From Techdirt comes a link to this article; it offers several suggestions as to how libraries can remain relevant in this here digital age. The most shocking suggestion? “Hold LAN parties, after hours, in libraries.”

What’s interesting about this suggestion is what it implies about the concept of the “library” as a whole. The first Dictionary.com definition of a library is “a place set apart to contain books, periodicals, and other material for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference, as a room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.”

It’s the notion that “librari-ness” is associated with a physical location that’s always struck me. The design of the building (or section of a building) used for storing books in such a way that they’re easily accessible (as opposed to simply warehousing them) is, I think, unique.

Of course, it’s not just the books that make a library-type building what it is, but all of the other areas that must be included to allow other kinds of activities. Desks or tables for study and writing; large open areas for gatherings; conference room-like areas for smaller, private meetings; and so on.

Naturally, these secondary uses of the library space are an outgrowth of the fact that it also contains lots of books. Some books are not circulated, and cannot leave the library, so patrons need a place to read them and take notes. Books can sometimes be read out loud to a group of people, so there needs to be some performance space. Even public access computers relate to books in the fact that, for the most part, content on the Internet is something that you read.

Given how they’re not even tangentially connected with books, suggesting that libraries should hold LAN parties implies something very important — a division in how we perceive libraries. It suggests that a library’s most important asset is the space that it controls, rather than its large collection of books.

This point of view makes sense. We have so few truly public spaces left in real life. Coffee shops and bookstore, being retail establishments, much prefer that people spend as much money as possible while loitering as little possible. Their tolerance of your presence is predicated on a possible financial transaction, and that tolerance has its limits. Libraries on the other hand belong to the public, and unless you are very socially disruptive, their patience is almost infinite.

This isn’t to say that the we can throw out the books entirely; it’s those books, and the public’s free access to knowledge and information that they represent, that got those library spaces built in the first place. But, in this day and age, a library’s real estate can be just as important as the knowledge it contains; it’s just about the last place that a citizen can’t be forcibly removed from for refusing to spend money.

Are libraries in danger? Well, the collections of books are going out of style, but as public spaces that provide access to knowledge and information, and allow folks to gather for communal activities, they’ll probably be okay.

And that’s the thing we need to remember, however much we love books — cost should never be allowed to stop interested or concerned individuals from having access to information, whatever the medium. However unlikely it seems now, if libraries can make that happen without containing a single book, so be it.