What will happen to public libraries

Libraries are shoring up some of their traditional partnerships, like with schools. They are also expanding into some new and surprising partnerships. In Colorado, the Poudre River business librarians have been helping the State Office of Economic Development and International Trade answer calls from small-business owners about a myriad of issues around the pandemic.

The American Libraries magazine documents an extensive list of where and how librarians are being deployed to other tasks within the library and in collaborations with outside organizations.

Reopening: In Pennsylvania, the Department of Education is working on a framework to help local libraries plan their re-openings. There will be mandatory health and safety guidelines, recommendations on how to secure COVIDrelated supplies, and lists of resources for federal and state guidelines from the CDC for community organizations and businesses.

In Erie, Dessy is already working on a day reopening plan. That, in turn, will cause us to alter our methods. Anticipating what the public will expect, Marcellus Turner, of the Seattle library, described how his pandemic-era trips to Target and grocery stores have become research trips.

He notes the plexiglass, and he observes the processes and standards for health and safety for what that means for the future of the Seattle libraries. What can they model? And all librarians have to worry through other logistics: How will they clean the books? How will they open—phasing in with shorter hours, fewer locations, more contact-free drive-throughs?

And how to rearrange the seating? Throughout all these events, libraries have stayed open, filling in for the kids when their schools closed; offering therapeutic sessions in art or conversation or writing after losses of life; bringing in nurses or social workers when services were unavailable to people; and hiring life-counselors for the homeless, whom they offer shelter and safety during the day. Today, interventions like those have a ring of simpler days.

But libraries have learned from their experience and attention to these previous, pre-pandemic efforts. They are pivoting quickly to new ways of offering services to the public—the core of their mission.

When libraries closed their doors abruptly, they immediately opened their digital communications, collaborations, and creative activity to reach their public in ways as novel as the virus that forced them into it. You can be sure that this is just the beginning. Today libraries are already acting and improvising. Feeding the hungry : While schools have traditionally supplied lunches and breakfasts for American schoolchildren who economically qualify for them, libraries have always stepped in for after-school snacks and summertime food programs.

With schools now closed, more libraries have become drive-through or pick-up locations for grab-and-go meals. This is happening in St. Louis County, for example, which is collaborating with Operation Food Search, a nonprofit that distributes free drive-through food pickups in nine of their libraries.

In Columbus, Ohio, the Columbus Metropolitan Library closed so quickly that they were left with nearly 3, prepared meals on hand. In Ohio, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, together with the United Methodist Church food ministry are offering ready-to-eat meals to all children 18 years old and under. Internationally, the Milton Public Library in Ontario, Canada, has partnered with Inksmith , an education technology company, to print face shield headbands for PPE masks.

The Billings, Montana, public library is 3-D printing face masks for health care workers. The Oakland, California, library has repurposed bookdrops to collect new, packaged masks. Providing round-the-clock Wi-Fi access and hotspots : Aware that many of their customers rely on the library as their only point of Wi-Fi access, libraries in many communities leave their Wi-Fi open after closing hours.

Those numbers are increasing. Also, many libraries have loaned out the entire supply of their portable hotspots to school children who need internet connection to do at-home school work. Others have purchased more hotspots to begin filling the gaps.

The Brightwood Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library made sure all the hotspots they possessed through a Grow with Google partnership were checked out before their closed their doors.

Taking care of the homeless : In Washington State, the downtown Spokane Public Library has opened as a temporary homeless shelter. In San Luis Obispo, California, the parking lot of the Los Osos Library remains open as a designated safe and clean space for homeless people who live in their cars to camp overnight. The Richland County Library system in South Carolina, working with the United Way, collected and delivered their 40 standing hand-sanitizing stations to local homeless shelters.

They also bought and placed porta-potties outside their downtown libraries. Keeping people productive, safe, healthy, informed, and connected to each other : Many libraries have ramped up their online presence. Also, libraries have always been trusted sources of information.

Many are revising their websites and scaling up their social media for multiple purposes: bringing in more users and broadcasting the message of their diverse, digitally-available holdings; posting timely, accurate, curated information; and offering up-to-date public-service information on local efforts and issues like city services, public advisories, health directives and requests, tax and unemployment issues, and of course, COVID resources.

More from this series. The series began almost seven years ago, when smaller communities across the United States were still trying to rebuild their economies after the financial collapse of and beyond. Now, with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the very people and groups that led the way in local recovery—small businesses, innovative start-up organizations, locally oriented restaurants and bookshops and bars and civic spaces—are exposed to a sharper, more sudden, and potentially more devastating shock than the one they endured a dozen years ago.

National-level and international responses obviously will determine much of our collective public-health and economic future. But in the past two weeks, Americans have already seen governors and mayors, schools and hospitals, religious organizations and foundations and nonprofit groups taking the lead while the national government has faltered. The upcoming theme in this space will be on-the-ground reports on the way the economic, civic, and medical dramas are playing out.

But what is happening in the rest of the country matters at least as much, and probably more. An Atlantic reader who has moved from a major East Coast city to a medium-sized city in Greater Appalachia writes:. My apologies if this seems irrelevant given the size and scope of the current world situation.

Given your past works, I thought this might provide some fodder for your overarching work regarding Our Towns. I am a lifelong politics and government person in my mids. I spent the better part of 15 years engaged in either civic associations, county-level citizen advisory groups, and local government advocacy. Against this backdrop, I avidly followed your dispatches from around the country during the research for Our Towns. As I was still an active private pilot at the time, it was a perfect mix of topics for me.

It also planted in me the idea that there were different ways of achieving a quality of life outside of the major metropolitan areas. It was a major reason my wife and I started to look outside of [an East Coast metropolis] for where our next chapter could take place.

We settled on [the medium-sized city], moving here in December of It was like your main thesis come to life. Besides the unlimited outdoor options, the easier pace of life, the strong local brewery scene, there is a palpable sense of local patriotism.

Of locals seeing their success being tied to one another. And so it is heartbreaking to see and feel the very hard limitations of this optimistic world view run headlong into the current [coronavirus] situation. I am saddened for lives that will be lost and economic hardship that we will endure. I know that over a long enough time period, we'll recover and we will rebuild. But there will always be scar tissue. And part of that is a honest reckoning of how fragile the system is, and a dimming of optimism for what it can build.

A small price compared to loss of a loved one, or the economic pain that will sure to be revisited upon our most vulnerable population. Information about the report, by John Austin and Alexander Hitch, is here. The full report, in PDF, is here. As the introduction by Richard C. Longworth of the Council, previously a long-time economics writer for the Chicago Tribune , puts it, the stereotype of the industrial Midwest that dominates political discussion is out of touch with real developments there:.

The result, half completed, looks nothing like the silos and smokestacks of yore …. Already we see a new Midwest, powered by different places, people, and industries … Most of the economic capitals of this new Midwest are not the old industrial cities. All have leaders who understand that the world has changed and their cities must change with it.

And all know where they stand on the global supply chain. They are global cities now, earning their living from the global economy. The report is worth reading in full, for midwesterners and anyone else considering the next stage in American economic recovery. Information about the report is here , and the full PDF is here. Left to its own incentives, the authors argue, the tech economy will not naturally spread itself more broadly across the country.

But, they say, it can be nudged, encouraged, and steered in that direction. But Boston took a different path toward becoming one the strongest innovation hubs in the world, in no small part due to federal support. World War II brought an influx of federal funding to the city, especially for the development of military electronics. As the Cold War began, that support was formalized and dramatically expanded The federal government was even more instrumental in the development of Silicon Valley ….

In , Santa Clara County the heart of Silicon Valley received more defense prime contract funding per capita than any county in the nation. None of this is to say that these federal investments created these places on their own or that they were designed to create these places … But they did help enable emerging growth centers to become self-sustaining.

As for current candidates, the report gives this map. The report gives details about these localities:. This past week, Muro, Whiton, and Robert Maxim, of Brookings, did a report on the metro areas where the pandemic shutdown was likely to be most destructive.

For now the main point is: In the long, slow, uneven recovery from the past Great Recession, people around the country have thought and learned a lot about the process of recovery, and how it can be hastened and more broadly shared.

Report is here ; PDF version is here. The title is self-explanatory, and the meat of this report is a detailed list of proposals for sustaining the small businesses that have been so crucial in community renewal around the country, and now are at unprecedented risk.

Thanks to these authors, innovators, and other civic patriots. More reports on their work in the days to come. Once you accept that a book is as good as it is going to be, and as finished as you can stand to make it, the miasma lifts and you can move on—to the next writing project!

When the purpose of a book is to advance a new or different way of thinking about a topic, it should be: as short as possible so the reader gets the point efficiently ; as specific as possible so the reader can test the argument, and perhaps change future ideas or behavior ; and as droll as possible because, obviously.

It is short, specific, and droll. In American Manifesto he pulls together many of the themes he has developed. As he puts it in the early pages, in a passage that gives an idea of his writing tone:. This book is a cry for help in three parts. Take note: I am not speaking of Trumpty Dumpty. The greatest threat we face is not from a rogue president, but from ourselves.

The three parts that follow are about, first, social and political division; and second, the collapsing economics of traditional media. O, the humanity. But I will say that one of its main public-policy proposals involves modernizing antitrust laws and enforcement, to catch up with the technological, financial, and social realities of this age. The Sherman Antitrust Act of , the Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting efforts of the early s, the rise of the labor movement, the state-by-state spread of reform laws—these were all responses.

For democracy and civil society to survive after our Second Gilded Age, something comparable is necessary now. So Bob Garfield argues, and so I agree. You can read about the event where the senator spoke, which I happen to have attended, here , and get a PDF of the speech text here. Spoiler: The senator was Elizabeth Warren, and the speech was given long before she launched her presidential run. I was glad to have read American Manifesto , and I think most media- or politics-minded people will be too.

Congratulations to Bob Garfield on its done-ness, and good news for the rest of us in its brevity, specificity, and wit. It also includes some of the kinds of collections besides books, and some of the public places where books are available to borrow besides at traditional libraries.

Makerspaces are becoming popular in libraries around the country. Some are sophisticated, others modest. Ben Franklin was the founder, in a way, of modern makerspaces in libraries. The southmost public library near the Rio Grande in Brownsville, Texas, has an observatory that is used occasionally. The library also hosts movie-and-popcorn events for children who are incarcerated in detention centers alone after having crossed the border from Mexico to Texas.

The modest makerspace inside the Dodge City, Kansas, library. It was put together by a young librarian who grew up across the street from the library. Learning the ropes in the maker space at the Washington, D. Memorial Library. The library is currently under renovation.

The library invited a traveling program from Wichita. There were hundreds of people participating. This was sponsored by the local Michelin company, and the requirement was to use old tires in the creation. The internal space is vast, enough for exhibitions and receptions. The external space boasts plenty of parking and room for concerts, catered by local food trucks. Libraries catalog much more than books. At the A. Can we maintain that in an age of social distancing?

Will libraries need to supply gloves for shared keyboards? Will seniors still find respite in a library community? With library buildings closed, and many librarians furloughed, how will public libraries continue to lead on book and author discovery? A number of librarians have taken to hosting Zoom chats.

But with many library websites being refreshed less frequently, combined with canceled author tours and a diluted publishing schedule during the crisis, it is increasingly challenging for librarians to get out front about new books and authors. These events have become premier opportunities for publishers to reach book-savvy librarians to encourage displays, hand-selling, social media, online reviews and author visits at local libraries around the country, in hopes that excited librarians will contribute to the making of a bestseller.

In terms of maintaining strong collections, many libraries have suspended purchases of print titles while they are closed during the crisis. This could have major implications going forward. How many libraries will be able to double back at some point to buy copies of print books published during the crisis for their collections?

And, of course, without the proper logistic systems in place, some titles might not even appear in a library's catalog. Predictably, e-books, digital audio, and other streaming services have become essential during this crisis. OverDrive has reported a surge in the number of libraries now offering instant library cards, and a massive increase in books borrowed. That growth trajectory is an opportunity, and is encouraging news for libraries that have tried for years to get more traction for their digital collections.

However, the digital library market has been tenuous in the best of times, marked by high prices, lend limits, and other restrictions. And this sudden shift to digital now presents a whole new set of potential concerns, not the least of which is that this increase in digital usage does not automatically come with additional support for public library budgets.

The well-being of the staff is important, and the need to make it a priority becomes even more apparent in the context of the pandemic, when reopening means putting the health of workers at risk. We are here to serve our community.

The capacity to serve the community was the conclusion of my Hurricane Harvey research. That study showed that rather than attempting to develop new sources of resilience, policy-makers should combine funding with design choices to supercharge existing community-based institutions such as neighborhood library branches. My research found libraries are already situated close to those in need, are familiar with the needs of their communities and are a trusted institution.

Continuing to support well-funded and resourced libraries, and the health and well-being of library staff, will be vital as we live through — and recover from — the impacts of the COVID pandemic.

In his Kinder Institute Forum talk, sociologist Eric Klinenberg discussed the amazing power of the public library system, as well as the biggest threats to this vital and sorely neglected part of America's social infrastructure. Skip to main content. Allison Yelvington. Libraries during Hurricane Harvey For the first phase of research, I mapped the locations of all Houston-area libraries on top of Harvey FEMA individual assistance claims and census data.

Libraries during the COVID pandemic While libraries were able to serve Houstonians by opening as quickly as possible after Hurricane Harvey, we are in the midst of a disaster that forces them to remain closed.

Second, it offers our more distant patrons an option of accessing information. We have funding issues, but the bigger problem is geographic and transport related. We cannot bring together a critical mass of young people at one time and one place to do whatever.

I like to say that if you have a valid library card and access to the Internet, you can use your home library for research on a business trip in China at midnight. Or check out a novel to read on safari while at the Nairobi airport. It could serve to enrich the lives of our seniors, and show teens the value of being bilingual while having the potential to help everyone communicate better without a huge impact on our budget.

Another idea would be to bring bilingual teens together with elders to help them write down and translate life stories leaving a legacy that can be treasured by their families and community. We have seven weeks of workshops where we work one-on-one with seniors and provide them with printouts of the three top drug programs that best suit their current prescription needs. This program makes us all feel very good about what we do and our patrons continue to express their thanks long after the programs are over.

This will continue since there is little to no cost involved. Public response has been overwhelmingly positive. Unfortunately staff was cut so drastically that we had to drop the program despite the use of volunteers for the majority of the program. We have started using community volunteers to coordinate adult programming, again due to staffing cuts. It has forced us to really focus on identifying the type of programming of most interest—which turns out not to be author visits, but science, opera and family game days.

In discussing some of the issues they have faced that so far have prevented them from implementing their ideal library services, countless library staff members cited restrictions on budgets and staff time—and in some cases staff or administrative interest:.

Innovations are exciting, but few and far between in terms of having the staff or budget to implement any. I do not see these repercussions as risks, however, but as positive moving forward. The demand is high but there are just not enough staff and they will not pay for anymore staff.

We are considered dinosaurs, but we have our reservations based upon our own experiences about the need for privacy, possibility of identity theft, social media problems.

We understand that the younger generation will live like this probably forever, not especially concerned about negative issues at all. On that note, I would enjoy learning and watching more real-life examples of various apps for mobile devices. With time, some of us old-timers will probably relate to some of it, just like we have adjusted to computers.

If I had wanted to teach people how to make stuff I would have been a teacher. I think libraries are more about helping people learn for themselves. We set them on the path of learning, but do not hold their hands walking down the road. Our administration turns a deaf ear to our pleas for the materials and education our patrons ask us for more books, classes, etc.

At my branch, we often refer user problems with e-readers and other devices to those staffers who own such devices personally or have experience with them. We all need to know how to address such queries. I am in no way against automation or e-materials, [but] I do not think it is our job to push them on the communities. I want them available. I want people to be comfortable with them and be able to utilize them through our offerings.