Nationwide, public libraries are changing. What started as buildings of books about many subjects — fiction and nonfiction — are morphing.
In Plant City, Judge James Bruton and his wife, Quintilla Geer Bruton, partnered with the Plant City Women’s Club in the early 1950s to start the Bruton Memorial Library. Operating as a department of the City of Plant City, the Bruton Memorial Library maintains a cooperative agreement with about 30 other libraries run by Hillsborough County and Temple Terrace. That agreement allows Bruton to offer many more services than a typical 20,000-square-foot library with an annual $800,000 budget, a dozen staff members, and a collection of 100,000 books, periodicals, and DVDs could.
Like many other libraries, one obvious change agent at Bruton over the past 20 years has been its 46 public-use computers. The way knowledge is stored has gone from books and paper files to large online computer databases. These databases can be mixed and compared at will and in real time, without the need to reorganize information by hand, and reprint it with ink and paper.
At least some of Bruton’s collection of 100,000 books, periodicals and DVDs will soon be computerized, and library patrons can download them to desktop computers or hand-held computer devices known by brand names like Kindle. Even if all 100,000 are not computerized, the amount of electronic file space (and the floor space to house the computers on which the electronic files are held) to store the digitized material will be considerably less than the amount of square footage to shelve them in hard copy form.
This revolution is creating excess capacity in libraries like Bruton, and library operators have already begun to provide new services in libraries and to consider other new services which libraries will be able to provide in the future.
Citizens who need advice on where and how to obtain government services such as license plates, registering for homestead exemption, applying for unemployment, Social Security and Medicare can already go to Bruton Memorial Library for help or to use a public-use computer to apply online. This service is called E-government by librarians, and many of the 20,000 patrons per month who pass through the doors of Bruton do so for this service.
The John Germany Library in downtown Tampa has dedicated space as an economic development incubator where newly-created small businesses can start on their economic journeys. Other libraries provide maker spaces where creative patrons can paint, write or draw. Some libraries are considering the expansion of their collections to include community history and media like pictures and audio files created by citizens who have witnessed growth and change in their communities in their lifetimes. Bruton provides space for community meetings and tutoring of students. The range of new knowledge-related services which libraries may provide in the future is virtually limitless.
Our new City Manager Mike Herr, Library Director Tonda Morris and our City Commission-appointed library board, chaired by Jim Chancey, are discussing a new visioning and planning process for Bruton Memorial Library in the near future. The question is not whether Bruton should change, but how.
Alert and interested Plant City Times & Observer readers, many of whom are patrons of Bruton, are encouraged to begin thinking about what Bruton should become and what new services it should provide. The vision of Bruton in 2030 should be created by the good people who operate it and the patrons who use the fine services it provides.
Felix Haynes is an owner of the Plant City Observer.
