Editorial: The Power of Place

I can already hear some of the reactions to this issue’s cover story: “There’s no way a café can fit into my library.” “I cover 40 classes and three schools, where will I find the time?” “Libraries are for learning. Period. There are plenty of places for kids to fill up on junk.”

OK, so maybe a café isn’t doable—or even desirable—in every school or public library. But a café, in and of itself, really isn’t the point. The fact is that we librarians often get so caught up in what we’re doing (teaching, programming, connecting, and explaining) that we sometimes forget to pay attention to what our users are experiencing. We forget about the “library as place.”

The idea of “library as place” has been interpreted in various ways, but for me it revolves around two simple ideas. The first is the importance of creating an environment that makes visitors feel welcome—and keeps them coming back. The second is creating a library that serves as an alternate space—a third place—that’s different than students’ homes and classrooms. While these ideas are interrelated, the first is often about design and attitude, while the second is about the role a library is willing to play in the lives of children and young adults. Both ideas are more about feelings than thoughts, more about the heart than the head.

In Alfred Kazin’s memoir, A Walker in the City, the writer and literary critic describes visiting the Brooklyn Public Library as a boy, more than 50 years ago. “It was the Children’s Library on Stone Avenue… in the long peaceful reading room there were story book tiles over the fireplace and covered deep wooden benches on each side of it where I read my way year after year from every story of King Alfred the Great to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

For Kazin, the experience of becoming a reader was inseparable from the power of place—the library’s beautiful tile and welcoming benches. For a research project I’m working on, I’ve interviewed older adults who are lifelong library users. Without exception, all of them had positive library experiences as kids, and the physical attributes of the place (“a chair that a five-year-old could fit in!”) were often as important as the staff or the collection. I learned that sometimes the small things, like a couple of easy chairs, can telegraph the message: this place is for you.

Envisioning your library as a third place—which is what these cafés are about—is more ambitious. Since sociologist Ray Oldenburg first came up with the idea of the third place—a gathering point that is essential for community—the concept has been adopted by scores of savvy corporations, including, of course, Starbucks. Many adult services librarians, recognizing a good opportunity, are exploring ways that their public library can assert itself as a third place within their community.

But kids and young adults need a third place, too, a place where they can put aside their worries and schoolwork and enjoy conversation and play, friendships old and new. And how much better if that third place comes with a cup of hot chocolate and an oatmeal cookie?