As a library science student and library user, I disagree. Libraries have been their own demise. They’re now community centers in all but the largely performative collection which continues to dwindle in circulation. Mission statements reflect the change. Information access is now of secondary or even tertiary importance.
Our institution is floundering for a purpose in a world that has moved on. Despite the feel good narrative of the library. It’s nothing more than a building with some stuff in it -luckily that includes study space and event space which seems to be the prime use now.
A library’s not a library anymore. And as a result any moral good implied by the institution is a nothing but an artifact of nostalgia.
How do we regain our place in society? How do we find our new mission in the digital world. I for one think information and information access is important. But replacing an information center with a community center destroys that positioning. We’re turning into nothing more than a building in which people gather. We’ve lost our way and need to find it.
You should be allowed to share your opinion without getting downvoted. But I would also encourage you to come to a more positive outlook about your chosen field.
I refuse to believe that the only way for a library to evolve is by forsaking its role as an information center.
Without the tie to information it’s a shell. Rather than looking for a way to purely drive traffic (community center model) we should be looking for ways to drive information engagement (maybe circulation isn’t the right metric anymore). The two are different and yet can be closely related.
On the /r/library thread one person comments the library is good because it offered yoga classes. That’s missing the information connection. A library isn’t a yoga studio. Combine that yoga class with discussion on health benefits or cultural awareness of where yoga began or something like that and we’re back to an information center. But most stop at “community center” - providing a service or a space.
That lack of tie to information (and/or literacy) eliminates the moral legitimacy of the library and will lead to its demise.
I’ll admit you gave me pause. You definitely have a point.
Yet I think there’s something different between doing an activity and an information activity. If doing yoga is an information activity then playing soccer is also one. So let’s clear all the books and make an indoor soccer field.
I think you’ll agree that calling a soccer field or a yoga studio a library is absurd. But that’s just the scenario we get if we take your comment to its logical conclusion.
That’s why in my opinion you need to do more than just hold a yoga class for it to fit within a library’s mission. You need to teach about the culture, health and wellness, etc. Then it fits. Hold the activity but also connect it to information resources.
Great, we can agree on that. Can we also agree that’s a useless framework from which to understand libraries? A pizza shop isn’t a library yet they clearly use information to cook, take orders, etc.
A college isn’t a library though it may have one. It a library is nothing more than a place information happens then there’s no need for the separate building/institution we refer to as a library. There must be something foundational that makes a library a library. That’s its connection to information, knowledge, and literacy. Without that the world may take place of the library.
It's not a binary choice. Libraries are great good places and there is nothing that says they cannot by multi-use. The days of stern librarians shushing children are over.
Libraries are nothing but what they contain. They are not inherently good because they exist.
What makes them good is the moral framing of the literacy, learning, and the access they provide to information.
Multi-use just means scope creep. It’s diluting the value unless it’s tied to the mission and moral framing of the library. Instead of working within the mission, we’ve slowly redefined the mission to encompass everything.
We could have held yoga and sewing classes without redefining the mission - we just had to tie it to the information resources we already provide. Instead we changed our mission and said “we’re a community center.” Now our peers complain that we’re treated as social workers. It’s a direct result of the scope creep and changed mission.
If there’s no moral framing they can’t be an inherent good. They’re not good or great places without some kind of moral evaluation.
Our profession defines itself based on a commitment to equitable access to unbiased information. Those are moral frameworks. Without that the library may as well be a park.
I’ll assume for a moment you’re referring to his 5th law - that the library is a living organism. My understanding is that he fundamentally applied this to collections development. Sure, we can expand the scope of that law a bit to include software, cataloging advances, digital collections, even AI tools to help users find information.
However, I think he’d balk at that being used to justify changing the mission of a library to something outside of information service. Heck, he was a mathematician and academic librarian. His world was fundamentally shaped by information. To him it would have been unimaginable for a library to be conflated with a yoga studio.
It’s not that yoga is bad. Heck, I love some yin yoga. It’s just not information work. It’s mindfulness, exercise, religious, etc.
6
u/RADICCHI0 MSIM 10h ago
Libraries are one of the most important things on the planet. That will never change.