal for public funds. On the other hand, it may be this strong sentimental attachment that carries the day for library bond issues, other interviewees said.
At the same time that libraries may occupy an almost sacred place in the American community psyche, they are in many other respects "invisible" to the American public. As one interviewee put it, "Who's against libraries? Nobody's against them; it's just nobody much notices." Or as another interviewee acknowledged, "The public counts on libraries to be there, but they don't have a very good sense of what they might be counted on to do."
But several library leaders pointed out that despite these trends, libraries are definitely not off Americans' radar screen and in fact are enjoying considerable public esteem. A measure of this, suggested some interviewees, is the library building boom in several of America's major cities.
Others raised the issue of whether Americans will lend budgetary support to libraries if they come to primarily house computer terminals and digital collections and whether, to support these collections, libraries will have to start charging fees. Why should taxpayers support information that they can get from their desktop computer? Others posed the question, Why should taxpayers support digital information with local bond issues when, by definition, digital information is not locally owned? At the same time, one library leader cited a local community that seemed reluctant to support a bond issue for building more library buildings unless a strong digital component was factored into the planning process.
The apparent migration of middle- and upper-income Americans -- traditional library boosters -- to the super bookstores may also have implications for future library support, according to some library leaders.
A sense of urgency pervaded library leaders' remarks about the need for the profession to "step up to the plate" and strongly define and assert its role in the information age. Many interviewees thought that librarians, at both the local and national leadership levels, were too reluctant to take on this role.
If nobody "much notices" libraries, then it is the librarians' job, in addition to being information navigators, to make the public notice and become advocates for the profession, the interviewees said. Library leadership needs to be able to state its case, be more aggressive, and as one interviewee put it, "be, in the public view, worthy of investment."
Many thought this assertiveness was particularly essential, given the current antigovernment political environment in which public institutions across the board are fighting for survival.
One library leader suggested that the profession actively recruit student government and other leaders in high school and college to consider entering the profession and to renew its leadership ranks.
Some of the leaders who were interviewed expressed optimism that the spring meeting in Washington DC -- to discuss the sector's public message campaign -- would spur this sort of activism. But others expressed caution: "One questions the extent to which the public library directors, their staff, and their boards actually understand the profound nature of the change that's under way."
Library leaders, as expressed in their vision statements and personal interviews, are at a crossroads in trying to define their profession. Their vision is firmly grounded in the library as a physical space, a hybrid of digital and book collections, and a community information resource, and in the librarian as a vital information navigator. Still in dispute is the library's competitive niche in an expanding marketplace of information. The individual user who once would have sought out the library is now being his or her own "librarian" -- or at least is attempting to assume this role. Another key question is whether the public will support these roles politically and financially and whether the sector can reach a sufficient consensus to exert its leadership in the new information environment.
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