Description

The library is a service institution. A collection made accessible to a particular community, the library is defined by its contents and the society it serves. The development of the library is inextricably linked with the evolution of these two elements. As the concepts of the collection and its accessibility shift through time with cycles of seminal discoveries and the changes brought about by such inventions, they redefine the library’s role in society.

^{Cycles of Change}

The earliest collections consisted primarily of hand-copied manuscripts. Pre-historic archives in cuneiform were records of dynastic warriors and rulers, great libraries of the ancient world were the property of kings, libraries of the Middle Ages the realm of the church, Renaissance libraries the exclusive collection of wealthy patrons and the great research and reference libraries the domain of private universities. While there is record of public access to scrolls in the Roman Republic of the first centuries A.D., collections after the fall of the Roman Empire remained for many centuries the realm of the literate and, by necessity, the wealthy.

This concept of the library was dramatically altered by the 1439 invention of the moveable printing press. The resulting growth of printed matter led to increased literacy in a society in which the book was no longer the property of a few. Yet these opportunities primarily benefited an enlightened middle class of teachers, scholars, and scientists rather than the general public. The growth of private collections in universities was a direct result. These libraries are still in existence today and include the Bibliothèque nationale de France (previously the Royal Library of Charles V), the Bodleian Library (previously Humphrey’s library at Oxford), the British Library (founded as part of the British Museum), the Laurentian Library, the Vatican Library and the German State Library in Berlin. These institutions are the basis of today’s academic and university libraries that continue to serve scholars in their research needs.

The emergence of the public library, with accessibility for all, had its origins in the 18^th century. Prior to this time, the few public libraries known were but sporadic and unique endeavors. Some well-known examples are the public library associated with London’s Guild Hall, dating back to 1425, and the Bibliothèque Mazarin, the private collection of Cardinal Mazarin that opened to the public in 1643. Circulating and lending libraries of the 18^th century further extended accessibility to collections.

The development of the library as a public institution, not surprisingly, parallels the progress of individual rights from the period of the Enlightenment. In late 18^th century France, the overthrow of the monarchy had direct impact on the formation of their public libraries, many of which “… find their origin in the Revolutionary decree of November 2, 1789, which declared that all the possessions of the clergy, including their libraries, was national property.”[1] In Victorian England, at a time of demands for rights and representation, the Public Libraries Act was enacted as law in 1850 through the advocacy of Ewart, Brotherton and Edwards.[2] In the U.S. of the 19^th century, the public library, as a concept, was embraced as part of the democratic ideal. The realization of the public library was often made possible through the support of individual citizens. The Peterborough Town Library of New Hampshire, established in 1833, was the first free library in the U.S. to be established through the use of local taxes. This was the start of a long tradition as community-based funding still accounts for 90% of American libraries today.[3] By the close of the 19^th century, the institution of the library had evolved to an established resource in a society where “books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves.”[4]

Constructed as civic monuments, the design of public libraries in the early 20^th century reflected the esteem placed by that society on knowledge. This esteem was expressed in the building through a monumental scale, references to Classical architecture and an imposing interior. The development of the public library in the next 75 years mirrored the transformation of that society away from such formalism. These changes were visible on the design of the exterior and the interior but also in the programmatic make-up of the library itself. The open-stack library of the 1930s and 1940s with popular materials, browsing collections, and children’s and young adults’ collections and reading rooms was the precursor to the model of the functional library outlined by the American Library Association in 1948. Espousing accessibility and functionality, one principle was that “the public library building of the future should be planned and equipped as a modern educational center.”[5] In the following decades libraries were provided with meeting rooms, audio-visual facilities, projection rooms, listening rooms, children’s rooms and collections that included the then new forms of media such as records, tapes, CDs and movies. The inclusion of such amenities and familiar domestic objects together with the later addition of food and drink in the form of cafés demonstrates the changing role of the library in the last quarter of the 20^th century. This transformation from the formal library of the 1900s to the familiar “living room” of the city reflects the changes in the society served by the institution of the library.

The Impact of Information Technology

The invention of the printing press wielded an impact on libraries that lasted for a period of almost five centuries. This cycle concluded with the institution fully established in society, upholding a universal mission as information resource for both research and popular culture. Mid- to late 20^th century libraries were relatively similar from one to the next until the 1990s when this continuity was broken by the initial integration of information technology into the library. When the term was coined in 1958 by Leavitt and Whisler to define a branch of engineering that “includes techniques for processing large amounts of information rapidly”,[6] information technology was no longer new. The 1951 introduction of the first real-time computer at MIT was followed by four decades of developments resulting in the present-day panoply of operating systems, microprocessors, desktop computers, removable disks, differentiated hardware and software, notebook computers, storage devices, digital imaging and image scanning. In the last quarter of the 20^th century, libraries adapted to these developments in the form of electronic workstations, electronic reference and online public access computers (OPAC). The emergence of the Internet for public use in the early 1990s marks a turning point. “From the mid-90s to the present, all things related to the Internet can only be described in terms of exponential change, from capabilities of base technologies to the creation and accumulation of digital content to the number of users and possibilities for use.”[7] The advent of Internet commerce in which the library’s commodity of books and information are exchanged online heralds a new cycle of change in the development of the library in society.

^{Changing Library Concepts}

Most libraries today exist as hybrid models, offering both the services of the conventional library and ones enhanced by digital technology. The activities of searching, storing, archiving and, more recently, online searching, using digitized and scanned collections, and digital archiving, all exploit the digital era’s “promise of indefinite memory”.[8] The success of these new services led to the obsolescence of some library standards such as the card catalogue or microfiche. While this promise of infinite memory has its limitations, its legacy of digital archives, e-books and virtual storage has radically changed the spatial needs of the library and the demands of the patrons. With competition from numerous digital resources such as Internet bookstores, e-books, free digitized collections – all of which are accessible from one’s personal computer – the future of the library in the age of the Internet is in question. With the demise of many bookstores around the world, an undercurrent of uncertainty is palpable with regard to the role of libraries in such an era. Advocates on each side extol the virtues and drawbacks of the bookless library, a mirror of a society divided in opinion and in opportunity. The library of the 21^st century is an institution grappling with its own significance in a society transformed by the output of digital technology.

Public Libraries

The public library with its mission to serve the broad and varied interests of its community intersects with digital technology on many different planes. With the goal of providing information free of charge to its constituents, the public library is a vital resource especially in a society dominated by the presence of the Internet. For those without digital access, the library serves as an opportunity to increase digital equity. A 2010 survey conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that “67 % of libraries … are the only provider of free public access computers and Internet in their communities.”[9] The public library remains a source of information and access not only for the underprivileged but also for students, citizens, small businesses, the young and the old. In searching for an identity within a new technological order, the public libraries of this decade are very different from one to the next, demonstrating the pluralism that currently exists in this building typology.

The Seattle Central Library, completed in 2004, marks the beginning of this quest for self-definition. Premised on OMA’s prescient 1999 proposal observing that “the contents of a whole library can be stored on a single chip or … that a single library can now store the digital content of all libraries”,
[10] the design of Seattle Central recognized the need for a “potential re-thinking”[11] of the library as a type. At Seattle, the library program is reapportioned to accommodate books as well as new forms of media. A new flexibility is demonstrated in which an efficient accommodation of printed matter (the “Book Spiral”, designed for a sequential 700,000 volume capacity) permits the “consolidation of the apparently ungovernable proliferation of programs and media.”[12] Leading the dialogue on new forms of media and the possibility of a bookless future, Rem Koolhaas’ embrace of new media in the Seattle Central is achieved primarily through the use of a highly sophisticated architecture, on both the exterior and the interior, as visual symbols of change. The success of such provocative architecture is due in great part to its acceptance by the highly progressive community that it serves. The library has benefited from the positive notoriety it has achieved from this “starchitecture” status.

Other libraries have followed suit in employing architecture to create identity. The unmistakable marks of renowned architects such as Frank Gehry or Alsop + Störmer – the Lewis Library at Princeton University (2008) or the Peckham Library in London (2000) – have elevated the status of the institutions themselves.

While the byproducts of digital technology such as the e-book or the ability to access books and information from non-specific locations have not led to the demise of the book, there is speculation on the viability of the library as an institution of only books and information. Public libraries today fear the loss of relevance not only from the Internet but also from the changes in the society they serve. Recognizing the lure of commerce, both physical and electronic, in modern life, another approach to public library design acknowledges the multitude of attractions – shopping, eating out, attending the cinema – that compete with excursions to the library. Designs of some libraries posit the institution of the library as one such competitive venue of entertainment. David Adjaye’s Idea Store at Whitechapel, London, the first of the UK Idea Stores, is overt in its adoption of commercial branding to market a “new” institution of a library that distances itself from the formidable and underused institutions of the previous generation. In cosmopolitan Amsterdam, Jo Coenen’s OBA – Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam is an urban destination for its citizens of all ages with the inclusion of not only books and electronic media but also an art gallery, a café, a restaurant, a theater and a rooftop bar. In Norwich, England (Millennium Library, Michael Hopkins Architects, 2001) the library is incorporated into a shopping mall that is a tourist destination in the historic district. In suburban Cerritos, California, the public library is designed to entertain, emulating its neighboring attraction and competitor for young readers, Disneyland. Inspired by the drive-in commerce of the American West, the Arabian Library near Phoenix (Richärd + Bauer, 2007) in the vast, arid landscape of the Arizona desert, offers a drive-in counter where books ordered online may be picked up by car.

Frequently viewed as a place in which digital equity can be achieved through free access, some public libraries have expanded their role beyond that of a bridge to span the “digital divide”. While many mid- to late 20^th century public libraries, often termed “living rooms of the city”, transformed into places of refuge for the homeless, recently public libraries in underserved neighborhoods have adopted more proactive programs with objectives steeped in economic egalitarianism. The Biblioteca España (Giancarlo Mazzanti, 2007), sited in an impoverished neighborhood of Medellín, Columbia, includes a community center and a daycare facility for its users – all achieved through the vision of a progressive mayor’s agenda of “social urbanism”. Its celebrated black monumental forms have rendered it an architectural destination and the establishment of public transportation to and from the city was an unexpected and long overdue benefit to its underserved citizens. At Usera, a high-crime neighborhood of Madrid, the Biblioteca Pública (Ábalos & Herreros, 2004) is designed as a protective fortress for its youth with an urban art interior inspired by graffiti, the language of the streets. At the Idea Store at Whitechapel, a learning center of secondary education is integrated into the library for the immigrant community it serves. According to the Director of the Seattle Public Library system, today “libraries are more than functional buildings; they are monuments to the values of education and democracy … They are a symbol for the community that we’re investing in our children and investing in our immigrants and refugees.“[13] Interestingly enough, this can be read as continuing the tradition of Andrew Carnegie’s concept of the free public library as “a cradle of democracy upon the earth … where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”[14]

Academic Libraries

Less confined by the wide-ranging patron demands of the public library, the academic library’s integration of digital technology is directed mainly at a focused mission of research. Significant academic libraries such as the Philological Library at the Freie Universität Berlin (Norman Foster, 2005), the Law Library at the Universität Zürich (Santiago Calatrava, 2004) or the Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin (Max Dudler, 2009) all accommodate a physical collection while incorporating many aspects of digital technology. In contrast, the engineering library of the University of Texas at Austin as well as the Library Learning Terrace of Drexel University in Philadelphia opened without book collections. At Stanford University’s engineering library all but 10,000 volumes were culled. While digital collections are suited to some research libraries – such as in the field of engineering – it is by no means a universal direction for the future of academic research. Copyright protection remains a major obstacle in the digitization of many publications. Some subjects of research rely on original texts with their patina of markings and annotations while publications related to obscure subjects of study are not often included in digitization projects. According to Professor Adrian Johns of the University of Chicago, who specializes in the history of the book, the world is “nowhere near the point when people doing serious research, especially on historical topics, can rely solely on digital sources. … Compared to the variety that exists out in the printed world, Google is just skimming the surface.”[15]
The Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne (SANAA, 2010), a single fluid space without boundaries, combines physical collections, a learning technologies lab and public space for an “avant garde approach that combines computer interfaces with real world instruction.”[16] Helmut Jahn’s Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago (2011) exemplifies the best of both the analog and the digital with a design that emphasizes the physical collection while utilizing the most advanced technology of robotic retrieval for its storage.

Digital Libraries

While the full impact of digital technology for both the public and the academic library remains to be revealed, the adoption of digital technology has taken flight in virtual endeavors called “digital libraries”. Digital libraries exist only online and their materials are free of charge and accessible in multi-lingual formats. The term is currently used to refer to “systems that are very different in scope and yield very diverse functionality. These systems range from digital object and metadata repositories, reference-linking systems, archives, and content administration systems, which have been mainly developed by industry, to complex systems that integrate advanced digital library services.”[17] Some significant examples are Europeana, “a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitized throughout Europe”,[18] with European cultural and scientific institutions as its sources; the World Digital Library, “significant primary materials from countries and culture around the world”,[19] developed by a team that includes the U.S. Library of Congress, partner institutions in many countries, UNESCO and a number of private companies; and the Google Book Project, which in 2012 scanned 20 million books with institutional partners such as Harvard University, Oxford University, Stanford University and the New York Public Library. An online resource, DLD, the Digital Library Directory, is a portal to some of the best digital library resources within the categories of arts and humanities, business and reference, health and medicine, science and technology and social sciences. While these digital libraries do not yet offer services of conventional libraries, they have eliminated boundaries for global access to information. The potential accessibility of such collections from around the world is awe-inspiring even though many issues such as copyright, universal accessibility and relevant formats are yet to be resolved.

The evolution of the role of the library in society over the centuries from private resource to civic monument to functional building to living room of the city is today in flux. Fueled by advancements in information technology the developments of this century are far-reaching ones for the growth of the library as an institution. As a collection made accessible to a particular community, the library has evolved dramatically. The concept of the collection to include virtual objects is one that illustrates the speed of change since the mid-19th century. While the integration of technology and the Internet into everyday life has caused speculations about the existence of the book and hence the library in the foreseeable future, the many solutions that recent libraries have adopted in redefining their role in this society are indicative of a new spirit. From library shopping centers, library restaurants, libraries without collections, virtual libraries, library community centers, library daycare centers, libraries as acts of redemption to libraries as cultural icons, the pluralism of roles confirms the strength of the institution itself. In this multiplicity of roles the library extends itself further in service of a multi-faceted society, challenging conjectures of its impending obsolescence. In this new cycle of library development the breadth and extent of these new opportunities come nearest to fulfilling the ideal expressed by Thomas Jefferson in 1807 that “… knowledge is the common property of mankind.”

20

Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Henry Dearborn”, 1807.

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Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.