From Lending to Learning

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Understanding today’s public libraries

As noted in the previous chapter, the public library of today is complicated for various reasons. The role of the library in the twenty-first century in the face of advances and changed leisure habits and reading preferences, not to mention the fundamental technological shift from analogue fixed print to digital fluid content, must change. But how? There is a need to diversify into, on the one hand, different products to lend and on the other different services to offer. At the same time there is a tension between the principle of universal access and the need in these days of market-driven segmentation to appeal to discrete groups. For example, the demands of readers of adult crime fiction set against ...