Published by Benton Foundation
Funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
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This was no easy task. It was not difficult for participants to absorb the positive findings about libraries: they have strong support among children and families, people value them for their collections of books, librarians are trusted information navigators. But it was sobering for participants to absorb some of the less optimistic findings from the survey and the focus group: college-age Americans are soft in their support for libraries, nonusers don't want to pay taxes to support various library services, and libraries are "behind the curve" of the new wave of technology, as one focus group participant put it.
What emerged was a proposal to propagate "new life forms," in which libraries team with other public service information providers to form community education and information networks open and available to all. With some communities already experimenting with collaborations and cyberspace creating myriad cyber-communities for information exchange of all kinds, libraries should create broad-based, real-time networks with public service partners that can facilitate this exchange of information. Grantees also felt their efforts in reaching this goal would be enhanced by a coordinated communications campaign and message strategy.
Tom Reis, Director of Marketing and Dissemination for the Kellogg Foundation, set the tone for the conference sessions by issuing a call to the grantees to "build consensus around current and emerging roles in libraries; to develop a message that we can all support, and to figure out how we can collaborate to get the message heard."
Pollsters Celinda Lake (Lake Research) and Brian Tringali (The Tarrance Group) summarized the survey and focus group findings. While underscoring that Americans are enthusiastic about their libraries, Lake cautioned conference participants that Americans are ready to turn librarians into volunteers and libraries into charitable institutions to which Americans would make voluntary donations. Lake also cautioned that Americans historically are unwilling to pay more in taxes for public services because they think those services will benefit others. Tringali issued a word of caution, arising out of the polling and focus group findings: "Signaling the death knell for libraries is . . . the public perception that libraries are museums of old information." Tringali added that libraries must create a vision for the future or risk losing financial support, especially because the public generally holds all public institutions in low esteem.
Pointing toward a new strategy for libraries, Joey Rodger of the Urban Libraries Council asserted that the focus group "described an institution that is behind the curve in a lot of ways. The context for our discussion should be that the world does not understand us and does not love us, so what do we do in that context?" Further pointing toward a strategy of collaboration and renewal, two participants noted the potential coming together of two like-minded entities to create a forward looking cooperative in tune with the digital age. "It seems like libraries are trying to become community networks," observed Patrick J. Finn of La Plaza Telecommunity Foundation. "It seems like community networks are trying to become like libraries," responded Daniel E. Atkins of the University of Michigan. "Why can't they merge?" he asked.
The grantees worked to build a bridge from the language and concepts of their library visions to the general public's ambivalent attitude toward libraries' identity and role. Messages and strategies were tested in small group discussions. A vision that emerged was: access for all built around a unified and integrated resource hub. This would become the "new life form," with other public information providers as partners, and would tackle the community's information needs and problems.
The attributes of this new collaborative would be: community-based; publicly funded through taxes, fee-for-service and other contributions; a seamless web of community information, which all partners would participate in creating and disseminating. The opportunity to create models of community learning collaboratives or new forms of public service media, in which libraries play a key role, is to actively define the public interest in the digital age, participants said.
Attendees engaged in a discussion about creating a joint multifaceted, multimedia, umbrella communications and outreach campaign, based on a model developed by the Benton Foundation for the Coalition for America's Children. This campaign would begin to lay the groundwork for new perceptions of the role of libraries and other public service media in fostering healthy communities. This campaign could consist of two parts. The first part would develop a communications strategy and related products, based on the research conducted to date and on additional focus group testing. The second part would create communications campaign products to support local coalition-building and alliances, some of which could be directed to specific audiences developed through existing networks. These products would be based on the opinion research but adaptable to local use.
The conference participants also articulated the need for an ongoing policy assessment and analysis of the impact of the recently passed Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act creates a new federal framework in which libraries and their partners must work if they are to effectively articulate their voice as key points of public access, public learning, and community service.
Because the media drive the public agenda, which in turn drives the political agenda, library leaders may want to take steps toward taking responsibility for defining their image in the public mind -- rather than sitting back passively and waiting for their role to be defined for them. Just as they are navigators of information, so they must chart a role for themselves, giving meaning and message to their future institutions and their profession. This is particularly important as commercial undertakings make significant inroads in information provision, and as the youngest Americans turn to their home computers to find information.
Library leaders do not shy away from the need to come up with new community-based alliances for libraries -- strategic partnerships that can weave a network of community public service information providers to enhance each other's value and their combined value to the communities they serve. One key model for building this new network is a further testing of public sentiment toward libraries and other information providers, especially as the impact of the 1996 Telecommunications Act becomes clearer. Also on the possible agenda is crafting effective messages for a comprehensive, community-based public education and communications campaign.
As the demographic clouds on the horizon portend, libraries could begin to weaken in public support. And they could find themselves relegated to the status of dusty archives -- little more than museums, cataloging the resources of the past. To secure their future with a younger, more private, more acquisitive generation, libraries will need to think creatively. The future is open to invention, and libraries must give meaning to their public role in this critical transition. As this report makes clear, the public loves libraries. But the libraries they love are sometimes at odds with the library leaders' visions of libraries' future roles. If libraries want to secure an identity as a community meeting place, for example, they had best chart a course to create this identity, one that now registers low on the public agenda.
What will determine the course of libraries in the digital future? The way that library leaders and visionaries respond to public opinion and the public policy context -- as well as their own visions. The library world thus has its work cut out.
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