Library usage on the rise in West Texas despite technological developments

By Madisen King, madiseki@ttu.edu

One might think that changes in technology, social media and the decrease in books read by adults each year would negatively impact libraries, but that does not seem to be the case in West Texas. 

In fact, librarians are busier than ever and excited about the future.

“Honestly, our business has been fantastic,” said Hannah Stewart, Director of Libraries in Lubbock. “We have seen circulation go up, we have seen digital just explode… We have had to put more money toward supplemental things, and part of it is TikTok. With BookTok, people are starting to read again. We are in a very interesting new wave of people coming back into the library fold.”

According to data provided by Stewart and the City of Lubbock, there were over 346,000 visits to the city’s four library branches, during the 2023-24 fiscal year. More than 618,000 items were checked out, and patrons made over 43,000 visits to library computer labs.

According to an article by Pei-Chun Lee, an associate professor of Library, Information, and Archival Studies at National Chengchi University, public libraries in many regions serve as resilience amplifiers and create an organization among communities. 

They are a place where members of communities can come together to help one another and build each other up. They give community members access to computers and technology that they may not have, and these technologies do not cause as much harm to the environment as computers in private hands.

 “People come in needing help with things… we have older patrons, and they don’t know computers as much… there’s always going to be people that need help,” said Ashley Oglesby, branch manager at Groves Branch Public Library.  “There’s always going to be a need for a place where people can come in and meet with other community members, talk with each other, figure out stuff… As long as there’s people that want real books and communication, I think it’s going to be available.”

School libraries, however, have seen a decrease in student visitations, but these libraries still offer services to their students to keep them interested.

“We usually try to advertise our new books,” said Vickie Jurado, librarian at Shallowater High School. “We display them on top [of the shelves] so students see them when they first come in. We also have a contest that we run every year for our top readers, our top performers. They are rewarded with a Barnes & Noble outing, and they have the choice of whatever books they’d like to buy… We thought ‘Let’s reward some of these kids that are still coming to the library and still reading.’”

Despite their general optimism, librarians still express concerns about the future of libraries, their jobs and the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

“I know some schools don’t find the library as a place that’s necessary, but we will always say it’s a necessary place…,” Jurado said. “Librarians wear a lot of hats; we are doing a lot of IT things right now, working in the media center. So, it does worry me some — what would happen to our library… worrying about job security, we’re pretty much covered, but job title as a librarian is a little concerning.”

Stewart and Oglesby worry about rise of technology and AI.

“I don’t think technology is quite there yet. Could we get there someday? Sure, but what librarians do can’t be done by a machine,” Stewart said. “A library is for information seeking and providing… and I think that because of the nature of what we do, I don’t see online being an issue. Even during COVID, we figured out what to do because what our community needs is to be outside of the interwebs.”

“We happen to love technology,” Oglesbt said. “There’s Libby and Hoopla, there's a lot of online platforms that you still have to have library stuff for, like a library card. I have my online stuff and people my age have a pretty good online presence, but you need real books… but I definitely see the shift on the amount of books we keep in house versus having more books available for online platforms… There’s always going to be some physical presence.”

Over 290,000 books were checked out from the four libraries in Lubbock on Libby, and digital databases were accessed over 21,000 times during the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to City of Lubbock data..