I was browsing through the Newseum Front Page (which shows you the front page of newspapers around the world) function and I happened to stumble across an article in the Guelph Mercury: Book-borrowing is where it’s at.
The article’s main thrust is that libraries are good because they have “free” (“free” is a bad way to put it – everything provided still costs real money but the costs are covered through taxation) materials and resources. People appear to be most interested in free computers and Internet connections. All these are good things and I’m happy to see people enjoy them. However, the article gives no attention to the staff so far as I can tell. Aside from a few quotes, one gets the sense that this article could have been written about a warehouse with a computer lab in it. I wonder about the community stories involved there. Has the Library helped people learn new things? On the leisure side, has it helped people feel happier or more relaxed?
Book use, movie loans and children’s programs have all seen big increases in demand as people have less disposable income.
But the biggest difference from other trying economic times is that this is the first post-internet recession, and people are flocking to the library to use its electronic services and access.
“We are definitely experiencing an upsurge,” said Norman McLeod, the library’s chief executive officer. “When times are tough people turn to the public library. It’s a service they know will be there and they value it more than they normally do.”
[...]Now it’s not just free books and magazines or cheap entertainment for the kids that people are looking for. It’s internet access.
“Our role has changed since the last recession in 1983 because of the internet. It’s not just demand for traditional services anymore, it’s a demand for access to information. That’s been quite a dramatic change,” McLeod said.
People want access to job searches, resumé writing, even printing services.
“They’re not just borrowing more,” McLeod said, adding that there were 600,000 visits to the library website last year.
“But books are still the biggest thing we offer. I don’t see that changing in the near future,” McLeod said.
That quote in the last line has me wondering. Does “biggest” here mean “most” (i.e. the largest percentage of the collection) or does it mean something more like “best” or “most distinctive”? In any case, I hope the Library is studying what their users are doing so that they can design new services and help people even more.
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