Next on the Endangered Species List: Your Public Library

While I could easily make this article an all out rant about the dumbing down of America, I will spare you my thoughts (for now) about how our education system is putting America’s youth and the idea of not just the American dream, but the notion of a lucrative and prosperous lifestyle for many young Americans in jeopardy.

This article is slanted more toward current thoughts on how our evolving perspectives toward things like “ new urbanism” and the need for human interaction in the face of ever expanding Internet ubiquity are changing the way libraries are used in the traditional sense and how they will either evolve into something [almost] entirely different or languish as largely unused public money pits before facing demolition in large numbers throughout cities across our nation.

I caught a great article on Slate this morning about how the use of libraries in their traditional sense has become essentially obsolete, while our need for social outlets for human interaction has not declined.  What has happened after 30 years of urban sprawl is that the massive libraries situated in urban city centers have given way to lots of smaller public libraries which lack the funding to provide the resources that larger facilities can deliver.  The result being a requirement to rethink how people would use such a facility and re-design new libraries to accomodate this use through incorporating asthetic features that are more familiar to today’s culture.  This can be seen in the design of newer libraries like the one in Salt Lake City, UT, which is where the image in this article came from.  It essentially looks like a huge shopping mall.  The interesting thing about it is how they have incorporated features such as retail and coffee shops into their design.  Indications are that this re-thinking of what a library should be in the 21st century has been successful in maintaining an important centerpoint for modern society.

Strategy leaders like Ross Dawson have published stories indicating a strong likelihood that libraries will face extinction in about 11 years (2019).  While I agree with extinction theorists to a certain degree, I am not so sure that this is an all or nothing ultimatum.

I do see how traditional libraries with expansive reading rooms and rows stacked deep with books will soon give way to facilities like Salt Lake’s.  let’s just hope that the focus stays on knowledge acquisition and not cinnamon rolls or athletic footwear.