The Library is a Verb
Since stepping into my new role as dean of the library at Elon University, I have been thinking a great deal about what a library actually is. Not as a building, not as a branded space with a formal name, but as an idea that stretches far beyond any set of walls. Calling something “the library” locates it on a map. It gives it boundaries and a clear identity. That is useful, but it is also limiting.
A library is much more than a noun. It is a verb.
When I watch how students and faculty actually use the library, I do not see a static place. I see movement. I see verbs everywhere. People question, explore, connect, clarify, sift, interpret, imagine, design, compose, and make meaning. They come with uncertainty and leave with insight. They test ideas, seek connections, and follow curiosity into new domains. These actions create the real value of a library, not the bricks, books, hardware, furniture, or the signage. The energy of learning comes from what people do inside the space, not the space itself.
In that sense the library behaves less like a building and more like a living process. It is a way of working that strengthens learning and inquiry. It is a cultural practice that shapes how a community thinks. And because it lives in the actions people take, it is not confined to a specific set of walls or any other physical setting. When someone libraries, they are not going to a location. They are performing a set of intellectual behaviors that help them better understand the world, whether they are in a classroom, a residence hall, a studio, or online. The library travels with them.
This idea becomes clearer when we look back across the long history of libraries. The forms have shifted again and again. Clay tablets, scrolls, reading halls, digital platforms. Tools come and go. Architecture adapts. Technology keeps remaking workflows. Yet through all of this, the library endures because the underlying actions remain. To gather. To preserve. To question. To connect. To interpret. To synthesize. To imagine. These verbs are what carry the library forward. They are the part that does not change.
Seeing the library as a verb also shifts the mindset from passive to active, from a location to movement. A noun can feel fixed, while a verb carries energy. When the work of the library drives the engines of inquiry, fuels the platforms where ideas grow, and sparks the habits of sensemaking, it becomes part of the university’s core identity. Not because of what it contains, but because of what it empowers people to do.
The library is not only where we are.
The library is what we do.
And when we embrace it as a verb, we give it room to breathe and evolve, carrying forward a tradition that remains agile, grounded, and capable of shaping understanding across whatever future unfolds next.
