Public Libraries in 2001

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

In thirty minutes I am supposed to tell you everything I know and think about the library of the future. In that amount of time the best I can really do is skip the rock across the pond and hit some high points that I think are relevant to what you are doing or what you want to do. The task of defining what libraries may or may not be in the year 2001 or 2020 is rather daunting. In San Francisco it is no theoretical task - we are creating a new main library, we are renovating twenty branches, and we will be implementing a new-generation automated system in the next twelve months. We have not been sitting around thinking about what libraries will be like; we have been designing a new one. First, will there be libraries in the year 2001? I think there will be because the public wants them. A recent survey shows that people like libraries, they use libraries, and they will continue to do so.(1) The public like libraries, and buildings, and books, and all those traditional services. The next piece of significant evidence is some research that we conducted in 1988 in San Francisco. I was hired in 1987 to build the new main San Francisco library and create state-of-the-art technology. One of the first things we needed to find out was if the public would pay for it. So we commissioned a benchmark survey by a professional firm which basically found that the people of San Francisco like libraries, want libraries, and will pay for them. The survey asked respondents if they could think of a better use of their tax dollars than spending it one the public library. Ninety percent could not think of a better use. That told me that they want a good library. Second, will libraries be the same as they are today? My contention, again, relying on the surveys, is that libraries will change. They will change because the public wants them to. Again, I think the public attitude and their willingness to pay for these libraries will be a primary determinent of change. But how are libraries going to change? That is subject to a good deal of interpretation. Obviously the economic environment we are in, which is now a global environment, needs to be considered. Another factor is technology, in which a number of things are indicative of what is coming in the near future. I am sure most of you have heard about the full-text Diskman from Sony. In its first year Sony sold more Diskmans than they did Walkmans in Japan. It is only a question of time before they start showing up in the United States. We all assume that television is here forever. But we do not know that. Tandy has recently released the Multi-Media PC-ROM. Tandy, Radio Shack if you will, is the Montgomery Ward of the electronic world. When it starts distributing multimedia PCs through all its stores, it is a significant indicator of the future. Basically, it is the librarians who are debating whether it is libraries or books or computers. The public wants them all. They want buildings, books, and computers - they want everything we have always given them and they want all the new things too. So in San Francisco, we are spending $140 million dollars on a new main library. It has to conform with San Francisco Civic Center architecture; it will be quite large - more than fifty thousand square feet per floor, on six floors. The building itself becomes a metaphor for the library; the past, the present, and the future. They key element that will drive library development over the next decade and beyond will be the public's need for information. It is time for libraries to simplify their message. We used to say that ignorance is not nice, but we will live with it. We did not do much about it. When we got into the cycle that says ignorance costs. We are now at that stage in our society where we must finally come to terms with the fact that ignorance kills. To me the mission of the public library is to eliminate ignorance. Remember Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, which says you have biological needs, physiological needs, security needs, social needs, ego needs, and self-actualization? …