Libraries = Collections?

Over the past few years, based on conversations with people, libraries are associated with books, audiobooks, DVDs, CDs, e-books, databases, etc. - basically resources or collections of resources, regardless of the media type. Yesterday, I was doing shelf-reading of a print reference collection. Today, I had a conversation with a few colleagues about collections and circulation statistics. Overall, libraries are deeply connected and defined by its collections. My colleague, Nate Hill recently blogged a post about the changing role of public libraries which covers a bit of what I discussed in my last post and will discuss in this post.

For a long time, libraries have been and are still defined by their resources and collections of resources. Increasingly, people are finding information online on their own, which has brought up questions like why do we need libraries and how can libraries stay relevant. It's not only the resources that defines what libraries are, the library staff plays a crucial role. Why not encourage and support an environment for library staff to use their ideas, skills, creativity, and knowledge to collaborate with the community to develop, organize, create, and coordinate events, programs, wikis, blogs, etc. while using the collections? I think there's potential in libraries playing this kind of role and it's great to see that it's happening.