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| Literacy @ The Library CLLS |
Is this the
only way we can see libraries?
Reading
articles about libraries on a near-daily basis, I can’t help but notice that
the images most often chosen to represent libraries are a shelf of books.
Occasionally
there’s even a person, but unless the article is about the new town librarian,
they’re anonymous:
Don’t
misunderstand, there’s nothing wrong with books, or libraries having books — I
love books. What I don’t love is that these images of books and bookshelves
represent the limited way in which the media thinks about libraries even when
they specifically say otherwise. For example, check out this 2014 article from
Smithsonian Magazine, entitled “Libraries Are Great at Lending All Sorts of
Things — Not Just Books” and this 2017 In the Bay piece called “Public
Libraries: More Than Just a Book Lending Service.” Both of these delightful
articles about how libraries are more than books lead with images of, yes, you
guessed it, bookshelves! It makes no sense, but it happens all the time!
So what type
of photos should media outlets use to represent libraries? Well, to start how
about some more active images — pictures of people doing something. Nobody
comes to the library and turns into a bookshelf, library patrons do things —
sometimes important things — at their local library! Here are some examples:
🔽
➧ Toddlers
improving their spatial reasoning while they play during storytime at the Franklin
Park Library.
➧ School-age
kids learning computer programming at Manchester
Central Library’s after-school Code Club
➧ Harpist Amber
Burdick performing at the Topanga
Library.
➧ Meeting of
the Japanese Book Club at the University
of British Columbia Library.
➧ “Yoga for Every Body” a class incorporating basic meditation and yoga at the Edenvale Branch Library.
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