Library cafes : next logical step

Abstract

Library managers seeking national attention for their libraries might consider opening a library cafe. Innumerable library-related publications, as well as USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, and The San Francisco Chronicle have given ample coverage to the convergence of food and libraries in recent months. Who would have imagined such a simple innovation would have proven to be so newsworthy? It is the actual idea of food in libraries or, rather, the iconoclastic notion of old barriers and traditions being rebuffed that has grabbed the media's attention? For decades food has been categorically denied in the library environment. Eating in libraries was considered verboten -- as out of place as eating in church or in the classroom. But now, in the more relaxed, unencumbered age in which we live traditional library customs and practices once held sacrosanct are being re-evaluated in relation to the bottom line. And the bottom line, at least as far as public libraries are concerned, is getting more people to use the library.