Rich writes “Monday’s Boston Globe had an article called “Libraries move with times, discover niches.”
“At the Boston Public Library each month, teenagers get down to the vigorous techno thumps of the popular arcade game Dance Dance Revolution. The Norwell Public Library treats visitors to a monthly free dinner and a movie.”
“We are not your grandmother’s library, ” said Kimberly Lynn, president of the Massachusetts Library Association. In the era of waning readership and Internet search engines, libraries in Massachusetts and across the country are shifting their resources and expertise to areas once unthinkable. Gone are the hushed bibliothecae of yore where even an occasional irreverent clicking of a heal prompted furrowed brows of disapproval.
Instead, public libraries are finding new niches that make them appealing to patrons, and patrons are increasingly using libraries as a free alternative to DVD rentals, music stores, Internet cafes, and even gaming arcades.”
Waning Readership?
Where is the evidence for all this waning readership I keep hearing about? Are magazine and books sales decling? How about circulation figures, are they down? The only decline in publishing I think may be valid is newspapers, and Craig’s List has more to do with that then readership.
Quiet Place to Read?
So where do you go if you want a quiet place to read as these activist librarians are intent on destroying that atmosphere?
look harder
Unless it’s a really small library there are almost always ways to accommodate both and almost all libraries do.
“Activist?”
Re:Waning Readership?
I think you already know the answers: Every objective measure shows generally rising circulation, generally rising book sales (but maybe fewer books per person). Magazines are complex–some rising, some falling, some being born, others dying. Newspapers…well, for a long time the decline was really the fast death of afternoon papers. Now, some large metro papers do have declining circulations–but most truly local papers are doing just fine.
But hey, saying “readers are still reading” doesn’t sell papers.