Libraries: We need them now more than ever
By Marjorie Kehe | 11.29.08
The timing couldn’t be more terrible. Even as Philadelphia announces a plan to shutter 11 of its city libraries, there is more and more anecdotal evidence to indicate that libraries really matter.
Just today TMC News has a piece about the important role libraries play in keeping a growing senior population in the NY area connected and enriched.
And then there is a piece in the Norwalk Hour about Fairfield County, Conn., libraries and the way that they are scrambling to keep up with increased demand. It seems the economic downtown has made their services more valuable than ever.
(You have to smile at any story that begins by describing a library facing a horde of kids who have shown up for a free concert by the Norwalk Symphony. There’s a movie theater showing movies for kids right next door, yet librarians are hustling to put out enough chairs to accommodate the extra 50 or 60 young listeners who have shown up for the concert.)
There has also been press lately about the important role that rural libraries play in keeping their constituents connected and informed.
There may have been a time when we wondered if libraries still mattered but that question appears to have been answered. Librarians have been creative and smart about learning new ways to meet public needs.
And that may prove particularly true in the midst of an economic downturn.
Let’s hope public officials keep that in mind should they be tempted to eye libraries as a way to trim budgets.
Comments
2. Lindsay Price | 12.01.08
I had a library at the foot of my street growing up. We went as a family all the time - it was an outing to go to the library and pick up a stack of books. I perfected the art of reading and walking and balancing on those trips.
That library was a place of comfort. A place where I learned the joys of reading. The joy of holding a book. I love the silence of libraries, the silent hum in the air of people taking in words. I love that the library knows no age group: every library I’ve ever been in has been filled with young and old.
When I lived in Toronto, I spent an afternoon every week at the reference library. It was a place to get work done (again that silent hum of work, everyone bent over their desks, or typing quietly on their laptops). It was a place of great resource (I researched a play reading newspaper articles across the country from the 50’s and 60’s there).
The internet is of course, another great resource. But there’s no feeling like skimming your hand across a shelf of books. Pulling out one slowly. Feeling it’s weight. Flipping the pages and getting the smell of ink and paper. Tracing a finger across a line of type.
Even now that I live in a much smaller town, one of the first thing I did was go and get a library card. The selection maybe smaller and the resource not as vast. But the feeling is the same.
We must not lose our libraries. We must fight for them.
3. Hugh Giblin | 12.01.08
Libraries are arguably the most important institution in society. The positive effect they have on us is impossible to quantify. Yet public officials fail even in good times to give them the priority they deserve.
It is exactly in these hard times that libraries are more critical than
ever. I agree we should fight for them in good times and bad.
4. RfP | 12.02.08
Andrew Carnegie made a very canny argument for libraries in January 1903:
“The free library, maintained by all the people for all the people, knows neither rank nor birth within its walls. …
“Free libraries maintained by the people are cradles of democracy and their spread can never fail to extend and strengthen the democratic idea, the equality of the citizen, the royalty of man. They are emphatically fruits of the true American ideal.”
Of course, at the time there was no evidence that public libraries would provide a measurable return on investment. The rhetoric, backed up by cash, carried the day.
5. Jen | 12.10.08
As someone who works in a library, I can tell you that in the last year our circulation has gone up about 20%. As the economy continues to tank, people come to the library for those luxuries they can no longer afford such as DVDs, internet access, big screen movie nights, and -of course- books.
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1. Jaime Austria | 12.01.08
Thanks for this item; libraries must be kept open and more built.
Kindly take a look at something that might help: a SECRETARY OF THE ARTS petition; I hope you’ll sign and that you’ll invite as many as possible to sign too. Let’s catch up with so many other countries that do have ministries or departments of arts/culture:
http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html
Sincerely,
Jaime Austria