Project strategies in the contemporary public library. Dissecting prototypes of the digital age.

The library as a repository of books, librarians as its guardians and calm readers, is an image that has been blurring in our society, due to a series of events that began at the end of the 20th century with the progressive technological advances that led to the adoption and democratization of other media, such as audio, video and finally the establishment of the Internet, which had to coexist in the same physical space with books that had a long reign as the main source of access to knowledge.
The growing demand of users, the massive production of material and the new forms of research established in the mid-seventies, end up consolidating the open reference library as the dominant model, which by definition is the elimination of specialized spaces for the deposit of books and consultation room, thus generating a single space for coexistence between books and users; but this change was accompanied by other modifications, “the segregation between areas of administration and reading is also weakened, as constant information and bibliographic orientation is essential in the new libraries”, this is how the library begins a process of transformation as a program, due to constant adoptions of media and needs.

On the other hand, on July 4, 1971, American philanthropist Michael Hart, who at that time was a student at the University of Illinois, created Project Gutenberg, which today is known as the first digital library in history. The invention and contribution of the project consisted of the creation of E-Books or electronic books, beginning with the digitization of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, the Bible, among other texts that were free access and important for all humanity. . Hart’s thinking is summarized in the following text he wrote: “We consider electronic text as a new means of communication, with no real relationship to paper. The only similarity is that we distribute the same works, but once people have gotten used to it, I don’t see how paper could still compete with electronic text, especially in schools.” Twenty years after the beginning of the Gutenberg project, in the In 1991, the dream of interconnection and remote access to information for the entire world would finally materialize with the popularization of the Internet and the creation of Web protocols.

As a result of the above and in the face of an imminent paradigm shift, on May 1, 1995, the Federation of Digital Libraries was created in the United States, where as the first action they established a definition of what a library should be in terms of mission and vision. digital, “Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including specialized personnel, to select, structure, offer intellectual access, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works, such as “so that they are timely and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities”, but beyond functioning as an independent body, digital libraries were established for the most part as analogous versions of each physical library in The cyberspace. The adoption of different media and new technologies by libraries led to the creation of various terms that attempted to describe this fusion between library, computer and telecommunications, going so far as to describe it as a hybrid library, automated library, electronic, virtual, paperless, without walls, online, media library, cyber library, etc., many of these terms quickly fell into disuse due to the accelerated advancement of technology and the normalization of the use of digital tools in everyday life.

The consolidation of the Internet as a global means of accessing information, together with technological improvements in computer screens, as well as the creation of new devices such as mobile phones and tablets, has significantly expanded access to electronic books and scientific documents. high quality; Some of these materials have existed in digital format since their origin, which has facilitated their wide and economical dissemination. In this context, the library began to be seen as a building that could be considered expendable, and the book, which was previously its emblem, began to be perceived as an anachronistic object.
But in contrast to the above, during the first decades of the 21st century, libraries have proliferated, reaching a total of 2.8 million libraries around the world, including 409,972 public libraries, covering a number of annual visits of 5,669 million. users to 2022, this phenomenon of continued growth was called “the construction boom “which was born at the end of the eighties and lasted until practically the present day”, the term arises from the translation of the header of the publication entitled “the boom goes on” from 1999 where it is described how North American libraries “are doubling or quadrupling their size while adding computer stations, bathrooms, elevators and fireplaces, or simply opening new rooms” a phenomenon that spread worldwide due to the resignification of libraries in the information age, and their adaptation to a new role within society. This is how interest in public libraries is currently active on all continents, from representatives of large national libraries such as the National Library of Qatar of OMA, to constituent parts of cultural centers such as the Binhai Library in China of MVRDV or the Deichman Library in Oslo by Atelier Oslo + Lund Hagem, to triggers for large urban renovations such as the Library Parks in Bogotá and Medellín.

This massive and continuous interest is mainly due to the reformulation of the public library as an institution, which is constantly adapting to new technologies, in addition to offering more diversified services attending to the needs of more heterogeneous users, thus consolidating itself as a center collaborative and learning. Then the question arises, What type of project strategies are being applied in contemporary public libraries?