Posted: Sunday, April 13, 2008 12:00 am
Growing up in the dark heart of America, the near-rural fringe of North Little Rock in the 1950s, I lived and breathed for the bookmobile's biweekly trek to our small outpost of suburbia, where no public libraries had taken root.
Mom had to intervene when the bookmobile lady would only let me check out two children's books at a time, and the rule was relaxed when the librarian realized with delight that she had a real reader on her route.
I read everything - the dense, tragic and occasionally comical Russians; the endless mysteries by Christie, Queen, and Stout; the subtle riffs of Wodehouse and Waugh; the World Book Encyclopedia from A to Z and the entire dictionary; the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, Baghavad Gita, Sayings of Confucius, etc.; everything Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain ever wrote; all the horse books; all the Hardy Boys, Bobsey Twins, Boxcar Kids and Nancy Drew books. I read history, mythology, folklore, astronomy, biographies and every Reader's Digest condensed book published for decades.
Heaven only knows what I actually learned or retained, but reading took me from the confusion of daily life into worlds I hadn't known I could imagine. Reading taught me to spell, though not to speak - readers often mispronounce. Reading was my salvation and chief pleasure. I am sure that there are many others like me, saved by the bookmobile or the nearby public library.
There is nothing quite like a public library. It's a sanctuary amidst urban confusion. It's a repository of the world's knowledge. It's a place where there's always an interesting discovery to be made. It's an unimaginably valuable resource for citizens of a democracy. It's a bastion against citizens having to resort to Fox Noise for their information.
It was that steel-and-railroads capitalist, Andrew Carnegie, who gave away much of his fortune to found public libraries in America and England - some 3,000 of them. I'm grateful for his amazing gift, although I don't believe that societies should depend on private charity for something as essential as education.
The American Library Association (ALA) tells us that there are 16,543 public library branches in America today, employing 328,000 people. In addition, there are 3,653 college and university libraries, 99,783 elementary and secondary school libraries, and 10,657 government, special, or armed forces libraries. Public libraries alone reported almost 2 billion visits in 2007.
There's a movement to privatize public libraries in America. Numerous small communities, strapped for cash and bludgeoned by Republican tax rollbacks, are turning over library management to private companies. So far, the management companies do not own the library's assets, nor do they charge user fees, and this is crucial. But let's imagine what might happen if this trend runs its course and public libraries are fully privatized.
User fees start small, but then increase until no one but the well-to-do can afford to use the library.
Actual librarians are too expensive and demanding, so untrained minimum-wage part-timers staff the library.
Historic documents are thrown out by the truckload; too much trouble to scan, too dusty and space-consuming to keep.
Encyclopedia Britannica is replaced by Wikipedia. Hey - it's free, and it's easy. So what if anyone can post anything at all on any topic whatsoever, anonymously?
Books are replaced by online executive summaries to save time and money. We get the plot, but not the poetry.
Video/DVD rental is outsourced to Netflix, which charges additional fees and shares our movie preferences with the FBI.
A beefy security guard is placed at the entrance to each library to keep out the riff-raff, to check for citizenship papers, and to decide who goes through the metal detector or is physically searched.
When I was working in Eastern Europe before the Wall came down, I visited several libraries and found them grimly frightening. There were no open stacks; all material had to be retrieved by official personnel. The librarian could question, delay, or deny your request, and report you for incendiary or unpatriotic reading selections. Privatizing libraries seems to me to be just another way to destroy free and equal access to information.
Libraries are just one of the things that governments do well in free societies. Don't wait for next year's National Library Week to take advantage of what your library has to offer. And I for one won't complain about paying taxes to support libraries. I am honored to support freedom, democracy, and the centrality of education in this way.
Editor's note: National Library Week is April 13-19.