The Columbus Metropolitan Library recently asked its Facebook followers to give them ten words: five to describe the library of their youth and five to describe the library of the future, 20 years from now. Here are the word clouds they assembled from the results, starting with the libraries of their youth:

If you’re beyond your teenage years, I bet this retrospective word cloud will make sense to you. Now, how about this one, describing libraries of the future:

Surprised? Unless you’ve spent a fair amount of time in libraries recently, you probably are. But it turns out that the library enthusiasts from Columbus are illustrating a lot of what is happening in their hometown library system and in many other libraries around the country, right now.

I visited libraries recently in downtown Columbus, Ohio, and talked with Patrick Losinski, the CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) system, which includes the flagship main library and 21 branches around Franklin County. His title alone, CEO, should be a hint about how progressive the libraries of Columbus are, and how serious the city is about placing the libraries front and center in its trajectory toward a modern, relevant, connected city.

I walked to the library from the throwback Comfort Inn & Suites where we were staying, at the edge of German Village, one of Columbus’s historic, now trendy neighborhoods. (By the way, at Comfort Inn, be sure to look for Scott, the evening clerk. Ask him any mundane question about where to eat, visit, or wander around, and he will come back with a stunning 20-minute soliloquy including historical, architectural, culinary, economic, and literary information, which he delivers as rapid-fire as an auctioneer. Hurry, he probably won’t be there long.)

At 9:30 on the recent weekday morning when I went to visit, there were just a few people sitting on benches outside the library, with their smartphones and coffee. Losinski said I missed the real morning rush, around 8:55, when a predictable 20 or 25 people, and twice that in the winter, will be lined up and waiting to enter.

Around the turn of the 20th century, when the Columbus library was outgrowing its space, city librarian John Pugh boarded a train for New York City to knock on the door of Andrew Carnegie, whose philanthropy funded 1700 libraries around America. Would Carnegie build a library for Columbus? The conversation didn’t go well, until Pugh started over in his childhood Welsh, to which Carnegie responded in his native Scottish dialect. The cultural, if not linguistic bond (both are Celtic languages, although long-ago diverged) seemed to make a difference.

Eventually Carnegie agreed and offered $200,000, more than was usual in his library program, to build the elegant granite and marble Romanesque building. It is truly beautiful.

Losinski quips that the original construction cost would about cover a thorough cleaning of the library these days. The library has now begun an ambitious building expansion, part of a 120 million dollar expansion throughout the entire system. It will feature, among other things, replacing the solid back wall of the building with two stories of windows, where readers will overlook the existing Topiary Park, a seven-acre tree park and garden, which is groomed to represent Seurat’s famous post-impressionist painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grand Jatte. Completion is scheduled in time to host the 2016 World Congress of the International Federations of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), which will be held in Columbus. The city won rights to host the Congress in an Olympic-venue type competition.

The library system already puts up impressive numbers–as of 2013, nearly 800,000 cardholders, 6.5 million in-person visits, 6.9 million web visits, 15 million books circulated, and almost 800,000 eBook downloads.  

But the library community knows that it is on a more complicated mission than simply putting up traditional numbers. When the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked people in 2012 what libraries should offer the public, the overwhelming response focused on education and reading. Some 85 percent said that libraries should work more closely with local schools. And 82 percent said they should offer free literacy programs for young children. Indeed, the Columbus library system was already headed in this direction as a major strategic focus, spurred by a sense of urgency from findings from the past 7 or so years from the Ohio Department of Education.

In the city of Columbus, the study found, about 35 percent of preschoolers were “Not Ready for Kindergarten.” What does this mean? Well, for example, when a 5-year-old walks into kindergarten, takes a book and holds it upside down, you know there is no reading readiness there. Only about 60 percent of exiting 3rd graders had reached the “Third Grade Reading Achievement”, suggesting that those same 35 to 40 percent of the kids didn’t make much progress in their last four years. Dreadful.

The library system’s answer to this problem is a set of labor-intensive hands-on programs. For a million dollars, the Ready for Kindergarten program settles into the neediest neighborhoods. They scout for families in laundromats, shops, clinics, shelters, churches, anywhere they can find them. Teams of library staff visit homes of these families regularly, kits with board books and bath-sponge letters in hand, and invitations to the library and story hours, all pointing toward helping families get started toward kindergarten a few years away.