THE CHANGE IN MEANING AND ROLE OF THE LIBRARY

Otike Fredrick wawire

I tend to agree with Augustine Birrell who once said, “Libraries are not made,
they grow” and to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, a library should
be the delivery room for the birth of ideas –a place where history comes to
life. It is the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true
virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get

unrestricted access to information in many formats and from many sources.
In addition to providing materials, they also provide the services of
specialists, Librarians, who are experts at finding and organizing information
and at interpreting information needs.

More recently, libraries are understood as extending beyond the physical

walls of building, by including material accessible by electronic means, and
by providing the assistance of librarians in navigating and analyzing
tremendous amounts of knowledge with a variety of digital tools. The term
Library has itself acquired a secondary meaning: “a collection of useful
material for common use,” and in this sense is in field such as computer
science, mathematics and statistics, electronics and biology.

The stakes are high, from a social, cultural and economic point of view.
Libraries play a fundamental role in our society. They are the collectors and
stewards of our heritage; they are organizers of the knowledge in the books
they collect – adding value by cataloguing, classifying and describing them;
and, as public institutions, they assure equality of access for all citizens.
They take the knowledge of the past and present, and lay it down for the
future.

It is however, not to the museum, or the lecture room, or the drawing-school,

but to the library, that we must go for the completion of our humanity. It is
books and other information materials in the library that bear from age to
age the