Community Centered: 23 Reasons Why Your Library Is the Most Important Place in Town


Community Centered: 23 Reasons Why Your Library Is the Most Important Place in Town
by Julie Biando Edwards, Melissa S. Rauseo, & Kelley Rae Unger
As librarians, we know the value of our community services, and our patrons appreciate their importance as well. But in an increasingly digital world, we see the role of libraries as community and cultural centers at times undervalued, and occasionally under fire.

More than just books and banks of computers, libraries are still places where individuals gather to explore, interact, and imagine. We decided to take a look at some of the specific ways in which libraries add value to our communities and serve as cultural centers for our patrons. We separated library services into five very broad categories: (1) libraries as community builders, (2) libraries as community centers for diverse populations, (3) libraries as centers for the arts, (4) libraries as universities, and (5) libraries as champions of youth. Under each of these we highlighted specific ways in which libraries serve in these capacities, and included examples of unique or exemplary library services that support the notion that libraries are about more than just information.

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