“Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services (and a collection is only one of many). Great libraries build communities.” - R. David Lankes, Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries for Today’s Complex World

R. David Lankes, Virginia and Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas at Austin, will appear for a public lecture at the Jesup Memorial Library on Tuesday, August 12th at 5:30pm. 

Lankes will talk about how innovative libraries around the globe are being shaped to meet the challenges and opportunities of their communities. How does a “barefoot library” in South Korea connect to a library built into the industrial shell of a train factory in the Netherlands to one of the most innovative libraries in the US serving a population of 2,000 in Texas? How can these experiences inform the libraries of Maine moving into an uncertain future? Lankes will share what ties together great libraries around the globe and how these lessons can serve Bar Harbor and coastal Maine.

Lankes is a passionate advocate for libraries and their essential role in today's society earning him the American Library Association's Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award for distinguished contribution to reference librarianship in 2021 and the Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship in 2016. He also seeks to understand how information approaches and technologies can be used to transform industries. In this capacity he has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation including at the National Academies. He has been a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada, The Harvard School of Education, the French national library school Enssib, and was the first fellow of ALA's Office for Information Technology Policy. His book,The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. Read more at https://davidlankes.org/