Australia’s 1976 Horton report anticipated the modern library identity crisis

Evidence

Horton recommended that central government should bear more of the burden, but in return, libraries should become real community hubs, with a range of responsibilities, recreational, informational and advisory. … If this sounds eerily familiar, it is because Horton had identified, back in 1976, exactly the crisis of purpose that we associate with the digital age. — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 910

Categorization

• XREF: Direct echoes the reader’s own themes of libraries as community hubs — connects forward to digital-age debates over library purpose.
• SEED: An essay comparing Horton’s 1976 Australian community-hub model to today’s library-as-third-place movement.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 910