In some ways, I’m finding the fact that people don’t really know what we do in a library except checkout books rather frightening. We are madly reinventing ourselves in a lot of creative and exciting ways, like linking with newspapers and there are a lot of people not even noticing! David King was at SXSW and found a lot of the geeks there didn’t even know you could access the catalog online! There’s something scary about geeks not knowing about a pretty mundane but basic technology. Maybe it’s too mundane and old tech to catch their interest. We all know the catalog needs serious improvement, but there are some things it does pretty well. Chris Brogan loves to work in bookstores because he is surrounded by books!!! Why isn’t a library the place where people think to about being surrounded by books? I’ve sort of wandered, but I think they are related paths – at least in my mind!

“This is a reason why I’m not all that thrilled about the idea of the library as “community hub” sometimes. It just seems to be a way of legitimizing the collapse of other social institutions and throwing the attendant problems into the lap of public libraries, especially in cities.”

I definitely sympathize w/ that first hand… it is a problem. When I speak of libraries as a community hub, an admittedly ambiguous term, my intention is to cull an image of a public space that can be used for community organizing and has information/knowledge professionals to support whatever activity the community might be up to, as long as it fits within the ‘Library Bill of Rights’.

Are we good w/ that?

We should be deeply concerned with the fate of journalism, because that’s ultimately where the information that becomes the knowledge that we collect, organize and disseminate comes from, but I would agree with Nate and Norman that news gathering and libraries should remain basically separate (news gathering and pretty much every other institution in society should be basically separate, for that matter). As librarians and concerned citizens, let’s push the government to provide economic stimulus to the newspaper industry so that it can remain a vital and independent component of our society rather than trying to fold its functions into other institutions.

This is a reason why I’m not all that thrilled about the idea of the library as “community hub” sometimes. It just seems to be a way of legitimizing the collapse of other social institutions and throwing the attendant problems into the lap of public libraries, especially in cities.

That said, one strength for libraries is local history, and they can serve as archives of oral history (and create more). They could perhaps also serve to collect/organize/link to local blogs that help provide a picture of the community.

You’ve missed a key point – Libraries don’t currently have the capacity for journalism, but newspapers do! My proposal is that the library reach out to the local newspaper (now, rather than waiting for them to fold) and see if there are resources/people in the newspaper organization that fit in with the library’s goals.

There are well-trained journalists in newspaper rooms across the countries who are losing their jobs. These newspapers do have some type of revenue streams as well, but those streams are not enough to support the existing infrastructure of a newspaper. The streams might be enough to support an operation of some type if the infrastructure were shared with another organization.

Rather than sitting by and watching the newspapers collapse, libraries could explore how to partner with the newspapers, to share infrastructure and costs, and keep some of the functionality going to continue creating a community information resource. If public libraries are looking to step up in their role of community hub, this would serve to solidify that role.

Instead of letting those skilled journalists leave behind their community knowledge and ability to collect news as they go elsewhere for jobs, the libraries could work to employ some of the journalists, using some of the existing revenue stream of the newspaper. The library certainly can’t absorb all of the costs of running the newspaper, but perhaps there are elements of people and revenue that could be absorbed to create new organizational capacity.

Yes, I know there are a hundred reasons why this can’t work in our current structure, but guess what… _everything_ is changing (including our current structure)!

If you are out there in a public library, why not call up your local newspaper and have a meeting? Explore the possibilities! Newspapers are looking to get creative to survive, and we could provide that platform. This is a time-sensitive issue; the longer we wait to meet and reach out, the greater the chances of the newspaper shutting it’s doors and losing this opportunity to make something greater than the sum of its parts.