Nate Hull’s Weblog

The U.S. Public library system has undergone significant changes since its rapid rise in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, as the institution continually redefines how it should serve individuals and communities across the country. While the primary role of the public library has always been to educate, the ways in which it educates, the means it uses to educate, and the types of people it attempts to reach has changed significantly in the last 100 years. Many of these changes have been shaped by outside influences, such as government policy, grants and philanthropy, public schools, wars, and new technologies. In this paper, I am particularly interested in how public libraries have responded to the rise of new technology and forms of media, especially digital technology.

As digital technology has provided new opportunities for libraries over the past several decades, it has also brought new questions and challenges. One of the biggest issues librarians currently face comes from the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web. My research will provide a backdrop to one of the biggest questions librarians currently face: how do public libraries remain relevant as a place to visit when online virtual libraries — including digitized books, reference material, and audio and video content — grow in popularity? This question has led some pundits to suggest the possible demise of the public library. In this paper I will look at unique services and initiatives that libraries have undertaken outside of books and reference material in the last century, and how the public library has adapted to new technology.

Vying for readership

In some cases, the public library has faced challenges that were created by its own success. For example, services and book collections for children — a new addition to public libraries at the turn of the 20^th century — became massively popular by the 1920s, at which point juveniles made up one-third of the users of public libraries (Martin, 1998, p. 57). Also, by the 1920s, libraries began literature and services aimed at adolescents and teenagers. In an effort to better reach this demographic, libraries began to loan classroom collections to schools. As demand for collections grew, many libraries planted staff members in public schools on a temporary basis. Yet by mid-century, most schools had built sufficient collections, and by the 1950s library services to schools separated, and public libraries were no longer an essential resource for elementary schools. Martin (1998) writes, “Having the public library maintain the school library was not a tenable arrangement. School officials wanted their own libraries and their own librarians. Unfortunately the pendulum in some cases has swung to the other extreme, with nearby school and public libraries having little cooperation and indeed little communication. Joint operation is now an episode of the past.” (p. 64)

The growth of school libraries, however, did not lead to a decline in the popularity of services for children in public libraries. In addition to book collections, public libraries began offering other ways to stimulate children, including story hours, pre-school story hours, reference and reader’s advisory services for children and parents, summer reading clubs, and close contacts with community organizations (Bobinski, 2007, p. 33). According to a 1993 study by the National Center for Educational Statistics, of the 18 million people who entered public libraries during a typical week that year, 60 percent were children and young adults, and children’s books made up 29 percent of total circulation (Bobinski, 2007, p. 33). The relation between public libraries and school libraries offers an example of how public libraries faced competition with an outside entity for users, yet remained relevant and successful in attracting a specific group of readers.

New forms of media

The 20^th century found the public libraries adopting new information formats. The first non-print materials offered by public libraries were audio recordings. The circulation of long-playing records were particularly popular in the two decades following World War II, and a survey in 1968 of medium-sized and large public libraries found that 40 percent offered record collections (Martin, 1998, p. 157). Filmstrips appeared in public libraries after World War II (Bobinski, 2007, p. 10), but users outside of organizations used film regularly, as the equipment for viewing film was not prevalent in most homes (Martin, 1998, p. 158). This changed with the advent of the VCR, and during the 1980’s videos became a popular format that boosted circulation numbers (Bobisnski, 2007, p. 10).

              In 1960, Marshall McLuhan stated that “the book is dead” (Bobinski, 2007, p. 7) and predicted that electronic media would take its place. He went on to predict that the last book would be published by the end of the century. Yet even as new forms of media such as audio and video found a place in public libraries, they have existed as a supplement to print media, and books remained the primary choice of information through the rest of the century to today.

Moving into the digital realm

            As early as 1967, librarians began to discuss the influence of digital technology on the library (Campbell, 2001, p. 60). These early conversations surrounded the automation of cataloging, and the first big step into the digital world came in 1966 with MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging), a computer program for cataloging digital bibliographic records. According to Bobinski (2007), this program led to a commitment to standardization and communication among libraries (p. 12). A year later, the Ohio College Library Center (later changed to the Online College Library Center) was established with the hopes of bringing libraries together under one database. The program went online in 1971, and quickly spread from academic institutions to public libraries and beyond. Bobinski (2007) writes, “Within a few years, there were no longer hordes of individual catalogers in each library duplicating the work of others or doing cataloging that was not standardized” (p. 12), and Campbell (2001) adds that OCLC “constituted the first large-scale, successful introduction of networking based on digital technology, and within a few years it began to transform the cataloging process throughout North America” (p.52) The OCLC system also went on to create a successful interlibrary loan system (Bobinski, 2007, p. 60).

1980s to early 1990s

• Changing demographics of users
• Proliferation of digital technology
• Rise of the Internet

Emergence of the World Wide Web (mid 1990s)

• Adoption by libraries
• Response and fears by librarians

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Bobinski, G. S. (2007). Libraries and librarianship sixty years of challenge and change, 1945-2005. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.

Campbell, J.D. (2001) The impact of digital technology on libraries: a chaotic revolution. In Marcum, D. B. (Ed). Development of digital libraries an American perspective. Contributions in librarianship and information science, no. 95. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.            

Martin, L. A. (1998). Enrichment a history of the public library in the United States in the twentieth century. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.