What makes a library a library?

WARNING: This blog post contains NO statistics.

In 2019, when people from Victoria were allowed to travel more than 5km from their home, and Western Australia had open borders, PLWA invited me to speak at a professional learning event on Creating Collections for Future Communities. My presentation was titled ‘Library Collections: A rambling diversion through the 2016 Guidelines, Standards and Outcome Measures for Australian Public Libraries’. I enjoyed the challenge of appearing educated and engaging on a topic for which I am highly unqualified. So with my trusty reference buddy Google and some tidbits picked up from various library jobs over the years I got to thinking about what makes a library a library?

If you go by dictionary definitions, the essence of a library might be described as:

“A curated collection of sources of information and similar resources, selected by experts and made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing.”

The key word or concept in the definitions was ‘collection’, which appeared in most versions. The additional flavouring came from words/phrases like ‘curated’ … ‘building’ … ‘for use not sale’. To summarise, the core of a library is the collection, which is purposeful, managed and accessible – and can be found in a place we commonly call a library.

If you read David Lankes’ The New Librarianship Field Guide (and I encourage you to – it’s an easy and engaging read), he starts with the times when a library was a ‘book palace’ and leads you through the ‘information centre’ to the ‘third space’, the ‘Learning Centre and Community Hub’ and finally to his latest proposition that a library is a ‘movement’.

“The focus isn’t on collections, or access, or places, it is on mobilizing a community for social action. In a world filled with a cacophony of perspectives, propaganda, and belief, we serve as vital social infrastructure and trusted facilitators working across community divisions to develop a new community narrative.

The future shared library service is a university of the people. A function that engages librarians and the community players who are part of local movements in learning. Teaching members how to organize collective action. Bringing together different industries together with librarians to forge common goals.

And just as all ideas need to be adapted to local needs, this library university does not have to look like a classical institution of higher education. Don’t build lecture halls, but cooperative laboratories. Teach online, but also learn together in pop up libraries in malls and beaches, and football stadiums. Eschew periodic diplomas for continuous portfolio building. And no class without the partners and community members making this real in their lives.” (https://davidlankes.org/library-as-movement/)

Now I want to throw in some recent developments in public libraries.

First up, the ‘open library’. It might be staffed during peak hours, but at other times you access the library via your membership card. There is a lot of trust in the library card. Swipe in, swipe out, secure access, CCTV. You may only be able to access part of the facility, but you can probably find something to borrow, access to the internet and a quiet place to study, work or relax. Relatively new to public libraries in Australia (having been used in university libraries and in some public libraries overseas), the ‘open library’ is accessible to people at times when it may be economically prohibitive for Councils to provide a staffed library service.

And now let’s visit The Learning Space run by the City of Canada Bay Libraries at The Connection at Rhodes, NSW. The Learning Space “offers a suite of digital resources and creative learning programs exploring emerging technologies.” I was there a couple of weeks ago and it was packed (within COVID limits) with people working quietly, accessing the wifi, printers and a couple of bookable computers. The librarian said it was a busy place. Three Story Times a week, after school activities for kids, tech programs for adults, and monthly book group meetings or author talks. But (and here’s the kicker), there are NO books, no DVDs, no magazines or newspapers. There are no physical collections. Use your library membership to download an eresource, but if you want to browse and borrow a physical item you need to go to the libraries at Concord or Five Dock.

So with all of this, what makes a 21st century library a library?

If I say it’s the collection, what is The Learning Space? The language at Canada Bay very carefully steps around the collection issue – they have two libraries and The Learning Space.

It would be easy to say that a library is a building, but David Lankes has taken us beyond palaces, centres and hubs to a place where the library is an idea, or a network of complementary relationships.

Part of me wants to say that you can’t have a library without a librarian, but in our modern world an ‘open library’ is unquestionably a good thing for library customers and communities (and for today I’m not going near the question of What is a Librarian?).

And if I jump on my soapbox I’ll proclaim that you can’t have a library without a customer. But I know that you could have row upon row of beautifully shelved books in Classical Latin and they wouldn’t draw a crowd. You can have a library without people, just not a great library.

“Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services (and a collection is only one of many). Great libraries build communities.” (David Lankes again)

All of which means I don’t have an answer to my question, unless I cheat and say a library is the combination of all of these things – collection, curation, customers and community, in whatever space or place or configuration that works for these things. It was easy to think of libraries as a collection of things, and I still think it’s the essential ingredient. But I have to be prepared to adapt my thinking if I’m going to keep advocating for libraries of the future.