Author: Chen Lei (Assistant Researcher, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences)
Public libraries in developed countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States are facing a gradual crisis, with the proportion of people visiting physical libraries continuing to decline, and the number of libraries is decreasing. Affected by the epidemic this year, most libraries are in a state of open-door and limited opening, and the use rate may fall to the lowest point in decades.
The decline in library visitors in developed countries is not something that has happened recently, but a process that has been going on for two or three decades. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has been conducting annual statistics on the use of public libraries in the UK since 2005, and the results of the survey that year showed that 48.2% of the total population was visited by adults over the age of 16 who visited public libraries in 12 months. This figure in 2019 was 31.4%, meaning that adult visitors to libraries in the UK have fallen by 35% in 15 years. But at the same time, in 2019, the proportion of visitors to museums and galleries in the population was 52.0%, and the proportion of visitors to historical sites was as high as 72.7%, indicating that the public's interest in libraries only weakened, and their interest in cultural visits and cultural tourism did not decline.
The situation of public libraries in the United States is almost the same as in the United Kingdom. The American Association of Museums and Library Services released the 2017 U.S. Public Library Survey in July, which showed that the number of library visits per capita in the United States in a fiscal year was 4.1, but library visits in the past seven years have declined by about 3% per year, and this figure in fiscal year 2013 is 8.2% lower than in fiscal year 2009.
Not only is the number of visitors declining, but so are the number of libraries in developed countries. Tim Coates, a veteran of the Anglo-American book and library industries, is in charge of a survey project called the Spot Project, whose data are mainly from authoritative professional organizations and aim to reflect the operation of the library industry truthfully and objectively. Coates said the UK has closed about 800 public libraries over the past decade due to budget cuts. The Speckle Project, published in 2020, shows even more grim findings: Over the past 20 years, the use of public libraries in the UK has fallen by 70%. Per capita visits to public libraries in the United States have fallen by 22% over the past seven years, and australian library borrowing has fallen by 21% over the same period, slightly better than in the United Kingdom.
This year's library operations have undoubtedly been worse affected by the epidemic. Most public libraries in the United States are under a lot of pressure, shutting down for a period of time as long as employees or readers have symptoms, and some temporary measures have been taken, such as setting up roadside service points, providing books and periodicals without contact, and self-printing on mobile phones. The pandemic will accelerate the decline in library utilization, increase day-to-day operating costs, and declines in fiscal and tax revenues in the states will also affect library budgets for the coming year, and these adverse effects may take some time to fully manifest.
The biggest factor affecting library access is undoubtedly the popularity of the Internet and mobile digital devices, but the "Spot Project" survey led by Coates has come to a somewhat surprising conclusion: rather than e-books changing people's reading habits, public libraries have been too much affected by the concept of digital development, have not consolidated and optimized traditional paper book services, and the way of management and operation is also backward.
Contemporary public libraries are increasingly turning themselves into databases and new media companies, and these digital services certainly favor the equalization of cultural services, but this change should not come at the expense of traditional libraries. Contemporary public libraries have slashed their budgets for the purchase of paper books and invested funds in digital construction. Due to the tight budget for book purchases, many libraries are unable to update their inventory in time, the total number of books in the library has dropped significantly, and the collection of British public libraries has dropped by more than 20% in the past decade, resulting in a significant reduction in the level of traditional service projects, and people can't find the books they want, which will further reduce the interest in visiting physical libraries.
At the same time, the British and American governments have also continued to reduce their investment in public libraries in the digital age, although government investment accounts for only a portion of the library's budget, and the rest is self-financing, but this is also a rather unfavorable factor. The U.S. government has reduced the library budget for 2020 from $242 million in the previous year to one-tenth of what it was, to just $23 million. Many local governments in the UK transferred libraries to the community after cutting budgets, and if there was no community organization to take over the management, they closed them completely, resulting in the loss of jobs for the staff involved.
In the process of declining the utilization rate of public libraries, there is also a noteworthy phenomenon, that is, the more economically developed and the more educated the region, the faster the number of people visiting physical libraries and the number of visits, while the demand for traditional libraries in relatively economically backward areas has basically remained at a stable level. Surveys conducted in their respective countries by the Pew Research Center in the United States and the British Association of Information and Library Professions have shown this. The reason for this phenomenon is that community libraries play an important social role in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, not only providing basic book lending services, but also a comprehensive service center in the street community, undertaking part of the functions of preschool education, amateur education, and community communication, providing valuable public space and equipment and resources for underdeveloped areas, and becoming a refuge at certain special moments of natural disasters, so it has a lasting attraction to local residents. People in economically developed areas are different, often have multiple channels and resources for access to cultural information, have no sense of dependence on public libraries, and reduce access to physical libraries in the digital age.
When discussing the fate of physical libraries, we must first figure out what makes a difference in what libraries bring to people. The Italian philosopher and novelist Echo and the French screenwriter and critic Carriel had a conversation about the book, published in 2009 under the title "Don't Want to Get Rid of the Book.". Both European intellectuals were bibliophiles, with the former's masterpiece The Name of the Rose parodying the murders that took place in a medieval monastery library, and the latter writing famous films such as "Tin Drums", "Love in Prague", "Hussars on the Roof", and "Big Nose Love".
Speaking about libraries, Carriel said that the French literary scholar Claudel once likened large libraries to the cross-sectional layers of coal mines, filled with layers of fossils and imprints, which are emotional botanical atlases and like countless jars that preserve specimens of human civilization. Carriel said he prefers the metaphor that private books wrap us around us like a warm leather coat, brushing aside the fog and fallacies of life and bringing us a sense of security and comfort. Echo says the atmosphere of a traditional library also enhances this sense of protection, and he likes the library's old-fashioned configuration, which uses a lot of wood materials, and the green table lamps and brown bookshelves create a special atmosphere. This dialogue not only expresses a kind of cultural nostalgia, but also can see some irreplaceable things that traditional libraries bring to people: people read books both to obtain knowledge and information, but also to get a pleasant feeling, so reading in a specific environment is very important, not to mention that at least at this stage, paper books are more friendly to people's vision than digital books.
The two intellectuals also spoke about the significance of the library's book collection order. Carriel asked why we decided to put one book next to another, and why did we take this approach instead of another? He believed that there were social relations between books and reflected the exchange between civilizations. Echo said that when he wrote a new work, he often had to disrupt the original shelf arrangement, and picked out some books and put them together for writing and research.
Echo and Carriel's dialogue reflects another core function of the library, which is to provide professional paper book services centered on human needs. One can quickly find a unit of books on the shelf organized according to a certain principle, expand and extend their reading, or they can call up a specific combination of books according to their individual needs, without having to buy them all.
It is necessary for libraries to carry out digital construction, but it is not its advantage, and the academic search engine and database of large portals are far more powerful than the library's digital platform. The expectation of libraries is not to be as all-encompassing as portals, but to provide better and more adequate traditional paper book services for people to read happily and comfortably. Whether it is the unshakable status of the library in the underclass community in britain and the United States, or the sense of stability, comfort and order brought by the traditional library brought by intellectuals such as Echo and Carrielle, it shows the enduring demand for a professional and humane reading space.
Guangming Daily (14th edition, December 24, 2020)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily