What Are Public Libraries For?
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Out with the Dewey Decimal System. In with co-working spaces,
podcast studios, and goats.
Experience:
5.21.2019 by Schuyler Velasco
Growing
up in Adams County, a sprawling, semirural community outside of Denver, Ser
Herr visited his neighborhood library at least once a week, making a beeline to
the children’s section. “It was just literally books,” Herr, 31, remembers.
“Once in a while my mom would rent a movie for us. But it was about as simple a
library as you could get.”
Today,
Herr’s most-frequented Adams County branch is an open-concept building
outfitted with a coffee shop and decorated with realistic-looking trees,
complete with leaves that change color with the seasons. The library system’s
name itself has changed; it now brands itself “Anythink.”
The
temple of books is changing, as communities like Adams County reevaluate the
institution’s role in public life. For over a century, that role was to be the
main source of materials and information, says David Lankes, director of the
school of library and information science at the University of South Carolina.
“A lot of people think of libraries as a place that collects stuff, whether
it’s books, documents, music, what have you,” he says.
But
now, library patrons need fewer tangible things. Patrons still check out books:
Library checkouts in the U.S. dwarfed Amazon book orders as of 2014. But people
can also borrow books directly on e-readers, or access them through
Spotify-esque subscription services.
Overall,
U.S. library visits still are trending downward. The White House’s latest
federal budget proposes eliminating federal funding for libraries, an unlikely
move that, if passed, would disproportionately affect areas that can’t rely as
much on tax funding and friendly local governments.
That
means that, to survive, public libraries have to evolve into something more
attuned to modern needs and tailor-made to local communities — with uses so
diverse they can at times look nothing like a library at all.
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And
there are other ways Anythink has found to get people into its seven campuses:
studios for producing podcasts and music; 3D printers; ample programming. The
libraries held 470 children’s programs in 2018, ranging from STEM workshops to
music and movement classes. In the summer, goats visit the libraries, part of a
program to teach children about farming. The broad menu has paid off: In 2018,
the small county’s library system had 108,555 cardholders and 1,130,415 total
visits, both increasing roughly 40 percent over 10 years.
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Some
of what Anythink did was just a matter of rebranding. (Buzzy names are a trend;
In London, libraries are called “Idea Stores;” a system in Montana goes by
“ImagineIf”).
But
changing the library’s image has also meant doing away with some staples of the
library experience — most notably, the nearly-150-year-old Dewey Decimal
System, which organizes nonfiction texts by way of an intricate, numbers-based
hierarchy. After a few standalone branches across the country experimented with
jettisoning Dewey, Anythink became the first library system in the U.S. to
abandon it entirely. READ
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