The Public Library: The City’s Economic Incubator.

HISTORICAL ROLE OF LIBRARIES.

Libraries have always served as repositories for a wide range of knowledge. From the Greeks of Socrates and Egyptians with their Royal [Ancient] Library of Alexandria come two central ideas: knowledge is worth collecting and retaining; and knowledge is unbound as to subject or discipline. The concept of libraries has a strong early association with museums and research. These two ideas and associations can serve well the economic development of small cities and towns in the 21st century.

The collection and organization of information, enabled by the explosion of information on the internet, is critical to the assemblage of general knowledge and business-specific knowledge. The libraries of our times are, or can become, an incredibly valuable community asset well beyond their historic passive purpose. Public libraries offer the opportunity to build on the tradition of a “public library” as a repository and to aggressively expand access to knowledge by becoming a portal to the vast knowledge base of the world.