Future Libraries

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

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”.

Delhi-based author Mridula Koshy and her partner Michael Creighton started the Community Library Project, that is helping hundreds of children become readers and, more importantly, thinkers. Read more about this library along with a very personal story of the founder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.