For the past one hundred and fifty years the idea of the public library has evolved alongside rapid technological change.  Many of these changes (broadcast media, for example) were viewed, at the time, as potential threats to the sector.  Despite these fears, libraries adapted and continued to thrive.  Predicting doom for libraries has been a failing business for nearly a century.  Nevertheless, the collection of technologies described as “the internet” pose a new and unique set of challenges to the persistence of public libraries.  

Technologies have been critical to the creation and development of public libraries.  

The written word, the printing press, and mass printing were all crucial building blocks for the creation of public circulating libraries in America starting in the nineteenth century.  Widespread literacy and durable, affordable books were the necessary preconditions for the development of public libraries as we know them.

New technologies in the past hundred years have also enabled (and eliminated) new library offerings and services.  Moving pictures were not a library offering until the creation of film strips and later VHS cassettes and DVDs.  Music was not lent broadly by libraries until the invention of the vinyl record and later the cassette and CD.  The changes in technology that brought about streaming audio have greatly reduced the role of recorded music in public library collections.  Today’s digital transformation represents only the latest in a series of technological changes that libraries have experienced and weathered over the last two centuries.

The collection of technologies that we commonly call “the internet,” are the most transformational since the founding of libraries.  

Digital technologies have a number of particularly disruptive effects on libraries.  They eliminate the need for some services, invite opportunities for libraries to serve new patrons, and reveal unmet demand for existing services.  Perhaps most significantly, internet enabled technologies allow libraries, for the first time in their history to imagine the provision of their services, or at least a facsimile of them, without their buildings, physical collections or even certain types of staff.  

All prior technologies merely augmented the basic concept of a public library (building + books + patrons + staff = platform).  However, the internet presents the possibility of radically transforming the concept of a public library.  It also presents the possibility of changing libraries in such a way that undermines the broad public support that has been crucial to their continued existence in America.  

Libraries are clearly not alone in being buffeted by the changes created by the internet.  If anything, libraries have remained immune for longer than most other sectors.  So long, perhaps, that some of its staff may think that public libraries can continue to remain immune to the pressures created by digital technology.

Public Libraries have always existed to serve multiple purposes.  

Throughout their history public library leaders have taken very different views about the purpose – and beneficial impact on society – of public libraries.  This ambiguity has allowed for “interpretive flexibility” among library staff, the general public and the donor class that financially support public libraries, albeit for different reasons.  Everyone can see libraries differently.  

Even among the library sector’s leaders and most ardent supporters there have been differing opinions on what the purpose of the library. 

• Melvil Dewey created the system that organized non-fiction library books but placed much less emphasis on fiction. 
• Andrew Carnegie had a very clear vision of public libraries as enabling individual advancement, to the benefit of business and commerce. 
• At the end of World War I the library director of Newark, NJ declared that the public libraries were failures because they had not stopped global conflict. 
• After World War II the Public Library Inquiry reported that librarians believed their role was to provide broad public education. 
• In the 1970s the director of the Queens Public Library believed that libraries existed largely to support the formal education system. 
• Some librarians have been against popular fiction while others have been their champion. 
• Some have quietly supported community censorship, while others have railed against it. 

Nevertheless, in spite of these divergent opinions on the “why?” of the library, the “what” has remained constant: a stable building, a circulating collection, a trained staff and uninhibited patrons.  

Does there need to be a single answer to the question, ‘why do libraries exist?’  

For nearly their entire history American public libraries have weathered the critique that they should think more strategically or face elimination.  Libraries have persisted in communities despite largely dismissing these warnings.  In doing so they seem to have proven all of their critics more or less wrong.  Therefore, anyone forecasting the demise of libraries at the hands of “the internet” should be cautious.  And yet the power of digital technology to transform industries demands its own respect.

Digital technologies can unbundle the traditional public library so that some of its core services (book lending, public programs, education, listening to audiobooks, watching films) appear to be able to exist without some – or all – of its patrons ever entering the branch or interacting with neighbors or library staff.  In the process of disaggregating public libraries are at risk of turning down or outsourcing services that were key to their value or public support.  Separating the library into a set of distinct services, with some online and some in person, could pierce the halo around the institution that has contributed to its broad support from across communities and make that interpretive flexibility more difficult.  Thus while digital offerings can be exciting opportunities to extend the reach of the institution they can also threaten the social contract with the public that allows libraries to receive stable funding from their local government.  

The question of dealing with digital transformation is ‘how can libraries continue to satisfy the public?’  

Digital transformation has brought an end to countless companies and ideologies.  It has brought obsolescence to untold numbers of technologies, businesses, services and products, many previously considered to be unassailable.  Libraries are not threatened because they have diminished value, they are threatened because digital technology rearranges the world around them.

The task of libraries in the face of digital transformation is twofold: persist, for as long as possible, while determining whether, by the strategic application of new technology, they could use digital technology to deliver greater value and benefit to society.