Books Are Just the Beginning: On the Road to Innovation with The Free Library of Philadelphia

Abstract

Introduction

The digital age has fundamentally changed the way people search for and consume information, leaving long-standing providers of information struggling to stay financially viable and contextually important. The younger generations, and a growing number of those in older generations, consume news, conduct research, communicate with friends and relatives, and do business from their computer or mobile device. According to a recent Pew Study, one quarter of all Americans get their news on mobile devices (Duncan 2010). Clearly the physical provision of knowledge and communication has shifted, resulting in a crossroad for entities that provide news and knowledge.

The Free Library of Philadelphia is attempting to navigate its way through this crossroads as it seeks to determine the role libraries play in the information age. For decades, generations of diverse Americans have viewed the physical library as an access point for knowledge, transformation and the opportunity for advancement and change. As President Kennedy put it, “Libraries should be open to all—except the censor.”

As the electronic age propels us forward, what is the library’s role? Libraries across the country have attempted to answer this question in very different manners. Seattle’s Public Library has been completely redesigned and re-visioned, with little resemblance to its previous look and feel. Now a large greenhouse-like space with no interior walls, the library has become an urban hangout for many. With a clear focus on attracting people through the sheer excellence of the building and technology services, Seattle has made stacks of books less important, and the library seems to acknowledge they will be gone in a matter of years (Rybczynski 2008). Their rebuild has served them well. Approximately 60 percent of users visit the library twice a week (Gilmore 2010).

Chicago’s Public Library, also feeling the push to digitize and entice people to visit, recently renovated and “innovated” its approach. Instead of renovating to be more modern, the Chicago Public Library reworked its facility and conceptualization of space utilization in an effort to accommodate more, and different, groups of people. With a new physical space, which uses the first floor to house books, the library was free to incorporate many large loft spaces on other floors as video rooms, computer rooms, exhibition spaces, etc. The idea was based around flexibility—to build a space that changes with society (Rybczynski 2008).

While these libraries took different approaches to attracting visitors, there is an overarching recognition among the library community that the historic role of the library has changed and that survival is directly linked to determining its role in, and adapting to, the digital information age. The Free Library of Philadelphia is currently in the process of re-examining how it interacts with its consumers to determine a path for the next 20-50 years. By providing new ways to experience information in physical settings or by providing immediate digital and comprehensive access combined with a guarantee of quality, the FLP seeks reassert its historical role.