Future Libraries

More than just a place for bookworms – will the library of the future have vegetable patches on the roof and a repair café in the basement? Tim Schumann works at the Heinrich Böll Library in Berlin’s Pankow district and is co-founder of the “Green Libraries Network”. Here he explains why public libraries have to redefine their role.

Guaranteeing free access to knowledge and information is the primary goal of public and research libraries in Germany. How is the German library system structured, and what challenges do they face within the sector?

Hardly anyone still prophesies the end of the libraries. Instead, the discussion is about how to support them for the benefit of all. A thoroughly optimistic summary of our series “The Future of Libraries”.

In the era of digitization, the impending death of public libraries has often been announced. Faced with all these upheavals, they have managed to reinvent themselves, and the Grande Bibliothèque, located in Montreal, is a fine example of success and popularity. 

Libraries increasingly define themselves as educational and meeting centres. One important element is architecture – which sometimes calls for climbing in hiking boots!

Libraries are ill-equipped to fight fake news, critics say. Maybe they were celebrated too soon as bastions against misinformation. But as part of a network they can certainly act against manipulated reports.

Libraries create a future. Their own is uncertain. Start of the “Future Libraries” series on the libraries of tomorrow.

When modern libraries are discussed, the staff is often envisioned as experts in digitization, integration, inclusion. „But it’s unfair to ask someone to learn everything“, says Nate Hill, Metropolitan New York Library Council.

Public and accessible meeting space becomes increasingly rare and high quality education remains out-of-reach for many people. Nico Koenig and Grif Peterson from “Peer 2 Peer University”  talk about the potential of libraries as a shared space for community building and lifelong learning.

Ville Vaarne, communications manager of the Finnish Library Association, has received over 200,000 hits with a Youtube video about US President Trump. For Vaarne the proof that social media is a must for libraries.

For some time inclusion has been one of the chief buzzwords of modern library work. It usually means accessibility and a stock of books in simple language. But that can be only the beginning.

Libraries are confronted with the demand to counter the uneven distribution of opportunities for participation. But merely talking about diversity and inclusion will not be enough, according to design principal Traci Engel Lesneski.

“Nobody expects libraries to save the world, but we are in a perfect position to do just that,”say Rebecca T. Miller and Rebekkah Smith Aldrich. In this interview, the two US library experts explain why the belief that digitisation makes libraries irrelevant is a myth.

Libraries have always offered their users a share in cultural memory and knowledge of the times. This has not been changed by digitization. But the manner of knowledge transfer has.