There is nothing better than taking a break from reality with a good book. The home of the most diverse collection of books, and a place that most avid readers call their “second home,” is none other than the library.

2500 years ago, Ashurbanipal, King of the Assyrians, hired an army of scribes to copy old texts to create 30,000 clay tablets with information on religion, medicine, language, and history. He created the world’s first library: the Library of Ashurbanipal in Iraq.

Since the seventh century B.C., libraries have developed and spread all over the world. Today, there are 2.8 million libraries, which serve as research centers and safe havens. Of these, 2.2 million of them are school libraries. These libraries have witnessed generations change and now see a brand new era of technology. The rise of artificial intelligence and book banning across the U.S. have raised concerns about whether libraries will grow obsolete in today’s fast-paced culture. 

In Mississippi, there was a 43% decline in checked-out materials in state libraries between the years of 2018 and 2022. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) reported similar statistics; IMLS found that over the last decade, the average number of library visits per user declined by 49%, and while 1.25 billion U.S. library visits were counted in 2019, only 671 million occurred in 2022. Even at Rock Ridge, students balance busy schedules and rigorous coursework, and it seems difficult to find time to enjoy a book, let alone visit the library to borrow one. 

Libraries today don’t serve the same purpose as when Ashurbanipal opened his, and statistics show that the use of libraries in the U.S. is declining. Even though technological advancements have deterred demand from libraries, these public forums will not grow obsolete. They will continue to stand as strong pillars, preserving culture and information, and serve as community spaces with resources that everyone has access to. 

From Ancient Treasures to Modern Resource Centers

The first libraries were treasures: they preserved valuable knowledge and rare scholarly findings and were crucial in documenting the culture and history of the time. Today, libraries are an accessible tool to all, not only scholars and literate elite. Libraries provide services like computers and free WiFi, books on fiction and non-fiction, and quiet workplaces. They encourage the interaction between humans and the literate world. According to I Love Libraries, an organization funded by the Library Champions Program that supports the American Library Association’s (ALA) efforts, “they connect people to information and connect people to people.”

Three decades ago, students spent days in libraries to find information for research papers; today, students access Google or ChatGPT to find the information they need in a matter of seconds, and they are less dependent on libraries to access resources. Libraries are ever-adapting to the newest technological advancements to stay up to date. 

Rock Ridge librarian Alexis Groah finds it crucial for libraries to adapt in order to keep their tools pertinent. “I think libraries have had to adapt to society to remain relevant, because people are accessing information from a variety of different places these days, primarily online,” Groah said. “I don’t think they will ever go away because I don’t think people will ever truly stop reading or stop having a desire for physical resources and physical books. [Society and the changing ways of how we access our information] have driven a majority of the change and libraries had to adapt; otherwise, maybe they wouldn’t have remained.”

The argument of whether libraries remain open grows in relevance as the line between reality and technology becomes blurred with the rapid upsurge of artificial intelligence. Rock Ridge Librarian Lisa Blydenburgh-McGuinness has had a vast amount of experience within the field, having been a librarian for 20 years. “The internet is like having all the books of a library piled up in the middle of the floor,” McGuinness said. “We have 18,000 books. Imagine that it is just one big heap. Now [try to] go find something. That’s what the internet is, and it’s gotten worse since AI. A library and a librarian can help you find what you want more specifically. I can’t immediately [say], ‘Oh, this is exactly what you want.’ It’s a treasure hunt, and I would hope people would relish that.”

But libraries don’t just provide books and research; they’re a safe haven, as well. In 2014, the “Ferguson Unrest” or “Ferguson Uprising” took place in Missouri, which was a series of riots lasting a year after the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer. After schools closed due to the riots, libraries were used as a safe space for kids to learn and study. 

According to The Atlantic, this wasn’t the only event in which libraries served more than what most know them to be. “After the hurricanes in Houston, some library websites were immediately up and running, announcing that they were open for business. After Hurricane Sandy, libraries in New Jersey became places of refuge. And in the Queens Library’s Far Rockaway branch, which didn’t have heat or light, the librarians set up a shop in the parking lot to continue children’s story hours ‘to give them a sense of normalcy,’ says Christian Zabriskie, who was a Queens librarian [in 2012, the year of the storm].” Zabriskie referred to the read-a-loud as “storytime at the end of the world.”

What Role Do Libraries Have at Rock Ridge? 

Students today use libraries for different purposes than they used to. They may not look at a library as the go-to place to acquire fast information, but rather a place that feeds their need for connection with physical mediums in an increasingly digital world. Although it may seem like Gen Z students visit libraries less often, a study conducted by the ALA in 2022 counters this assumption. The report claimed that 54% of Gen Z and Millennials visited a physical library that year, with many preferring physical copies of books over digital ones; respondents of the survey bought twice as many print books per month as books from other categories. 

Junior Reshmitha Rajagopal has observed how students interact with libraries and books from her experience volunteering at the Ashburn Library. “I know how [many] people come and go in the library, and I think not a lot of people go to the library, especially [not a lot of] teens,” Rajagopal said. “There [was] a time when people used to go to a library to do [research] because they didn’t have computers at home. I feel like [reading books] has also decreased [in teens because] a lot of people started reading online books on apps. [By consuming online media] you don’t get the same feeling as reading a book; you don’t get the same warmth and the same connection.”

Although students might visit libraries less often for research purposes, today students see libraries as places of connection, where they can meet with friends to work on school projects or seek quiet places to study and work without distractions. “[Libraries have] become more of a community space in the sense that there are various activities going on here at any given time,” Groah said. “It’s not necessarily just reading and studying; it’s bustling. I think it’s still the place for people to go to get books and information, but it’s become more of a community space where people can go and do any number of things.”

At Rock Ridge, reading books as a pastime increased for students after COVID. Groah observed a change in students’ interactions with the library’s resources throughout the school year. “We saw this big boom post-COVID where our circulation numbers tripled and since then it’s kind of slacked off a little bit,” Groah said. “I think there was this desire and craving for [spaces to connect with physical books]. Throughout the course of a given school year, [the number of students checking out books] ebbs and flows: students tend to start off strong [at the beginning of the school year], but then when you’re in third quarter, we see [the numbers] take a dip because everybody’s heads are down and they’re focused on studying and tests.”

At Rock Ridge, students might spend less time at the library than they used to because busy schedules don’t always allow for a lot of free time to spend with books; however, that doesn’t render our libraries obsolete. If people continue their drive to seek knowledge and explore, libraries will always remain an accessible tool to do so. 

The Rock Ridge library offers a wide range of books and a calm community setting, and encourages students to take time off their busy schedules and phones, and spend it discovering a new world in a new book. “It’s a choice to be on your phone, doomscrolling endlessly or open and cracking up a new book that’s never been opened before and reading through it, even if you don’t read [or] finish it,” McGuiness said. “We offer a lot of wonderful things here at the Rock Ridge library. That is for you all to choose whether you want to expand your brain or expand your knowledge. It’s here. It’s here for the taking.”