Dive Brief:
- The rise of technologies like the iPhone have changed how students get knowledge, challenging both school and public libraries’ traditional roles as curators of academic knowledge.
- In response, libraries are rethinking the services they provide, behaving as more of a tech-savvy community center.
- For example, the Austin library system now offers an entirely virtual, downloadable library and a zero-waste bookstore — and it could soon offer community gathering spaces.
Dive Insight:
The transformation is also opening opportunities for more innovative education opportunities. In Austin, a local librarian has started to offer Maker Week, where students can practice robotics or engineering. It’s a rare chance for students to experience self-directed learning.
“I feel like our kids now want you to give them the directions for everything,” librarian Elizabeth Mikeska-Benfield told the Austin American-Statesman. “But once they felt that freedom to make mistakes, they trusted themselves. [Makerspaces] give them the opportunity to see their potential to be engineers, computer programmers, and teaches them to think a lot bigger.”
Miriam Reed, the managing librarian at Recycled Reads, Austin’s no-waste bookstore, says fears that libraries will go the way of the Pony Express are overblown and that the tech revolution is just the latest in their evolution. “Many of the things that people are concerned about around technology or how information is dispersed is the same as people felt 500 years ago,” she told the Austin American-Statesman, referring to the invention of the printing press.
Similar transformations are also taking place in school computer labs with the advent of school device deployments.
