Pandemic Shockwave and the Future of Libraries

For many of us, the pandemic’s disruption on U.S. libraries continues to impact our everyday lives. During normal times, we may have become accustomed to visiting our local library to browse books and access a computer. But with COVID-19, that has become a huge challenge. For months, many libraries remained shuttered, and even as local economies are reopening, full access to libraries remains complicated. 

Recently, “Great Books, Great Minds” had the chance to talk with Denver’s Pat Wagner co-owner of Pattern Research, Inc., a 45-year-old training and consulting firm about emerging trends in the library field. Since the ’70s, Wagner has worked with libraries and associated organizations in 48 states and Canada, from small rural storefronts to large academic centers and urban districts, including school, special, academic, and public libraries, state libraries, library consortia, and state and national associations. 

She has been a presenter at numerous state and national conferences along with direct work with library teams and trustees on strategic and operational issues facing their libraries. Wagner frequently contributes to library industry-related publications and is the author of The Bloomsbury Review Booklover’s Guide, which resulted in a speaking engagement at the Library of Congress on the care of private collections. 

Here what Wagner had to share about the evolutionary shifts taking place within our nation’s libraries amid today’s COVID-19 environment. 

Before we talk about some of the dynamics currently taking place with library systems across the country, can you offer a little context around libraries as a whole?

Sure. There are basically four types of libraries. We have the academic/university libraries which are protected in many ways because accreditation organizations require that all higher education institutions have a university library. 

You have special libraries that encompass corporate libraries, medical libraries, law libraries, and such. Most of the people involved with these have library degrees plus extra degrees. By way of example, one-forth to one-third of all law librarians are lawyers. The stereotype is they go to law school, find out they love to research, and then they go back and get their Master of Library Science degree and stay within libraries.

Then we have school libraries, often called media centers. They take up the largest percentage of libraries in the United States. They're often under a lot of attacks because a lot of politicians see them as low lying fruit. So basically, we'll close school libraries, even though there's significant research that shows just having a school library ups kid’s scores, as well as their ability to work in classes.

What sorts of trends have we seen over the years in terms of how libraries operate? 

Starting actually about 20 years ago, libraries started to shift what they're doing, with the biggest thing being that they're no longer just centers for book information. For example, there is a small town in South Dakota that has a lot of food deserts and local health issues. They built a new library with a test kitchen, which is as nice as anything you'd see on the Food Network where they teach classes to residents of this small rural town on cooking healthy, ethnic food and everything. The classes are often packed.

Are there other examples?

Yes, take this example on the academic side of things. A few years ago Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana desiring to get the professors into the 21st century set up a podcast studio in their library. The professors were coming in for help with recording all their lectures and putting them online. That's a typical thing that a library might do that’s becoming more common. Then there’s the Madison Public Library in Madison, Wisconsin, awarded one of the national awards as the best library in the country. They ripped out the pretty carpeting in order to accommodate resident artists doing demos and artwork. This library was also one of the first libraries in the country to bring in social workers to actively work with local residents. They also have community policing stations.

So what do you believe that all of these changes reflect? 

What’s pushing all of this is what you might call unmet needs. The question might be, “how do we deal with marginalized populations, particularly poor new Americans? How do we deal with diversity issues? Conflicts sometimes arise with these uses when people say, " I want that traditional library where you sit quietly, read a book, and get shushed if you talk too loudly." It's not that those sorts of libraries are going away, but the push is for places where people can seek help of all kinds. I believe that just at the beginning of meeting those needs.

How in your view is all of this impacting library programs like those pursuing Master of Library Science degrees? What's hot in this space and what's falling away?

The information technology (IT) aspect of libraries is very hot. You can see this by looking at the curriculum of the library science programs, 50% of which are IT. User experience, website creation, websites, databases are considered that other branch of the library that helps to expand outreach to different audiences. There is also less and less emphasis on traditional library functions like cataloging. That's all going away and being automated. 

What about library archivists?

The problem here is having enough money for these projects.

Archivists and librarians don't get the same training, they're like two different professions, they don't like each other very much. In terms of the archival role, the question becomes, you have all this wonderful stuff that comes at a high cost to store it and take care of it. 

Can you offer an example here?

Sure. There’s an academic library in Kansas that received a 10,000 music book donation from a very wealthy man. The librarian who I know shook her head, with a great sense of humor and said, "You'd think this is a generous thing, 10,000 books. Yet it will cost us a minimum of $100,000 to $150,000 to catalog and take care of these books. I am now going to my office to write that rich man a grant proposal requesting $150,000 to take care of these 10,000 books."

WOW! I had no idea that that was such a massive and expensive undertaking

Yes, and libraries have come a long way though on the digital front. Just to give you an example, in some cases paper records that were printed before the beginning of the 20th century are all on cloth and linen. They are probably going to last longer than a lot of digital records that were put on film and often deteriorate. I have to brag about Colorado, which was first and foremost in the country, through the Denver Public Library and our state library, of digitizing historical records. Now it's a given and even little teeny libraries in small communities can get brands to digitize their entire newspaper collection going back to the 18th century or whatever.

Here’s my last question, what do you see in terms of the future for libraries in our new post-COVID world? 

We’re right at the point where a whole bunch of stuff is happening at once. You could call it a “library without walls” movement. Some of the questions being asked are “how do we bring library services to the people so they don't have to come to a building? Librarians can do anything, so what are the information needs and economic needs? Do people need job-hunting skills? Do they have the political information they need to make informed decisions? Today the goal is to give them the information they want versus just having them access books. Despite COVID, libraries are booming in a thousand directions right now. It’s been pretty cool to observe.

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