Are you reading books — physical books — as much as you used to?
Few of us are, and it made me wonder about the path ahead for national libraries. These great institutions date back to the ancient world — the first repositories of written material are in present-day Iraq and Syria — and evolved into the public or lending libraries that most of us know best. Particularly for children, library access offers a playground for the imagination and an endless source of discovery.
Today, some of these places are fighting for survival, under pressure from a fierce combination of forces. Budgets fall short of what’s required to pay librarians or maintain premises; technology is changing our attention spans and reading habits; political storms affect even the most celebrated library leaders; and ransomware attacks can bring organizations to a standstill.
The UK’s national library is still suffering from the impact of one such attack nearly two years ago. But when I sat down in the office of the new chief executive, I found her more than ready to turn the page.
This interview is Lawrence’s first in her new role. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Lawrence: I would like the national library in a digital age to have that timeless, classic feeling of pride in the collections that come from different sources – past and future and present – where everybody can have a sense of belonging.
When I was little and I first came to the British Library’s collections when they were in the British Museum, I was taken there with my London primary school class. My teacher wanted us to see our great institutions. We went to the museum to see the Greek collections and she said, ‘While you are here, you must see the Reading Room, the round Reading Room.’
I’ll never forget it. There were some manuscripts — you could only peek at them, but she explained what manuscripts were. She was the teacher that everybody wanted to have. And the thing that’s really special for me, is that teacher was my mum.
A library of the future shouldn’t need to rely on a particular teacher choosing to do that. The services should be available to learners at every stage of their learning journey — whether they’re children, whether they’re researchers, they should be able to feel that institution is theirs and be equipped at using the resources, which I believe will always be a hybrid of the physical and digital.
Gary Price ([email protected]) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.