Repurposing university libraries
Malay Mail - 15 Dec 2025 By Alwyn Lau
DECEMBER 15 — Of all
the departments in an educational institution, the library has to be the most
paradoxical one. It's because that’s the place where people go to read
books and do research, right? But the key thing any visitor to a library inside
a Malaysian university will realise within five minutes of entering it is that
people hardly “read books” in these places anymore.
Today a library is
more like a multi-purpose commons.
A library nowadays is
where students go to "chill", to spend three hours checking their
WhatsApp or post photos on Instagram or, okay, even do some work on their
devices.
Does this make the
library look like your average Starbucks outlet?
Absolutely. If the campus has a paucity of space for students to hang out
before or after class, the library is where most of them will be if only to
kill time.
So, yeah, nowadays
it’s also hard to tell the difference between a campus library and a capsule-hotel
lounge. Furthermore, assuming the furniture is comfy
enough, it’s also where students (and lecturers) go to catch some shut eye;
sometimes this reminds me of an airport departure
gate for a red-eye flight.
For many college
campuses, the library is also usually attached to the computer labs. So it’s
also a chance for students who didn’t bring their laptops to do some online
work.
Put another way, a
college library today can be essentially an Internet cafe which
also happens to have bookshelves. Another purpose of a college library today is
providing event space. I’ve seen
interviews, talks, mini-shows, forums and even one or two (quiet?) musical
performances held at the centre of a library.
In many universities,
students reserve consultation rooms so half a dozen or so people can
brain-storm ideas for an upcoming assignment or society event. So,
hotels, watch out. The college next to you may offer business
centre/meeting room space to rival yours.
The point is a
library today is no longer the place where people “go to borrow and read
books”. Yet, for all the new (re)-purposes above, a library in 2025 remains the
place where "reading materials" are centralised.
However — and here’s
the rub — what if these "reading materials" are being accessed less
and less frequently? What if reading simply isn’t “done” as much as it used to
be? Wouldn’t this eat at the very heart of that entity we know as a library?
A superficial
"solution" here would be for libraries to be repurposed as media
centres (which is sort of what they’ve also been all
this time).
However, what if 90
per cent of the media students want can be accessed online via their devices?
What then? It’s like a cinema if almost everybody prefers to watch movies from
their homes: the very role of this entity (let alone the physical space!) would
be up in the air.
What would be the #1
purpose of any library other than a) a custodian of e-databases (which will
require way smaller physical spaces) and b) a physical repository of materials
which somehow cannot be downloaded or viewed online, surely a set of items
which are decreasing in number every week?
I mean, what can a
library or librarians do better than everybody else? Maybe that’s an urgent
meeting that should be held... in the library, of course.
Source: https://www.malaymail.com/news/opinion/2025/12/15/repurposing-university-libraries
