The Role Of Libraries

[Trine Gritz]

Asgateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in society. Foundational in creating opportunities for learning, as well as supporting literacy and education, the resources and services each library offers all work towards helping to shape new ideas that are central to building a creative and innovative society.

Libraries also help ensure an authentic record of knowledge created and accumulated by past generations. If we were to exist in a world without libraries, it would be difficult to advance research and human knowledge, as well as preserve the world's cumulative knowledge and heritage for future generations.

Despite the rise of the online age, therefore, resulting in what we believe is the death of printed books and a growing lack of interest in libraries, there are still more libraries in the U.S. than there are Starbucks or McDonald's franchises. Public libraries have continually evolved throughout the years, serving as important community hubs to aid learning, professional development, and healthcare.

Even more so, in today's political climate, libraries have become centers for the movement that supports women, immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as those facing religious persecution. They stand as free public spaces that allow each individual to feel safe and to find a home away from home, where inclusivity is the standard. Now, more than ever, they are vital institutions that all members of the public should have access to, and here are several reasons why.

Libraries are synonymous with education, providing countless resources, namely books, internet access, printing facilities, and educational and professional training programs that can fuel economic, social, and cultural development. Libraries today not only provide their services face-to-face but since the light of the pandemic has also integrated e-learning to improve accessibility to the wider public. In addition to lending books and providing courses, libraries are also involved in copying materials for research or private study purposes. Not every student has the luxury of being able to afford every book or journal they require access to for their studies, therefore, they rely on the services of a library to sustain their academic consumption.

Recognizing the cultural importance of sharing, Mahatma Gandhi said that, "no culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive". The stimulus to share and reuse information and knowledge comes in many forms, and this is one of the most important functions of libraries. Libraries are rich repositories of significant historic and cultural collections, many of which are not available elsewhere in the world.

Libraries, which house centuries of learning, information, history, and truth, are important defenders in the fight against misinformation. Even though the past centuries have incurred many changes, as we have been subject to innovation, libraries continue to maintain their main purpose of providing visitors with the information they seek and are certain in providing only the truth.

As libraries are free for patrons, not many would consider the role they play in the economy, however, libraries do in fact play a key role in financially strengthening local communities. Libraries provide a workspace for telecommuters, supply free internet access for people looking for employment opportunities, as well as offer job and interview training for those in need without needing to spend enormous amounts of money on upskilling the workforce. The technology found in libraries today can be innovative, offering access to expensive tools, training, and skills that otherwise would not be available to everyone.

One of the most valuable things libraries contribute to their communities is space. Whilst libraries are not substitutes for shelters, counseling centers, or long-term systematic solutions to homelessness, nevertheless, they are vital to public health and safety, offering support to those in need. Each morning when libraries open their doors, they essentially become shelters, learning centers, and employment centers for the most underserved population. In addition to serving patrons experiencing poverty and homelessness, libraries are simply safe and meaningful spaces for all members of the community.

Libraries not only serve the purpose of providing information but also serve as a social hub for individuals wishing to find themselves and their communities. Students meet up in libraries with their study groups for school projects, mothers join baby story-time clubs, the elderly attend events to inspire connection with others, and avid readers indulge in discussing their latest read with other like-minded individuals.

In addition, libraries serve as community centers for diverse populations by supporting non-English speakers to help them integrate into the community, hence, ensuring that the library's selection is filled with books in different languages, as well as the staff often being multilingual to serve this necessity. Whoever you are and however you identify, all these communities come together to learn, share, and celebrate where they live, who they are, and what they want to become.

Whether a library boasts grand architecture or modest design, the physical space of a library has a way of communicating our underlying values as a society, providing resources and services for literacy and education, and aiding individuals in expanding their communal network. Libraries truly stand as remarkable spaces, playing the necessary role in ensuring that we continue to build up creative and innovative individuals to partake in our ever-evolving society. Therefore, the public's need for libraries that serve as shared, community-centered spaces is unlikely going to change in the near future.

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Democratization of Design. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and projects. Learn more about our ArchDaily topics. As always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

If the idea of libraries as frontline responders in the opioid crisis sounds far-fetched, look no further than the Denver Public Library. In February 2017, a twenty-five-year-old man suffered a fatal overdose in one of its bathrooms. That prompted the library to lay in a supply of Narcan, a drug used to counteract opioid overdoses. Other libraries, including the San Francisco Public Library, have followed suit and begun to stock the life-saving drug.

To keep up with changing technology and user expectations, public libraries have invested in more computer terminals and Wi-Fi capability. They have upgraded and expanded facilities to provide more outlets, meeting rooms, study spaces, and seating that patrons can use for extended periods of time as they take advantage of free Wi-Fi.

In 2018, NEH launched a new program for Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grants to support brick-and-mortar library projects as well as other efforts to strengthen the institutional base for the humanities in America. For example, the Hartford Public Library in Michigan received a 2019 NEH grant of $400,000 to construct a new library and community center, making available cultural and educational resources for the southwest area of the state.

With an NEH grant of $315,000, the University of California, San Francisco, Library, collaborating with San Francisco Public Library and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, will digitize 150,000 pages from 49 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area and make them accessible online.

Since 1970, the American Library Association has received 66 NEH grants, totaling $32,006,701 for projects ranging from bookshelf programs such as Muslim Journeys to traveling exhibits on topics such as the Dust Bowl and the African-American baseball experience, to reading and discussion series such as the Federal Writers Project and the Columbian Quincentenary. In 2018, ALA received an NEH grant of $397,255 to conduct the Great Stories Club, a nationwide program for at-risk teens on themes of empathy, heroism, and marginalization.

From the ancient world onward, libraries and archives have developed new and innovative ways of preserving knowledge, of organizing the material records of cultures, and of finding ways of making that historical knowledge widely available. You can see the importance of these functions by looking at the attempts throughout history by governments and others to deliberately destroy knowledge. In 1814, for example, British forces burned the 3,700 volumes of the still young Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., seeking to undermine the operations of the nascent U.S. government. More recently, in August 1992, the Serbian militia deliberately shelled the National Library of Bosnia in an attempt to eradicate the pluralistic culture the library represented. Horrifyingly, snipers trained their bullets on librarians and firefighters as they scurried to retrieve collections from the burning library.

This clay tablet from Tell Telloh, Iraq, dates from 2360 BCE. Its cuneiform script, which emerged from the Sumerian civilization in the fourth millennium BCE, is the earliest known form of writing. (Photo: Dea/G. Dagli Orti/De Agostini via Getty Images)

As technology firms develop wearable technologies, the amount of biometric data that will be captured from each of us will reach a point that medics will be able to make increasingly accurate predictions about our future health. This will help in the prevention of disease, but it will also open up major ethical issues. Who will own this data? We may be happy to share medical data with our doctor, but would we be happy with it getting into the hands of our health insurer? Perhaps libraries and archives can play a vital role here, serving as trusted agents providing individuals with access to their personal digital information organized, secured, and preserved to the highest archival standards. Under such a scenario, citizens would control who has access to their personal information, while libraries would be granted the right to aggregate and disseminate anonymized information solely for the purposes of public health.

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