In the internet era, public libraries are more vital than ever

Back in 2018, Forbes sent Twitter into fury with a now-retracted column. Its big idea: Amazon should replace libraries because it has “provided something better.” The Kindles, Netflixes and Starbucks of the world have rendered libraries obsolete, the author suggested; monetizing libraries would not only save taxpayer money but also bolster Amazon’s stockholder value.

Librarians and activists are fighting hard against this idea. In fact, they're making the case for why libraries are even more important in a world redefined by companies like Amazon. They offer free access to the internet, and classes on basic computer skills, data literacy, and more — all with a commitment to user privacy.

“Compared to a company like Google that is monetizing your pursuit of information, everyone that you interact with at a public library has a similar ethics and value framework around privacy, equity of access to information, the free marketplace of ideas, and is willing to die on that hill,” Jeff Lambert, the assistant director of digital inclusion at the Queens Public Library, told me. “As these companies get larger and more ubiquitous, and as data becomes an increasingly commodified and valuable asset, there's a lot of public education to do.”

As a librarian in the country’s most diverse county, Lambert’s responsibilities include overseeing the Queensbridge Tech Lab, an open-access classroom and computer space located in the nation’s largest public housing project. There, he coordinates classes on basic computer literacy, as well as skills that boost upward mobility, like data analysis, coding, and app development.

Young patrons testing out virtual reality goggles at the Queensbridge Tech Lab. Credit: Kaven vohra via Queens Public Library

For 64-year-old Marie Solange Baptiste, a long-time library patron and Queens local who immigrated from Haiti in 1994, the Tech Lab was a resource that helped her master Adobe Creative Cloud, learn web development, and put together digital résumes for job applications. Now, she is taking an entrepreneurship class there to work toward owning a French-style bakery — a dream of hers since she was 13.

"Years ago, when I was going to the library my feeling was it was about books only. But there's something new that transformed libraries into this small university. It's a mini university," Baptiste said. "It's not only about books, it's about the education we get from the library, about technology, about entrepreneurship — all those are wonderful things to do, and especially we don't pay for that."

Lambert also led classes that walked patrons through New York City’s open data system ahead of the country’s first online census in 2020, no trivial task in a county where one in four households lack internet access.

“One of our most remarkable assets is our reach and penetration into hard to reach communities,” Lambert said. “You can provide access to the internet. But if you're not providing it with digital literacy programming to support access and adoption, you're only completing one leg of a puzzle.”

Lambert said this kind of digital and data literacy allows the public to translate social and political grievances into action. Take, for example, data from 311, a government hotline for non-emergency complaints.

“[Think about] problematic landlords. You know that you don’t have heat and water, but once you see it at the aggregate … it’s something that could then become actionable in terms of tenants rights issues,” Lambert said. “Data literacy is civic literacy. It allows you to hold your elected officials to account and demand the resources that are owed to you.”

For Alison Macrina, this civic literacy entails the ability to not only access data, but do so privately and securely. Macrina became a tech librarian just outside of Boston after observing the American Librarian Association’s skepticism of the PATRIOT act, a sprawling post-9/11 government surveillance program.

As a librarian, she witnessed first-hand the heightened surveillance and police militarization in her community after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The Edward Snowden revelation came shortly after that. In response, Macrina began sowing seeds for what would become the Library Freedom Institute, a project that creates and trains cohorts of librarians as privacy advocates. (“Librarians are badass,” Snowden himself wrote about the project in a tweet.)

Macrina said the six-month program covers privacy basics like password security, identity theft, frauds, and scams — internet crimes the FBI has seen steadily grow since 2014. She added that the Institute also discusses the impact of companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon, which repeatedly leverage user data to grow their businesses.

“I'm making the connection between that kind of macro-level stuff to the way we use the internet,” Macrina said. “The kind of people who visit libraries are the people who tend to be more impacted by surveillance."

The people who are most likely to see public libraries as community anchors and internet access points — black and Hispanic Americans, and households with lower incomes — are the same people who are most affected by surveillance technologies including Amazon's Ring, and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

"What are we supposed to do about this?" Macrina said. "How can we take some of our power back?”

She is uncertain about what the future has in store for public libraries. Already, she sees institutions “chipping away” resources from libraries because they provide “no surplus value” in a capitalist system. She thinks they'll cease to exist unless librarians extend their commitment to intellectual freedom outside of library walls

Still, there are silver linings. Millennials use public libraries the most, and are the most likely to see public libraries as a resource for trustworthy information. And while Donald Trump proposed in his 2020 budget to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent government agency, Congress instead ended up approving a $10 million funding increase.

“All of these things, I think, serves the bigger goal of shifting cultural expectations,” Macrina said. “I know that sounds really lofty, but we've done it before, right? Somebody has to start doing it, and they have to make it a norm. The point is, we have all this ability to offer something different.”