Whither Libraries?

Where would we be without libraries?

In the Digital Age, it’s a valid and worrisome question.

When I was growing up — and for years after — the library was the place where knowledge resided. That’s where books were kept and loaned out to those seeking to improve their minds and answer burning questions on just about anything and everything.

And it was free, thanks in large part to a man who was once the richest person on Earth and who wanted to share his wealth with others less fortunate in life.

Andrew Carnegie made a fortune in steel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Carnegie was a man with real compassion for the poor who lived at the dawn of the public library system. But the earliest libraries were charging a membership fee, and many could not afford it.

Carnegie believed public libraries should be free, and -- with funding provided by him -- a total of 2,509 libraries were built between 1883 and 1929. Nearly 1,700 were built in America, 660 in the UK and many others around the world.

That idea of a free public library stuck, and is now the norm.

My little Iowa town had a Carnegie-funded library, and I enjoyed searching for books and reading them in its quiet rooms. It was a tradition I carried on through college and afterward in other libraries across the country.

But things have changed over the years.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the advent of the Digital Age. Today, we can check out eBooks and never enter a library.

We no longer have to get in our vehicle, drive to the library, find a parking spot, smile at or talk to other people, or look the other way when we see homeless folks trying to sleep in the farthest corners of the building.

Yes, we can now avoid all of that messy human interaction and simply check out a book with a flick of a finger.

Public libraries have been a hallmark of American democracy for more than 100 years, helping to educate our people and give all a chance to reach for their dreams through the pursuit of knowledge.

But for how much longer?

As new generations come of age, they are increasingly using their computers and smartphones to obtain the information they desire.

Statistics are hard to find, but it stands to reason that fewer people are visiting the library these days than, say, 20 years ago.

Today, libraries seem primarily to be places where those without an Internet connection at home can come to access library computers.

And -- especially during Winter and bad weather -- they are refuges for the homeless to pass the day away until they can return to their shelters.

These aren’t bad things to be, but it makes me wonder where libraries are headed in the 21st century.

As someone who loved libraries when they were the source of knowledge in the world, I hope they will always be with us in some form.

Life just wouldn't be the same without them.