Re-imagining the civic role of libraries in our technological age is an intriguing subject to me. So, when an article sidebar espouses the innovative ways public libraries have reinvented themselves in order to play a central civic role in their various towns and cities, my ears perk up and my eyes open. I just wanted
Appearing March 7th in The New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye’s article “Breaking Out of the Library Mold, in Boston and Beyond” (available here) examines how renovations of large, public libraries exemplify how the roles of public libraries and public librarians have drastically changed. Public libraries are moving far away from being dusty book repositories, and toward being airy, open social centers designed with the omnipresence of electronic devices in mind. And, as this role-shifting and repurposing has occurred, public library usage is spiking upward across the county; Boston’s central library alone saw an increase of nearly 500,000 physical visits in 2013.Continue Reading How Are Public Libraries Changing?