Libraries Turn High-Tech Page

On the threshold of the 20th century, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie issued a challenge meant to bring knowledge to the masses: He would build and equip public libraries if local authorities donated the land and maintained them.

The philanthropist’s millions erected 1,650 Carnegie libraries across the prairies, deltas and farmlands of a still youthful United States. Today, there are 16,000 public libraries across California and the nation, and on the cusp of the 21st century, a profound change is again taking place.

Far from becoming musty museums for those quaint things known as books, libraries are taking a quantum leap in their role as society’s repository of knowledge: Nearly three-fourths have plugged into the Information Age, providing public access to the Internet and the chance to explore databanks and archives.

And libraries, more in demand than ever, are broadening their offerings, becoming a sort of cultural crossroads, complete with interactive exhibits for children or coffee bars and restaurants, like the one at Orange County’s newest public library branch in Aliso Viejo.

“I’ve used the word ‘apocalyptic’ myself,” Los Angeles City Librarian Susan Kent said of the transformation of one of America’s most treasured public institutions.

Correspondingly, many experts--including state Librarian Kevin Starr, who calls libraries “malls for the mind and the imagination”--see the role of librarians becoming that of navigators on the frontiers of knowledge. Call them the ultimate search engines--or, perhaps the best high-tech name yet, cybrarians.

The movement to hard-wire libraries and redefine their mission is not without detractors. Some fear that placing too much emphasis on technology may backfire, and that librarians are too far ahead of their public--the “books versus bytes” debate. And some libraries, concerned that children could view adult material, have taken the controversial step of installing filters to block access.

Still, Kent called this “the most exciting time for public libraries” in decades.

Consider:

* San Francisco’s $140-million main library--both heralded and criticized as a high-tech model for the 21st century when it opened in 1996--has 220 computer workstations offering public access to library databases and the Internet.

* The California Legislature in September allocated $5 million to begin linking all 8,000 public and private California libraries into a single, interactive resource. That would mean the electronic databases of every library would be instantly available to any library patron anywhere in the state, so that someone who couldn’t find a particular book in the Mission Viejo library could find a copy in Eureka or at Stanford University within seconds and request its delivery.

“This is a quantum leap in librarianship and resource sharing,” Starr said of the $66-million program to be completed by 2010.

* Los Angeles voters last week overwhelmingly approved a $178.3-million bond measure for 32 projects to upgrade, renovate, expand or replace 32 branch libraries. This comes as an earlier $53-million bond measure for 27 branch libraries is nearing completion.

* The Orange County Public Library system, after restoring staff and hours of operation, is building new facilities after years of post-Proposition 13 cutbacks. The newest branch opened in January in Aliso Viejo with four computer terminals tied to the Internet, but there are state-of-the-art high-speed lines designed for expansion.

And as the millennium approaches, Microsoft’s Bill Gates has emerged as the Digital Age philanthropist, offering $200 million over five years to bring computers into libraries in poor areas in the United States and Canada.

“That’s as big an impact--if not more--than Carnegie had,” said Elizabeth Martinez, former head of the Los Angeles City and Orange County public libraries who was executive director of the American Library Assn. when Gates’ project was developed.

“Carnegie changed the physical landscape [of the public library] and made it accessible [to everyone], but Gates is making the 21st century available to low-income communities.”

Library Use Remains High

Nationwide, demand for library services remains strong. A recent Gallup Poll showed that 64% of adults have library cards and averaged seven visits to a library last year.

Of those, 81% borrowed books, 65% consulted a librarian, 61% used reference materials, 50% read newspapers or magazines, 32% borrowed records, CDs or videos, 17% connected to the Internet, and 15% heard a speech, saw a movie, attended a class or a program.

In the Los Angeles Public Library system, which serves 3.7 million people--the largest population base for any public library in the country--patronage continues to rise: Angelenos made 11-million visits and borrowed 12 million books and other items in fiscal year 1997-98. That’s up from 10 million visits and 11 million circulation items in 1996-97.

Increasingly, voters are using the condition of their local library as the prism through which they evaluate whether they get a return on their tax dollar, Starr said.

“You hear, ‘I pay my taxes, but the library is not open enough.’ Library service becomes the benchmark on quality of life.”

Accordingly, large and small communities across the nation are reinvesting in libraries as centers of learning, literacy and culture.

Main libraries also have been built or renovated in Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Sacramento and San Antonio over the last five years. Voters have approved new central libraries in Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Ark., and Rochester, N.Y.

In California, Starr said, “more than $2.5 million a day is spent on public libraries. That hardly sounds like a dying enterprise. There are more than a billion square feet of documented library expansion needs in this state right now.”

A growing number have added public meeting rooms and auditoriums, or expanded their range of programs and services--from children’s reading hours and author appearances to literacy classes, and instruction on Internet and database research.

For example, a weekend Teen Comic Art and Animation Festival at Los Angeles Central Library drew a crowd of 10,000 last month.

Free public access to the Internet is unquestionably one of the hottest attractions. Demand is so great at main branches in Los Angeles and San Francisco that people are restricted to 30 minutes during busy hours.

San Francisco City Librarian Regina Minudri said such demand for Internet access is “probably the biggest sea change in library service since we started automating in the late 1960s.”

Automation hit libraries in the 1970s, when cards that were slipped into sleeves in the back of books were replaced with electronic bar codes. The labor-intensive card catalog--an innovation in Carnegie’s day, as were movable bookshelves, a central circulation desk and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature--began to go online about the same time.

Today, librarians are contemplating the mix of books versus electronic databases that they will need in the 21st century, said Clifford Lynch, former director of library automation for the nine-campus University of California system and now executive director of the Washington-based Coalition for Networked Information.

In many library systems, including Los Angeles’, patrons can use an electronic card catalog, and get magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias and dictionaries electronically.

And more content will come online in years to come.

The Library of Congress’ National Digital Library Program is expected to exceed its goal of 5 million digital items on line by the Library of Congress’ bicentennial in 2000.

Among them: Matthew Brady Civil War photographs, film footage of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and audio of a 1920 campaign speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“Before, people would have to come to Washington and visit one of our reading rooms to have access to these materials,” said Bob Zich, director of electronic programs.

Now many public libraries digitize their local history collections. For the past 18 months, the Los Angeles Central Library has been cataloging more than 2 million historic photographs, a few thousand of which are now available on the library’s Web site.

“It’s a preservation issue,” Kent said.

New Roles for Librarians

The public may need some coaching in how to use the libraries of the new millennium, which is where knowledge navigators come in.

In a 1996 survey, the Washington-based Benton Foundation found that most Americans were concerned that technology would make reading outdated. And while librarians were liked and admired, those polled weren’t sure they were equipped to teach them computer skills, said Susan Nall Bales, director of strategic communications.

To overcome this “disconnect,” a recent foundation report recommended that libraries portray themselves as “high touch” institutions, and the librarians as astute yet friendly people who can provide “enlightened guidance” and build trust in technology.

And in poor communities, the chasm between computer haves and have-nots is being bridged gradually.

The public library in the small Alabama town of Demopolis (population 7,500) got a $37,000 grant from the Gates Library Foundation last fall. Coupled with a matching city grant, the library bought eight computers to provide public access to the Internet.

Acting director Ouida Kane, who in 28 years as a librarian has seen the Demopolis Public Library grow from “one little room” to a two-story library in a renovated furniture store, views the foundation’s gift as a godsend.

“If this is what the future is going to be--and if we want to have current and up-to-date materials--we felt it was necessary to provide this for our patrons,” she said.

Librarians can only speculate what technological innovations await.

“There are going to be dramatic changes and it’s going to be traumatic too, for many of us in the profession,” said Martinez, the former Los Angeles librarian.

She envisions libraries as places where patrons will find comfortable seating around digitized access points for computerized information. The librarian’s job will be to help the public--kids, anyone--use electronic and digitized information.

“How to use it? What’s reliable? What’s authentic? How to maneuver those millions and millions of sites on the Internet,” said Martinez, now a senior fellow in the graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA.

“I think the librarian is going to have star quality: We’re going to be popular. I see a very bright future, but a different one.”

Meanwhile, state librarian Starr says that anyone who predicts the demise of books or magazines “is absolutely fooling himself.”

The public library too will continue to be a community focal point--or as Starr called it, “the ‘there’ there.”

“Just because the technology allows people to fragment themselves into isolated units does not mean they’re going to do it,” he said. “The human being is possessed of multiple drives and needs, including the need for community.”

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Libraries in demand

Libraries are more in demand than ever, especially now that many offer computers linked to the Internet, interactive exhibits for children and coffee bars or restaurants.

LIBRARY CARDHOLDERS

Age 18 and up

Nationwide: 64%

Females: 69%

Males: 60%

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Age

18-34: 70%

35-54: 72%

55 and older: 48%

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Income

Up to $20,000: 48%

$20-39,999: 61%

$40,000-59,999: 70%

$60,000 +: 78%

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INTERNET ACCESS

Public libraries with Internet access: 73%

Connected, but with no Internet access: 17%

Not connected: 10%

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USE POLICIES

Most libraries with Internet access have acceptable-use policies for people using their computers, but don’t employ filters for screening sites.

Acceptable-use policy; no filters: 72%

Policy on acceptable uses; filters on some or all workstations: 13%

No filters; no acceptable-use policy: 3%

Other: 12%

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LIBRARY COMPUTER USERS

Fewer than a third of patrons use computers at the library.

Users: 29%

Nonusers: 71%

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Users, by age

18-34: 41%

35-54: 33%

55 and older: 9%

Sources: American Library Assn., based on a June Gallup Poll of 1,000 adults; 1998 National Survey of Public Library Outlet Internet Connectivity, 2,500 public libraries