Who Needs Public Libraries? A community-based approach to a decades old debate
Keywords:
change, leadership, public libraries, communityAbstract
This paper explores the common and long-held idea that public libraries will soon become irrelevant in the digital age. Unlike the majority of the literature published about this subject, however, it does not argue that libraries need to “lose the books” (Lafrance, 2015), nor that librarians need to become “become a hipper crowdof shushers” (Jesella, 2007). Instead, it contends that public libraries and librarians need only look to their communities in order to remain relevant through any societal or technological changes.
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