By Paola Guzman
A group of kids fight for a seat in front of a set of iPads propped up on a circular table. The ones who win a seat are exultant. They swipe their small pointer fingers across the screen, following the instructions to different games. The ones who lose impatiently wait on line behind the chairs, peering over the winners’ shoulders. This scene does not take place in an Apple store; it’s at the Peninsula Public Library in Lawrence.
Great technical advancements have been made within the last few years. Hardcover books are increasingly being replaced with digital pages on small devices. YouTube videos, virtual classrooms for make-up, music, any much more. Social media is the #1 news source of the latest news for most Americans. Yet, these advances have not greatly affected the number of Americans still visiting their public libraries. They have, though, affected how people in the new digital age use the library.
Libraries are experiencing an evolution. Commonly known as a place where people can sign up for a library card, borrow books, and do homework; libraries have become much more than that.
In 2012, the New York Public Library raised concern among scholars and academics when administrators announced a plan to remove books from their Fifth Avenue research center. Even though the books would be available digitally, many felt this initiative was too drastic, too fast.
The Public Library Association recently added “Digital Literacy,” to its initiatives, stating on its website, “PLA supports its members to make their libraries digital literacy learning centers.”
This initiative is clearly showcased at the Port Washington Public Library. In November 2017, PWPL opened its newly renovated children’s room. Despite the room’s new modern look and seemingly fewer books, James Hutter, technology librarian for PWPL, said they did not remove books from the new space.
The room is located on the lower level of the library. Library goers are greeted with bold yellows and greens. The noise is noticeably elevated and there is a large empty space to the right. The rest of this room is filled with bookshelves and comfortable chairs for children to sit on. There’s a room with a large table and chairs on the far left. Walking to the back, there is a small wing which contains iMacs lined up against each side of the wall.
The iMacs were installed for a “tween area,” Hutter said. A new room was also installed to resemble a classroom setting. It has an interactive smart board and Hutter hopes to buy chrome books for students to do STEM activities there. The chrome books would be projected onto the smart board.
In the former children’s room, “we did a lot of arts and crafts but not many technology initiatives,” Hutter said. Aside from the children’s room, the Port Washington Public Library also has a computer center that provides internet services and resources for the public. “We need to have staff that are trained and knowledgeable in this area [technology],” Hutter highlights the need for a technically savvy staff, “as technology changes, we have to keep the knowledge current, so we do a lot of ongoing training.”
In the next 12 months, a new “maker space” will also be added to the Port Washington Public Library. This space will include a new computer center, a classroom exclusively for teaching maker skills, a recording studio for video recording and podcasting, and possibly a video gaming space.
Visitors to the library’s Computer Center have gone up, Hutter said. Although his expertise and observations derive mostly from the digital side of the library, the circulation statistics report for Port Washington shows 21,536 people checked out and renewed books in October 2017.
“For a long time, I thought the eBook thing would take over, but its hasn’t overtaken books. I think the scale is even. For me, print hasn’t really died off,” Hutter said.
Moving to the south shore, Peninsula Public Library, one of the smallest public libraries on Long Island, is taking a slower approach to evolving the traditional space to accommodate the new digital age.
The opening scene of this article took place during a visit from the Five Towns Day Camp. On a regular school day, this library is less noisy and filled with studious adults and children. The library of three floors offers books, DVDs, CDs, Wi-Fi, and many programs. The children’s room has book stacks, small beanbag chairs, a kiosk with iPads, AWE early literacy work stations, and three computers that are for early literacy.
Carolynn Matulewicz, director of the Peninsula Public Library, says she does not expect print books to be removed from the library anytime soon. Demographics of different communities still benefit from traditional library services. “We have a diverse community here,” Matulewicz said. “We have a very big Orthodox population; they cannot use digital on the weekend.”
Matulewicz also notes the socioeconomic need for this library as “a lot of people don’t have access to technology at home, so they come to the library to use that. We have seen a dramatic increase in the usage of our Wi-Fi.”
According to the Peninsula Public Library statistical report, there was a total circulation of 23,636 for the month of November, second highest in Nassau County out of 54 member libraries. The report also showed 1,311 digital downloads and 672 total sessions of Wi-Fi usage. Children’s fiction ranked as highest circulation.
Peninsula Public Library in Lawrence will add a new building in the near future. “We are in the process of designing that and trying to look forward on how technology is going to change and how to provide it down the road,” Matulewicz said.
Diverging from public libraries, the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library of LIU Post, depicts a different environment, with different figures.
This library is constantly filled with students, however, instead of researching from print books, most of them are sitting at tables on their laptops, using the charging stations, or in the basement using the business incubator space.
Nancy Menton, circulation manager, says that 650 books were checked out in November. “The numbers have gone down significantly,” Menton said. “They’re not what they used to be.”
LIU Post also offers eBooks, and access to online databases. Professors often invite librarians into class, before research projects, to give tutorials on how to use the library database.
Libraries are slowly expanding the services they traditionally are known for. But they are not going anywhere anytime soon due to decreasing figures. Actually, from 2008 to 2015, the numbers have not changed significantly, staying at around 50 percent of respondents having library cards, in a Harris Poll survey.
From 2012 to 2016, there were also not significant variations in how often specific age groups visited a library, according to the Pew Research Center.
However, in 2015, 85 percent of respondents claimed to have used internet in the library while 54 percent borrowed books, according to the Harris Poll.
The libraries are filled with staff eager to help and patrons of all kinds, ages and demographics using their public services. The new digital age is redefining the world and libraries are running the race, avidly keeping up.
