Note: Because of Thanksgiving and some intensive work I need to do on the manuscript of the Wit and Wisdom of Barbara Quint, I'm taking next week off. The next issue will be December 1.
THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF LIBRARIES
Yet another library school has stripped from its name any mention of the dreaded L word, "Library." The University of Washington seeks to turn its School of Library and Information Science into the "School of Information."
I cannot understand the contempt for libraries among the people who are supposed to train the catalogers, children's librarians, serials librarians and library directors we will continue to need.
I can understand that since many libraries were years late and millions of dollars short in getting onto the web, we have a lot of ground to make up in public awareness of our abilities as internet gurus. I can also understand the hope that graduates of a school of information might make more money and earn more respect than graduates of a school of library and information science.
But entire generations of babies are being thrown out with the bathwater here. Deans of what used to be called library schools seem to be forgetting that people LIKE libraries. They vote for bond issues -- sometimes over the objections of pennypinching city officials -- for new library buildings and branches, not for T-1 connections and kiosks.
Why? Because libraries meet a wider variety of personal and social needs than any other institution, and they serve everybody .
The children's room is more than just wonderful books and videos and recordings. It is a cozy, safe environment, monitored by adults who genuinely like kids and pay respectful attention to their interests and take their questions seriously. Respect for children is a commodity that's in short supply in this country. Kids know that. Don't think they don't appreciate it and remember it fondly.
Children's rooms have both quiet places for shy dreamers to sit and read and think, and communal places like story hours where children can join in a circle of wonderment, chanting along with the storytellers ("Hundreds of cats. Thousands of Cats. Millions and billions and trillions of cats!"), learning the magic of words and poetry and books. The librarians offer help for parents, too, with resources on child-rearing, children's literature, and even home-schooling.
Librarians offers homework help for young people, too, and provide a safe place for them to gather after school. Unlike many stores, we don't post signs telling them only 2 kids are allowed in at a time, nor do they have to spend money to be allowed in. We offer for free young adult books that help teens understand and deal with the issues that come with their neither-fish-nor-fowl status.
For many citizens, the library is where they come for garden club, book discussions, historic preservation meetings, salutes to local authors, model railroad exhibitions, Santa at the library, and workshops on everything from genealogy to making balloon animals. Any local organization counts on being able to book the library's public rooms.
We know, as these deans apparently do not, that books and magazines still matter to people. Our collections specialize in something for everybody -- mysteries, romances, spy stories, and westerns to amuse us, but also the best literature from the past and present to challenge our minds and hearts. We offer books and information on contemporary issues, and on issues like justice and obligation that have been with us for thousands of years. We help people solve practical day-to-day problems, from grouting tiles to training puppies to cooking a Thanksgiving meal, and help them learn more about their hobbies and passions, from flyfishing to quilting to everything there is to know about Britney Spears.
Librarians were faster than most government agencies in noticing that some members of our community weren't being served. When we saw new ethnic groups moving in, we started collecting foreign language materials for them and books reflecting their history and concerns. We were buying large type books, providing recordings for the blind, and making our buildings accessible to users with infirmities and disabilities even before the ADA made it mandatory. Many libraries also offered delivery service to shut-ins and provided rotating collections for nursing homes and pre-schools. By welcoming and serving all our citizens, libraries help bind the community together.
Let it not be forgotten that we provide information to users passively as well as actively, by providing collections we think will meet their needs, and by giving them space and quiet to study the materials in peace. (One of my readers once told me how much he loved the quiet corner of the library where he was allowed to sit and slowly read his way through the entire run of Flying, learning at his own unhurried pace.) For such readers, insistent offers of information may be officious intrusions.
Information is only a part of what we do well. When did the part become larger than the whole? Where did we get the notion that the only users worth serving are the ones who want information? When did we come to believe that manipulating databases is a worthier activity than friendly, helpful, face to face encounters with the people we serve?
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REVIEW: ENGINES OF OUR INGENUITY
John Lienhard. The Engines of Our Ingenuity: an Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture. Oxford University Press, 2000. 0-19-513583-0. Based on the radio program from the University of Houston, transcripts available on the net at http://www.uh.edu/engines/
One of my favorite places to visit on the net has been Engines of our Ingenuity, in which John Lienhard, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston, has mused on hundreds of intersections between technology and our daily lives. A look at some of the program titles will give you a notion of the breadth of his interests:
- The pendulum clock escapement and the merger of science and technology
- The Medieval character of the wild West
- How some contemporary poets saw the Industrial Revolution
- Frankenstein -- the monster of our obsessiveness
- How we name our machines
Interestingly, he looks at libraries as one of our most important technologies, instruments that enable scientists and tinkerers to share and trade ideas. He has essays on such topics as "Inventing the Library," "Reinventing Journals, Reinventing Knowledge," "Diderot's Encyclopedia," the Cistercians' role in preserving our written heritage, and why old books are crumbling.
In the book, he synthesizes these brief radio programs into lengthier discussions of how the inventive mind works, how technology mirrors the human mind, the relationship between technology and literature, the inventing of America (a country uniquely shaped by its inventors and tinkerers), and more.
Lienhard is one of those rare people who both understands technology and is able to explain it to people who couldn't tell a camshaft from an axle. He doesn't lecture, he tells great stories. Even rarer, he understands the power of our machines and gadgets to change the way we live and think -- "an engineer doesn't have to build the Brooklyn Bridge or invent the radio to change the world." Small inventions, like pins, pencils, post-it notes, and indexes in books to help find specific information quickly, are miracles that affect our lives as profoundly as dams and skyscrapers.
I highly recommend both the book and the program transcripts on Lienhard's web site.
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COOL QUOTE
Books have always been a thing apart from human concourse. They are a quiet room, apart from the marketplace. The Internet is about business, chat, and play -- all the time with both hands on the wheel. It's flawed, exciting, unstable -- and not to be confused with the full record of ourselves that we keep in books.
John Lienhard, at the University of Houston. Engines of our Ingenuity No. 1269: BOOK/INTERNET OVERLAP. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1269.htm
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You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.
