Buildings, books, and bytes: libraries and communities in the digital age.

`You can take your kid to the library, but you can't take your kid to a website.'--18 year old highschool student

`If you plopped a library down...30 years from now...there would be cobwebs growing everywhere because people would look at it and wouldn't think of it as a legitimate institution because it would be so far behind...'--Experienced library user

This report is about libraries and the challenges they face in the digital world. But it is also about every noncommercial institution, from public TV to the freenets, that provides information to the public. It uses libraries as an exemplar of what can happen to even our most cherished public institutions when they face the onset of the digital revolution, a seismic societal shift. The report's findings about the intersection, and divergence, of library leaders' visions with those of the public hold lessons for everyone who values and wants to promote the public sphere of information and communications.

This study compares library leaders' visions for the future with the public's prescriptions for libraries, derived from public opinion research that forms the backbone of this study. For the purposes of this study, library leaders are defined by the institutional grantees of the Kellogg Foundation. This research suggests that libraries have their work cut out for them if they do not want to reside on the margins of the revolutionary new digital information marketplace. The younger generation, wedded to desktop computers, may provide a particular challenge.

But this battle is not the libraries' battle alone. At issue is the very notion of a public culture--that nexus of schools, hospitals, libraries, parks, museums, public television and radio stations, community computer networks, local public access, education, and government channels of cable television, and the growing universe of nonprofit information providers on the internet. This public opinion research affirms the need for alliances among these institutions to define their relative and collective roles in an expanding marketplace of information.

How library leaders see the future

Library leaders want the library of the future to be a hybrid institution that contains both digital and book collections. And they assume that it will be the librarian `navigator' who will guide library users to the most useful sources, unlocking the knowledge and information contained in the vast annals of the information superhighway. Some library leaders envision a digital `library without walls' in which users gain access to almost unlimited amounts of information through home computers or at remote terminals located around the community. They also envision a time when one library's collection will, because of growing electronic capabilities, become everyone's collection.

Library leaders see a continuing role for the library building. As a central and valued community meeting space, the library will become more of a civic integrator and a locus of community information on health, education, government, and other local services. Library leaders also express considerable concern about the `information have note,' individuals who do not have access to computers or online information. And they argue for a social activist role for libraries in which citizens could receive literacy information or acquire health and job information. They nevertheless express reservations about the library becoming marginalised by taking on exclusively the role of information safety net.

Public backing for libraries of the future

The public loves libraries but is unclear about whether it wants libraries to reside at the centre of the evolving digital revolution, or at the margins. Trusting their libraries and seeing them as a source of comfort in an age of anxiety, Americans support their public libraries and hold them in high esteem. They support a combined role for libraries that links digital and traditional book and paper information resources. And they accord equal value to libraries as places where people can read and borrow books or use computers to find information and use online services. Americans also strongly support the key roles of libraries, ranking the following roles as `very important'

* Providing reading hours and other programs for children

* Purchasing new books and other printed materials

* Maintaining and buildings building library

* Providing computers and online services to children and adults who lack them

* Providing a place where librarians help people find information through computers and online services

Warning bells

But the public sounded some warning bells as well. For example, the youngest Americans polled, those between the ages of 18 and 24, are the least enthusiastic boosters of maintaining and building library buildings. They are also the least enthusiastic of any age group about the importance of libraries in a digital future. And they voted to spend their money on personal computer disks rather than contribute the same amount in tax dollars to the library for purchasing digital information for home use. Moreover, men were less enthusiastic than women on almost all aspects of the library. And a strong plurality of Americans said they preferred to acquire new computer skills from `somebody they know', not from their local librarian. While only a fifth of respondents said they thought libraries would become less important in the digital age, those with access to computers were most likely to feel this way.

A focus group of frequent library users affirmed much of the polling data, endorsing America's trust in libraries and sounding warnings about the need to remain relevant. In many respects, focus group participants saw libraries as playing an important role in their communities. For example, they seconded the library leaders' vision of a hybrid institution, containing both books and digital materials. They also warmly endorsed the concept of the library as a place that provided equal and free access to information, especially to the information have nots.

Yet, in other important ways, the focus group participants placed libraries at the fringes of modern life, especially in relation to the technological revolution. Most telling, they did not see libraries leading the way in the digital revolution. In fact, they thought libraries should take a reactive role, adapting to new technologies. Libraries `should stay just behind the curve. We don't need them to be on the curve because most people aren't,' as one participant put it. Indeed, in a world of tight budgetary constraints, these Americans did not want to invest in libraries as technology leaders.

The `behind the curve' metaphor permeated the focus group participants' views of libraries in other significant ways. When asked to think about the role of libraries in the future, they placed libraries firmly in the past. In 30 years, they said, libraries would be relegated to a `kind of museum where people can go and look up stuff from way back when'. Thus, the library of the future, far from being a technology leader, would function as an information archive.

The super bookstores, such as Borders and Barnes and Noble, surfaced as strong competitors to libraries. Not only did these stores have popular books in stock (something libraries fell down on), but they created a welcoming atmosphere with comfortable chairs, coffee, and music playing in the background.

The focus group participants presented an equally diminished view of the future role of librarians. They acknowledged that librarians could perform a useful role as navigators in the as yet difficult to navigate universe of the internet. Yet they just as easily sanctioned the notion that trained library professionals could be replaced with community volunteers, such as retirees. For these sophisticated library users, the concept of `librarians as trained professionals' was nebulous at best.

And what about funding? The focus group participants were unwilling to increase taxes to support library services, including the provision of more technology. Their solution to funding needs was to turn libraries into charitable institutions, to which individuals could make tax deductible contributions. The fact that libraries already rely on charitable donations to supplement their public support had escaped them.

Given several notable discrepancies between survey and focus group findings, additional research on these topics is imperative to probe specific aspects of the public's vision and values and to create a more coherent context on which the library community can build a communications strategy.

America's love for libraries

Among other key findings of the public opinion research

* There is enormous overlap among library users, bookstore patrons, and home computer users. While some library leaders fear that computers and bookstores will increasingly draw library users away from libraries, at least for now this concern appears groundless--one market seems to draw sustenance from the other markets

* Americans favor spending more tax dollars and charging extra fees to supplement library operating funds and to purchase computer access and information. Given $20, they would rather spend it on taxes to aid libraries that want to purchase digital information and make it available through home computers than spend that $20 on their own computer software

* Library users favor increasing taxes more than nonlibrary users, who prefer a pay as you go fee system in which individual charges would be levied for certain services

* Like library leaders, Americans place high value on library buildings. But unlike the library leaders, Americans are less sure that the library is a significant community meeting place

* The public ranks highly the notion that librarians should take on responsibilities for aiding users who want to navigate the information superhighway. But when asked where they would go to learn more about using computers, a strong plurality said they would ask `somebody they know', not their local librarian

* Families with children were particularly strong library supporters as well as heavy computer users

* Garnering strong public support is the library's role in providing computer access to adults and children who otherwise lack it

* Minorities favor providing computer services to information have nots and are strong supporters of building more libraries. They are also willing to pay extra taxes and fees for more library based digital services. Lower income Americans are least likely to ask a friend for help in mastering computer skills, so they might be particularly receptive to librarians acting as digital information trainers.

Public policy context

The vision statements suggest key roles for libraries as collections, institutions and community resources in the digital age. Many of the roles identified in these statements rely on public policies that support, or at least do not undermine or contradict, these outcomes.

Four public policy issues will affect the realisation of library leaders' visions for their profession and the ways that people use libraries

* Universal service and access, through which libraries would provide affordable access to and use of computer networking tools

* Freedom of speech and the host of policies that support or limit libraries' ability to collect, create, and make available materials--including those that invoke controversy--in the digital age

* Intellectual property issues, including copyright and the `moral rights' of artists and authors to their work, which will affect both libraries and library users

* Funding or support mechanisms especially with the decoupling of library services and the local tax base as more collections are part of digital networks with no geographic boundaries

Strategies to move libraries into the digital age

At the spring 1996 conference of library and information management leaders, participants analysed the implications of the public opinion research findings with the aim of exploring common communications messages and strategies that would move libraries productively into the digital age. Participants worked to build a bridge from the language and concepts of their library visions to the general public's ambivalent attitudes toward the library's identity and role, testing messages and strategies in small groups and generally arriving at a consensus.

Participants acknowledged that libraries cannot and do not exist in a vacuum and that libraries must join forces with the entire landscape of institutions that contribute to public culture. They pointed to examples of libraries teaming up with other public service information providers, such as public television and radio, community computer networks, and local nonprofits, to form community learning cooperatives. Several of the grantees mentioned that such collaborations already are flourishing in some areas. They imagined the possibility of a coordinated communications campaign, based on public opinion research, to position libraries as key players in this new cooperative venture.

Participants said that the opportunity is open to create and promote models of `community learning collaboratives' or new forms of `public service media' in which libraries play a key role, and to actively define the public interest in the digital age. Participants also identified the need for creating a broader, educated constituency familiar with the impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which creates a new federal framework in which libraries and their partners must work if they are to articulate their key messages about public access, learning, and community service.

In summary

Americans continue to have a love affair with their libraries, but they have difficulty figuring out where libraries fit in the new digital world. And many Americans would just as soon turn their local libraries into museums and recruit retirees to staff them.

Libraries are thus at a crossroads, for they must adjust their traditional values and services to the digital age. But there is good reason for optimism as libraries and their communities take up this challenge.

Libraries have enormous opportunities nationwide to influence and direct public opinion because strong public sentiment already supports key visions for the future of libraries. Moreover, the growing use of home computers seems, at least at this juncture, to complement, not compete with, library use. So libraries and their leaders now must chart a role for themselves, giving meaning and message to their future institutions and their central role in community life.