Public Libraries as Information Hubs

An institution even more attuned than schools to playing an effective leadership role in lifelong learning and citizen democracy is the public library. Libraries already have more public trust than most other public institutions combined; they're the obvious locus for access (to technology as well as information), training and community development. Many library systems have put priority on using information technology in creative ways to get useful information to citizens. Some have also invested in the personnel who are the bridge between citizens and information: training and retraining them to use new technology to make their jobs more efficient.

Librarians, with their skills at sorting and organizing information, are likely to be ever more in demand in the age of information overload. Possibilities for partnerships with not-for-profits and with businesses seem logical. For example, the Seattle Public Library partnered with Good News/Good Deeds to expand and update its "community contacts database," the computerized information on local not-for-profits active in various service areas, neighborhoods, and issue areas. Today, there are over 3,000 entries, and Quick Information librarian Linda Rosenthal estimates that by midyear 1999, there will be more, and they will all be up-to-date. This provides a spine for a community information system that includes grassroots community organizations as well as larger agencies. It can serve not only citizens looking for information, services, or volunteer opportunities. It would also benefit members of the news media, who told Good News/Good Deeds focus groups that they would make use of such a database to deepen their knowledge of community organizations. However, library staff say they will need to allocate more resources in order to keep the database up-to-date and useful.

Libraries are also a logical place to convene citizens, not only to focus on technology, but to use it as a means to get the information they need to make effective decisions. In Hartford, Conn., for example, the library created a room where civic information is so well presented that city council committees began meeting there. On city maps, they could study the areas which citizens, police, youth, and bureaucrats identified as trouble spots and places where extraordinary citizen action was going on. This kind of "community mapping" of assets and liabilities, becoming more popular in cities across the country, provides better information flow between citizens and government, citizens and citizens. Libraries are logical places to focus and localize the information. It can also be put on-line for use by citizens and media.

Libraries of the future could become true public education and communication centers, linking up in some cases with public broadcasting and community media. Neighborhood databases, drawing from daily and weekly newspaper coverage as well as information submitted by community groups, could provide a wealth of useful history for new residents as well as a record of what decisions were made in the past, and why. This type of "civic memory" is missing in much media coverage and in many discussions on proposed changes in communities.