Changing role of libraries in today’s world

Among the damning statistics in Eurobarometer studies are those that show the miserly borrowings from public libraries in Malta. This reflects very poorly on the country’s reading habits, though the National Book Council’s recent survey has reversed that image somewhat.

The fact remains, however, that lending libraries are not the most popular of places. Various reasons have been mentioned: books are old; the environment is not one amenable to book browsing; the main public library is out of the way...

Those responsible for lending libraries made an effort, helped by a better financial packet by the government, to address some of the issues and the reversal of the downward trend in borrowing and library subscription did start.

The National Library in Valletta was also in the news a few months ago because it was in dire financial straits and could not rehabilitate unique books bequeathed by its founder and subsequent benefactors. This does not mean one of our national treasures is in a state of neglect. But the National Library, set up in 1555, and the public lending libraries that form part of the Department of Libraries are not what the 21st century deems libraries should be. The modern vision of libraries is dynamic. They are considered as places that disseminate information in all ways and not just through the traditional way of lending books or of keeping books for posterity.

The changes brought about by the revolutionary propagation of information technology have also demanded that libraries change to meet the demands of a public much hungrier for information than ever. Basically, libraries needed to diversify away from traditional books, taking IT on board and, in the process, needing a know-how that only specialised staff could provide. Not to mention the need of equipment that probably just was not there. And this had to be used and maintained. The computerisation of the lending organisation was one of the cases in point. It was handled well but took up resources that were traditionally not part of the library structure.

Quite simply, the set-up of a government department no longer fit the bill. Nor did the financing arrangements in place, originally intended for the upkeep of books in one place and the buying of books and the maintenance of a lending system in the other.

So the need to restructure was not just desirable but a necessity. It was logical that, following the successful restructuring of the Archives Department, the concept of a National Librarian, in this case with two deputies to help run the two main branches of the institution, should be considered and finally implemented. The new Malta Libraries Act – which the deputy chairman of the Malta Library and Information Association welcomed as “a legal framework on which to work and move forward” in an article on The Times last Wednesday – caters for the setting up of a public entity, with its own financing and financial generating capabilities, and structures that permit a widening of the definition of a library and a librarian to encompass information technologies, that brings libraries into modern times.

The new law looks good on paper but it will take the right people, with the right amount of leeway and, at the same time, support by the government to make the vision work: to turn libraries into dynamic entities that are expansive. But libraries can never forget their main mission: to spread, as far and wide as possible, the love of books.