dec04b.indd


CREATIVITY AND LEADERSHIP 

Libraries and librarians 
in the 21st century1 

Fostering a learning society 

by Robert S. Martin 

Ed. note: To keep in step with the evolution 
of ideas emerging from her year as ACRL 
President, Frances Maloy has redefi ned the 
focus of her presidential theme to emphasize 
the importance of creativity and leadership in 
academic and research libraries. To that end, 
the series of articles focusing on her theme has 
been changed from Libraries Are Education to 
Creativity and Leadership. 

Libraries are social agencies. They exist to serve specific needs in our society. 
Changes in the environment in which libraries 
operate—in the technological infrastructure 
through which we deliver services, in the 
economic substrate that finances operations, in 
the social landscape that defines the communi­
ties that libraries serve—dictate corresponding 
changes in the way libraries structure and 
deliver services. One additional change in our 
environment—our emerging understanding of 
the nature of learning and the way learning 
interacts with other aspects of our environ­
ment—is likely to result in an even more rapid 
change in the coming decade. 

I am convinced that museums and librar­
ies are fundamentally social agencies that 
share the role of providing the resources and 

services that stimulate and support learning 
throughout a lifetime. That simple recognition 
underlies the Congressional action that created 
the Institute of Museum and Library Services 
(IMLS) in its present form less than a decade 
ago. And that is why at IMLS we are dedicated 
to the purpose of creating and sustaining a 
nation of learners. 

We must become a learning society 
We often hear it said today that we are living in 
an information age. But in a world drowning 
in information, we are hungry for knowledge. 
That is why today, in the 21st century, we must 
be more than an information society. We must 
become a learning society. 

Building a learning society requires that we 
do more than develop the hardware, software, 
telecommunications networks, and other ser­
vices and systems that supply and organize 
content. It requires additional structure and 
context to enable learners around the globe 
to put knowledge to good use. 

What we know about learning—where, 
when, and how it happens—is changing. 
Over the past 20 years, there has been an 
explosion of neuroscientific research. We now 
know more than ever about how the human 

About the author 

Robert S. Martin is director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C., e-mail: rmartin@imls.gov 

© 2004 Robert S. Martin 

668 / C&RL News December 2004 

mailto:rmartin@imls.gov


brain learns, from infancy throughout the se­
nior years. We know that, although there are 
intense periods of rapid brain development 
in early childhood, our brains continue to de­
velop and form new connections throughout 
our entire lives. We know that children are 
never too young to learn, and we know that 
lifelong learning extends the quantity and 
quality of life. 

The structures we have in place today 
for providing public education evolved in 
response to specific environmental condi­
tions and social needs. Our current structures 
for learning—the formal education system 
embodying both the K–12 school system and 
the post­secondary education system—are 
relatively late developments in the evolution 
of human society. It has only been within the 
last 100 years or so that the words learning, 
education, and schooling came to be treated 

2 
as synonyms. 

It is only within the last century that we 
have come to believe that the best way—in­
deed, virtually the only way—for people to 
learn is in structured, formalized education 
systems. But, in fact, in our society we learn in 
three different sectors. We learn in the school. 
We learn in the workplace. And we learn in 
the home and community. The last of these 
three sectors is now frequently referred to as 
the free­choice learning sector, underscoring 
that learners in this environment are motivated 
by individual needs and interests. 

These changes are clearly summarized by 
the recently published 2003 OCLC Environ­
mental Scan: Pattern Recognition, which notes 
that we now operate in a knowledge economy 
“. . . in which technology and the knowledge 
on which it is based are central motors of 
economic growth.” This means that “human or 
intellectual capital—the knowledge that comes 
from education, training, on­the­job experi­
ence and workplace­based e­learning—is cen­
tral to sustaining personal and organizational 
advantage.” This has important implications, 
among which is that “the ability to learn and to 
adapt to change is a central life skill. Learning 
is valued as a crucial coping skill in an environ­
ment of change and fl exibility.”

3 

The OCLC Environmental Scan also brings 
to our attention three major social trends: self­
service, moving to self­suffi ciency; satisfaction; 
and seamlessness. Of these, the last is most 
relevant to envisioning a new role for libraries 
in the 21st century. While self­suffi ciency and 
satisfaction are important to learning and to 
structuring library services that support learn­
ing, the importance of seamlessness is crucial, 
and possibly the dominant trend for the future 
of libraries. According to the OCLC report, in 
today’s society: “The traditional separation of 
academic, leisure and work time is fusing into 
a seamless world aided and supported by no­
madic computing and information appliances 
that support multiple activities.” 

The report goes on to stress that this is 
particularly significant among young adults, 
noting that: “. . . the freshman class of 2003 
grew up with computers, multimedia, the In­
ternet and a wired world. . . . Their world is 
a seamless ‘infosphere’ where the boundaries 
between work, play and study are gone. Com­
puters are not technology, and multitasking is 
a way of life. . . . the lines between workplace 
and home are blurred.” 

While the report uses this analysis as a 
foundation to describe the kinds of seamless 
services that libraries need to develop, I think 
it is important to recognize the implications 
that go beyond our institutional boxes, and to 
contemplate developing a seamless infrastruc­
ture for learning across all the social agencies 
and organizations that create, maintain, and 
provide access to resources that support learn­
ing. In short, we need to adopt a bold new 
vision of learning. 

Learning is a community-wide 
responsibility 
The responsibility for learning is not and 
should not be the exclusive preserve of for­
mal educational institutions. It is a commu­
nity­wide responsibility. Lifelong learning 
should be a continuum—with formal and 
nonformal learning opportunities comple­
menting one another. Learning does not start 
at the schoolroom door, and it does not stop 
there either. It is and should be ubiquitous. 

C&RL News December 2004 / 669 



Addressing the needs of the free­choice 
learning sector is now more critical than ever. 
As more people become self­guided learners 
throughout their lifetimes, institutions such as 
libraries, museums, and public broadcasters, 
among others, can help to stimulate and meet 
their demands. 

In fact, we foresee a pending convergence 
of museums, libraries, archives, and other 
agencies of cultural and educational content, 
along with perhaps unexpected partners in the 
environment, such as broadcasters. The impact 
of digital technology, which has fostered the 
rapid development of rich collections acces­
sible via the Internet, has revealed the syner­
gistic way these agencies can collaborate. 

Equally important is the remarkable way 
that users find material relevant to their own 
unique needs and interests and retrieve and 
combine this content in unanticipated ways. 
It is important to note that the users of these 
digital collections do not care, and may well 
not even be aware, that the originals of the 
digital surrogates that they use are in a mu­
seum, a library, an archive, or some other kind 
of institution. They really do not care how you 
defi ne your institution—they just want access 
to the “stuff.” 

This convergence is not restricted to the 
digital environment. Networked digital in­
formation technology has simply lifted the 
veil that has obscured the basic fact that the 
silos into which libraries, museums, archives, 
broadcasters, and other developers and pur­
veyors of learning resources and opportuni­
ties have been relegated are ghettos of our 
own making. There is no natural law that 
distinguishes library from museum, museum 
from archives. 

On the contrary, the natural state of af­
fairs—underscored by our common history—is 
that the similarities among such agencies are far 
more striking than the differences. The distinc­
tions have only arisen in the recent evolution of 
human history, in response to specifi c techno­
logical practices that separated object from text 
and manuscript from printed codex. 

If we can posit that librarians, archivists, 
and museum professionals are not separate 

and distinct professions, but rather different 
facets of a single unified profession, we will 
find that our ability to serve the needs of our 
communities is strengthened. If we re­envision 
ourselves as public servants, charged with the 
responsibility for collecting and organizing the 
materials that document our rich and diverse 
cultural heritage and enhancing access to those 
materials for our citizens, we will find that we 
can reshape our practices, learn from each 
other, and better attend to our users. 

Looking ahead 
As we move forward in this 21st century, we 
need to change our thinking about how to 
develop and structure library services. We 
need to evolve into agencies that focus not 
on collections, but on the needs of the users. 
We need to develop facilities that recognize, 
embrace, and encourage the collaborative 
and social nature of learning. We must create 
learning environments that empower student 
learning, enabling them to turn information 
into knowledge. We must extend these les­
sons from the realm of the university to all 
levels of formal education, from kindergarten 
to the research university. 

Beyond this, however, we must also em­
brace the same principles for libraries of every 
kind, including the public library. We must 
recognize and embrace the social nature of 
continuous learning, free­choice learning that 
lasts a lifetime. Public libraries must be con­
ceived as a learning environment, providing 
spaces that foster and support the individual 
learner, as well as learners in every imaginable 
form of social grouping. 

But we also need to think much more 
broadly, to envision a seamless learning in­
frastructure, one that stimulates and supports 
learning for learners of all ages, in all circum­
stances. If we are truly to empower individuals 
to fulfillment—to enable them to maximize 
their human potential, become contributing 
members of the knowledge economy, and 
to participate effectively in civic affairs—then 
we must build a fabric of social agencies that 
facilitates continuous lifelong learning. Such a 
fabric must integrate all of our current social 

670 / C&RL News December 2004 



agencies that create, manage, and provide ac­
cess to learning resources, including schools, 
libraries, museums, archives, broadcasters, and 
a host of other organizations and agencies. 

In the 21st century environment of rapid 
change, fostering an individual ethic and abil­
ity to learn throughout a lifetime is increasingly 
important, to maximize individual potential 
and social growth and stability. Schools alone 
are not enough. Of course we continue to 
need schools, colleges, and universities—we 
need the very best agencies of formal educa­
tion that we can create. And libraries have 
always played an integral part in supporting 
curriculum and instruction in these agencies 
of formal education. Research demonstrates 
that the better supported and better integrated 
school and academic libraries are in the fabric 
of the institution, the better the parent institu­
tions are able to achieve their goals. 

But we need to go beyond our now­tradi­
tional notions of “education” and embrace a 
bold new vision of learning. We need to think 
beyond our institutional boxes and develop a 
seamless infrastructure for learning across all 

the social agencies and organizations that cre­
ate, maintain, and provide access to resources 
that support learning. 

Libraries—as well as museums, archives, 
and other cultural agencies—are important 
elements in this Web of learning. In fact, given 
our history of collaboration and our tradition 
of service, we can lead the way in demonstrat­
ing the potential and developing the reality. 
Our communities will demand it. If we do not 
provide it, someone else will. 

Notes 
1. This article is an abridged version of a 

longer essay that will appear in the 2004 vol­
ume of Advances in Librarianship. 

2. J. H. Falk, and L. D. Dierking, Lessons 
without Limit: How Free­Choice Learning is 
Transforming Education. (New York: Altamira 
Press, 2002). 

3. C. De Rosa, L. Dempsey, and A. Willson, 
The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern 
Recognition: A Report to the OCLC Membership 
(Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Online Computer Library 
Inc., 2004). 

C&RL News December 2004 / 671