Public libraries are important and vital public places. They are one of the few truly public places remaining that provide free and open spaces and opportunities for educational and intellectual nourishment, creative and cultural promotion, communal and social engagement, and economic development. They provide free access to diverse kinds and formats of information and, in so doing, help strengthen democratic principles and practices including freedom of assembly, speech, and the press.
They further present nonjudgmental spaces for individuals and groups to educate, enjoy, and explore their particular personal and communal interests and needs. Indeed, public libraries are unique social institutions that deserve our collective attention and defence.
Unfortunately, public libraries, are increasingly overlooked as key community and public places. It appears fashionable, for example, to disdainfully dismiss or undermine their importance for local communities, cultures and economies, and to exaggerate uninformed claims of their impending demise, particularly in times of financial constraints and the seemingly digital usurpation of their main mission of providing information.
Admittedly there may be some operational problems or service issues that generate frustration for both library users and staff, coupled with perennially flat or ever-diminishing budgets that further constrain library operations, services and products, that warrant criticism. But these problems and constraints do not justify sweeping declarations, and the resulting misinformed argument, that these places should therefore be (further) reduced or even shuttered.
Instead, these problems and constraints must be promptly addressed and resolved in order to help restore public interest, correct misunderstandings and ensure their long-term health and continuation of their beneficial contributions to the lives of individuals and communities.
Public libraries are not just about information: they are about understanding oneself, one’s community and the larger world around them
It is useful to situate the significance of public libraries within a framework of their contributions to communities, cultures, education, economies and democracy in order to begin raising needed awareness that can help deal with some of these problems and constraints. These contributions are not mutually exclusive; instead, they are symbiotic, informing and influencing each other in a complex matrix that makes public libraries significant for individuals and communities.
First, public libraries contribute to community development. They are a unique public place for social engagement that offer, for example, free and open access to diverse kinds and formats of information, free spaces for assembly and debate, and various opportunities for individual reflection, research and leisure.
They are cornerstones of an ever-diminishing public sphere where people can meet and mingle outside of their homes and workplaces and, significantly, free from commercial, financial, political or ideological pressures that seemingly permeate most parts of our lives and societies. They may in fact be the last truly public places left that help foster and develop their communities outside of the self-interested realms of business or politics.
Second, public libraries contribute to cultural and educational development. They collect, organise, preserve and make accessible the cultural capital of their community and, indeed, of humanity. They are a cultural place that make freely and openly available different ideas, philosophies, stories, myths, poems, reports and facts. This cultural accessibility encourages and nourishes creativity and intellectual activity that leads to the creation and extension of more culture.
Public libraries also provide a place for education, where anyone can engage in study and research in order to increase their education (which does not end after the completion of one’s schooling, however basic or advanced), energise their imagination and discover new perspectives and possibilities for self-discovery. They are also places of reading: where literacy – reading, digital and other kinds of information literacy – is taught and advanced. Public libraries are therefore not just about information: they are about understanding oneself, one’s community and the larger world around them.
Third, public libraries contribute to economic development. They provide a place where local businesses and entrepreneurs can access information and engage in research in order to strengthen their businesses. They provide a place for individuals to search and apply for employment and benefits, especially for those people who may not have access to computers or the internet at home.
They can also improve their community’s reputation and attract visitors who could visit the surrounding businesses. For example, many North American cities have, over the past decade, constructed or refurbished libraries in order to help improve their flagging downtown and other commercial districts.
Fourth, public libraries contribute to democratic development. They provide a place of open and free information that gives equal access to every citizen. In this so-called age of information, they are a great equaliser that establishes an equitable and just information playing field for all.
Public libraries, by extension, support and promote some of the bedrock principles of democracy such as the freedom to read, the freedom of ideas, the freedom of communication, the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press.
They are unique public places and useful developers of community, culture, education, the economy and democracy. Because public libraries preserve and make accessible knowledge, encourage literacy, add to cultural capital, support the economy, and advance democratic practices, they should be recognised as central to our very humanity. As the acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman declares: “We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.”
It is time to defend, and reclaim, public libraries for both our public and personal lives.
Marc Kosciejew is a lecturer at the University of Malta’s Department of Library, Information and Archive Sciences.