Eli Neiburger

The purpose of libraries when they were created was not to purchase commercial content for use by the community but to store and organize the content of the community. Popular materials have fueled a huge boom for popular libraries, but libraries were created to protect and ensure access to things like [local texts and history] for the communities that produced them, not to subsidize access to the hottest new clay tablets from Babylon. It’s these unique things that don’t exist anywhere else, and that matter more to our own communities than anyone else, that have the future for libraries. It’s not just data about the community, but also creations of the community that libraries can enable by giving patrons access to production tools, event venues, and – most importantly – a permanent, non-commercial, online home for our patrons’ creative works, making the library the publisher – putting the emphasis on the library as a platform for the community and less emphasis on having enough copies of the hot new thing.

The cat is out of the bag. Everyone is a publisher. The 20th-century [library] brought the world to its community. The 21st-century library brings its community to the world.