Beyond books: In the Information Age, libraries refuse to be left behind
Published: July 19, 2009, 12:30 am
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You can buy lunch and a latte, then browse racks stuffed with glossy magazines and new CDs. You can download an audio book, and scoop up an armful of DVDs and Blu-ray discs to take home.
You can get Twitter updates about literary happenings.
And, if all this gets too exhausting, you can even sink into a comfy beanbag chair for a little rest. (Don’t worry if you nod off –that’s positively encouraged.)
Welcome to Western New York libraries in 2009.
Once slightly moribund, if well-loved, places to learn –quietly! –in neighborhoods around the region, some libraries here are now putting a new face forward.
They are turning the current rough patch in the nation’s economy into a prime opportunity to rethink their core missions, unearth new attitudes and make a bid to become more important than ever in people’s lives –all in a 21st century that has become an ever-accelerating Information Age.
“The book is never going to go away,” said Bridget Quinn-Carey, who took over the helm of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library last year. “But I’ma firm believer that we need to provide all sorts of materials. Not everybody learns by reading.”
Sure, you’ll still find small branch libraries out there doing things the way they always did, now part of a downsized library system that emerged after 16 of 52 branches were closed due to a county budget crisis in 2005.
But look around the Buffalo Niagara region and you’ll also find examples of cutting-edge approaches that may point the way to what libraries in this area –and around the United States –will look like in a few years.
That latte? It can be bought in the Central Library in Buffalo at Fables Cafe, which sees bustling trade on the ground floor –right next to the popular materials section, which has been updated and expanded to look like a mega-bookstore.
Those DVDs, audiobooks and other non-print items now make up a good chunk of library spending –about 40 percent of dollars spent on materials by the Erie County system.
And the beanbags? For those, head over to Daemen College, where a brand-new library contains a “pillows and pads” wing, complete with beanbags and cushions meant to encourage students to study and read in comfort –even to doze, if they feel the need.
“Twenty percent of our students said they never came to our library because they like to study on their bed or on the floor. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we accommodate them?,’ ” said Glenn Woike, the college’s head librarian. “This is about not what we wanted, but what the students wanted.”
Not everybody is unilaterally thrilled about the changes.
Some library advocates in Western New York warn that public libraries must not follow the public’s thirst for pop culture and pampering –especially if it means sacrificing the values that have made libraries great.
“Libraries have a higher calling,” said Elizabeth Berry, head of the Buffalo- based group Save Our Libraries, which fought the shuttering of the 16 branches in 2005. “They do exist for research, they do exist for making people the best that they can be. They do exist for educating people.”
“If they act as if they are just another Netflix, they are missing the point.”
Library of the future
To sneak a peek at where some libraries are heading, head over to Daemen College’s new spread on Main Street. It’s the most ambitious new library to be built in Western New York in years.
And make no mistake: This is not your grandparents’ library.
In fact, it’s not even the library of 10 years ago.
The eye-catching 45,000-square-foot facility, with its environmentally friendly glass and slate exterior, is designed to be an “information commons” more than a traditional library, said Woike, who has worked at the college for 28 years.
“It’s a place where students can come with an assignment they get in a classroom,”Woike said, “and have all of the resources and people that can help them complete that project, and go out with a finished assignment.”
That means this library looks and feels different from what many library users are used to.
For instance:
• The entire building has wireless service, and it has 20 laptops available for students to “check out” and use anywhere in the building –in addition to 40 computers available on the ground floor.
• More than half of the library is “talking permitted” space. Much of the furniture is movable.
• The 170,000-volume book collection is located on the second and third floors of the new facility, and is not expected to grow much more in size, Woike said. Now, “recreational reading” materials like paperbacks, mysteries and romance novels are on the first floor, he said, to make them more accessible.
• The “pillow and pads” wing, on the top floor, is for students who want to recline when they read and study, and to further group interaction.
“When we did surveys of our students, we found that 58 percent of them like to study with a friend or in groups, and not in total quiet,” said Woike. “Students love to be able to talk.”
• A “video wall” which groups 25 42-inch monitors in a cluster for maximum impact offers students a chance to view news, educational programming, art programming – even video games, on occasion.
“Late some nights, when students are bored, we’ll run video games, like Wii, on that,” said Woike. “People are more than academic animals –they have a social component. We wanted to add that in.”
A changing Central
Across town, the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library is making changes at Central that, while not as wholesale as the Daemen project, are designed to boost the library’s high-tech appeal and increase its connection to people’s lives.
The first floor of the facility on Lafayette Square offers the full-service cafe, an expanded used-book and gift store, and a more open, bookstore-style popular materials section, plus a revamped entry area that speeds checkouts and makes the 1964-era building seem brighter and more inviting.
But the changes are only beginning, said Quinn-Carey, 40, who took over the system in early 2007 2008 after being hired from the Essex, Conn., library.
The library is about to begin a comprehensive space-planning effort at Central that will guide further renovations and a reprioritizing of library services, she said.
In part, changes in the future may highlight the library’s growing focus on technology and multimedia holdings.
“[Daemen’s new library] is an example of being very responsive to your population,” said Quinn-Carey. “We’ve been thinking a lot about how we get there.”
According to library data:
• Since 2005, the library’s spending on nonprint materials –including downloadable audio and video, Bluray technology, and CDs and DVDs, but excluding database services –has grown from 8 percent of its annual budget to 40 percent.
• The library’s collection is 82 percent print materials and 18 percent non-print products.
Quinn-Carey said those levels of spending seem right to her and other library officials because they roughly parallel the public’s borrowing patterns.
In other words, about 40 percent of the library’s circulation activity now involves the non-print items available at local libraries –such as DVDs of movies, CD recordings, and downloads.
“We’re going to be taking a hard look at that” spending pattern, Quinn-Carey said. “We’ll be looking at what proportions of our budgets go to these sorts of materials.”
Some library fans will be watching those deliberations with concern.
Berry, the library activist, said that she believes libraries should hold true to their ideals as repositories of higher learning.
“You have to be careful when you say, “Hey, whatever’s popular,’ ” she said. “You have to remember that you have an educational responsibility.”
“Technology’s great, when it works –but you have to have a balance.”
Quinn-Carey said she thinks that the library is filling people’s needs when it provides them a service or an item that they need and want –whatever that item might be.
“That’s like saying you should read ‘Jane Eyre’ and not read Danielle Steel,” the director said. “I’ma big fan of the book. But we’re dealing with a population now that’s not necessarily tied to that format.
“Why is one better than another, in terms of the value it delivers to us?”
cvogel@buffnews.com
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