I have always believed that when reporters screw up, they have a moral obligation to apologize and correct their mistakes just as publicly and loudly as they made them. Last week I published NeatNew and ExLibris earlier than usual so I could post disaster-related web sites when they would do most good. This meant that something I said ceased to be true almost as soon as I said it: the parenthetical remark that I was disappointed the New York Public Library hadn't created a web page to inform people about where they could go for help.
As soon as I learned that NYPL had indeed posted a disaster information page (http://www.nypl.org/branch/services/emerginfo.html ), I revised the column and wrote what I had hoped to write in the first place: that librarians of the New York Public Library were among the heroic government workers who kept on doing their job and brought aid and comfort to a distraught public.
It was because I have so much respect for the work librarians at NYPL have done through their web pages that I was disappointed when I didn't find a link from their home page to disaster resources (a link that appeared soon after I sent out the column).
NYPL's web pages (http://nypl.org/) have made many of its unique resources available to the entire world in digitized form -- historical photographs, the works of 19th century African-American women writers, historic theatrical papers, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, online exhibitions such as Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community. NYPL's web page gives access to their magnificent Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Their pages for children and teens are remarkable. I'm pleased to note that librarians have updated both of these pages with resources to help young people cope with the tragedy. Word Smiths, their online journal of poetry by teens, is now inviting young people to contribute their poetry and other writings about the disaster.
Carrie Bickner, who many of you may know from her "Rogue Librarian" weblog (http://www.roguelibrarian.com/) is web coordinator of the New York Public Library. She wrote to tell me -- correctly -- that my tossed off remark was thoughtless, and that I had no idea what things were like at NYPL in those first few days.
In fact, with the image of that beautiful midtown central library in my mind, I simply assumed it, and its staff, survived the blast, totally forgetting that --DUH -- of course there were branches in lower Manhattan. It wasn't until late Wednesday that they confirmed that all library staff were safe. Shutdowns of roads, bridges, and subways made it challenging for many staff members to get to work, and disruptions in telecommunications and internet connections made it difficult for some to even check in and report that they'd survived.
And despite all this, 72 of the 85 neighborhood branch libraries opened for business on Wednesday, where they were jammed with calls and in-person requests for information about the disaster. Librarians continued to provide that information despite occasional bomb threats that forced them to evacuate their buildings. With schools shut down on Wednesday, children's rooms at all the libraries were packed; I have no doubt that NYPL's children's librarians provided a much-needed and comforting adult presence.
I offer my sincere apologies to the librarians at NYPL. I am so glad that they all made it through. They not only provided all the aid and information I had expected them to, but they did it under the most difficult conditions imaginable. Let us hope that, if we are ever faced with such a test, we could perform as well.
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COOL QUOTE
The not so deadly silence
of a literary sanctuary
The last place on earth
for a little sanity
The last place on earth
Where my world is calm . . .
Excerpted from Leah Golubchick's poem "Library," which appeared in NYPL's teen poetry magazine, Word Smiths (http://www2.nypl.org/home/branch/teen/WordSmiths-Current.cfm :
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Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
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Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2001.
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