Future of Libraries Summit: A Crossroads of Budget Cuts, Service Demands, and Technology Needs

Maura Deedy -- Library Journal, 4/3/2009

• Library history must inform future innovation across the profession
• New roles required for libraries and librarians as user content needs change
• Community politics and values must figure prominently in mission of public libraries

Around 40 librarians gathered at the new Darien Library (CT) on March 26, 2009, to discuss the challenges facing libraries. John Blyberg, Darien's assistant director for innovation and user experience, welcomed the group, and promptly set the tone of the day: libraries are at the center of change—are we creating it or merely managing it? It was an opportunity to step back from the Web 2.0 tools, open source OPACs, and must-have widgets to re-examine the nature of libraries as the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close.

John N. Berry III, Library Journal editor-at-large, opened up the morning session with a discussion of Michael Stephen's rewriting of Ranganthan's Five Laws of Libraries, suggesting this framework as a starting point for any discussion of libraries’ future. Berry also suggested revisiting the origins of Boston Public Library and the Philadelphia Junto, reminding the audience that the original mission of libraries was to make information available for an informed public to engage with their government. While people are gathering in libraries, Berry suggested, librarians should consider it their purpose to be an agency that helps develop collective action through our information and technology tools.

Kathryn Greenhill, emerging technologies specialist at Australia's Murdoch University Library, later offered the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "libraries" and "librarian," suggesting that they don’t encapsulate all that’s being done in modern libraries. Libraries are not the only content shop in town, Greenhill added, and in a cage match we may lose against Wikipedia/Google/Pirate Bay. Much too often, libraries are used as a last resort. This does not bode well, she said, challenging libraries to harness their best assets—their place in the community.

Digital advocacy, and facilitating local politics
During the more informal post-lecture discussions, Berry and Greenhill expressed concern for the commercialization of information, worrying that private interests have come to dominate public airways, and that libraries were late to recognize the importance of Wikipedia and other 2.0 tools. We are facing the reality in which libraries are potentially absent from discussions about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the distribution of digital content. A challenge for today's librarians is to bridge the gap of basic technology training and advocate for users at the digital content table.

Despite the recent doom and gloom about print and newspapers, Berry and Greenhill managed some optimism, saying that libraries of the future (and today) could thrive by placing a greater emphasis on the local: local issues and local politics. Louise Berry, director of Darien Library, spoke of a collaboration with the local Darien city government to host and stream recordings of council meetings, an excellent example of providing information for an informed citizenry.

So, while some librarians may be haunted by the spectre of library obsolescence, this summit was one step in discussing and mapping out what the future of libraries may look like: a nod to our past, fulfilling a critical role educating an informed citizenry, and a look toward the future, advocating for users for free and open access to information, regardless of content or format.

To see the archived recordings from the Summit, see Kathryn Greenhill's followup blog post, or the Darien Library's uStream archive.

Update: Following the Summit, John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor collaborated on a post called The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians, "meant to be grand, optimistic, obvious, and thankful to and for our users, communities, and the tireless librarians who work the front lines every day, upholding the purpose of the Library."