As a professor, libraries are sacred spaces to me. Their varied architecture, histories, connections to their respective locales, and the fact that they chronicle the progress of humankind on their shelves has long been an inspiration. Whenever I travel, I love visiting as many libraries as I can, whether they are grand like Oxford’s Bodleian or very small like the Stanley Community Library in Idaho. Thus, I have taken no joy in recent months writing that American libraries are not functioning as central pieces of social infrastructure. When The New York Times recently published a piece noting that libraries need to be thought of as “third places” to thrive, I was thrilled because this is exactly the type of thinking that must become widespread if libraries are to become truly palaces of the people that anchor their communities.

Today,
libraries have been in steep decline and are not third places—social spaces separate from the two usual
social environments of the home and the workplace—for most Americans; the average American rarely sets foot into
one. The Institute for Museum and Library Services has found that over the past decade, there has been a
non-trivial decline in visits per capita to libraries nationwide: In 2009, Americans visited a library 5.4 times per year, a
decade later in 2019, attendance dropped to 3.9 visits per year—a
28 percent decline. Tim Coates has found a similar trend with
a 31 percent decline in public library building use between 2000 and 2018. This
decline has little to do with funding, as revenue has actually increased in
most places, and most years, since 2012.

Moreover, survey data from the Survey Center on American Life have shown that only 7 percent of Americans visit libraries weekly, while 22 percent report visiting libraries at least once or twice a month; hardly a large number. Almost six in 10 Americans report they seldom or never visit their local public library, with 32 percent—the plurality in the sample—saying they never do, bringing into question the purported centrality of these public spaces. And this lack of interest in libraries is a widespread phenomenon. Whether one lives in a small city suburb, big city, or rural area, and whether one is a Gen Xer, Millennial, or Boomer, people are not visiting libraries at variable rates. Income, distance, racial or ethnic, and even familial structure differences are not statistically important either—Americans uniformly do not visit libraries.

One solution to this problem is to re-invent libraries and help create spaces where communities want to actually gather well beyond checking out books or consuming digital material. Boston’s main library in Copley Square had made this transformation a bit earlier and it witnessed a significant rise in use and visitation. As such, I was thrilled to see the Times finally present such an idea rather than run another story claiming that the nation is witnessing a “golden age” of libraries with cherry-picked examples extrapolated into larger arguments claiming that libraries are truly “at the heart of their communities” and thriving.

Richard Reyes-Gavilan, executive director of Washington DC’s libraries, is cited in the Times discussing major renovation in the central branch, stating that “Libraries have been trying to figure out ways to make their buildings less transactional. We want people to come and stay for long periods of time to see the library as their co-working space or their third place.” This is exactly right, and the DC central library has done just that by transforming a landmark 1972 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building which lacked the spaces for community into a space that now has recording studios, rooftop gardens, a kids’ slide, fabrication studios, and numerous spaces for gatherings, meetings, learning nooks, amphitheaters, and varied, comfortable seating which all help create usable and desired communal spaces.

The Times also highlighted the new central lending library in New York, where the author was astonished by the rooftop terrace stating that “It is a public rooftop in the middle of Manhattan where you can sit quietly and read, or drink coffee (there’s a branch of Amy’s Bread), for as long as you’d like.” Creating a public café and welcoming place to socialize and read are exactly the ingredients that make up a healthy third place.

Of course, the Times article looked at new developments in large metropolitan areas with budgets and donors who can help libraries transform. Many other communities simply do not have such resources so readily available. The fact remains, however, that there is compelling evidence that such transformations do work and can help create community. Libraries will undeniably need significant support to transform into genuine third places down the road, but at least the nation’s “paper of record” is being more honest that libraries need to transform themselves and rethink how communities can make them open, vibrant, and regularly used public spaces.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

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