Libraries: Do we really need them?

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Yes.  I certainly think we do need libraries, and now let's think of good reasons for keeping them.

First of all, what are they?  In the abstract, they're collections of books or documents in various forms (paper, microfilm, and today, electronic documents), but they're also buildings or rooms in which these materials are kept, and in which (or parts of which) there are places where a reader can sit and read, and also places where a reader can browse: the so-called stacks.  In today's libraries, there are also people who are adept at finding information: Librarians; and of course, there are other library users, and programs for younger people and special categories of people, such as those looking for work, or school kids researching a paper.

What strikes you right away is that Libraries take us in the direction opposite to that in which most other modern institutions and technology are pushing us, namely to pursue solitary activities, such as browsing the web, watching movies at home on our video monitors, or engaging in pseudo-social activities, such as FaceBook.  Information is certainly available, even on a mobile telephone ("cell phone"), but we don't have the opportunity to browse, to talk to others who are interested in the same information, to use more sophisticated channels to obtain more sophisticated information and analysis than just a query in a search engine.  In a library, you appear to be on your own, but you're really surrounded with people with whom you could interact spontaneously at any time, not least the Librarians, who are arguably the most peculiar people in our society, both eager to engage with you, but also longing to be left alone.

I think I can make a case for the idea that the browsing in a Library is quite different to browsing the Web.  In a browser, you look up something, and you may or may not find something relevant to what you're looking for, but each destination provides other links, which may take you in any number of other directions.  In a library, in contrast, you see things adjacent to whatever you're looking for, all of which might be interesting.  (On your browser, to mimic this, you have to retrace your steps to the original inquiry, and look at adjacent items; possible to do, but not somehow the same.)  In a library, a book that you might never actually look for may catch your eye; it hardly takes a second to pick it up, and look through it, or leave it aside.  You walk through the library, to the shelves in which new acquisitions are displayed, and you could pick up something you might never think of actually chasing down in an online resource.  Could this be the reason why older people, accustomed to using libraries, might have such a variety of reading experiences, in contrast to younger people who seem to know exactly what they're interested in, and nothing else?

Talking about Library buildings, though, we begin to see some of the problems.  They are typically old, beautiful buildings, whose upkeep is expensive.  I'm all in favor of maintaining old, beautiful buildings, but the question of public support for Libraries is certainly confused by the peculiar fact that so many of them need such great investment in maintenance.  Fiscal Conservatives want to eliminate as much routine spending as possible from the budgets of Government at all levels, which means that as soon as support for libraries is seen to be a mix of upkeep of an aging building and support for acquisition of new information technology and materials, their immediate reaction is to reduce or deny funding.  In other words, it is easy to view a Library as a Money Pit.  Obviously, funding sources for maintaining beautiful old buildings are going to be entirely different from funding sources for increasing literacy or for education and cultural extension.  The way things are, Libraries are at the mercy of having to find funding for both sorts of expenses.

It is probably the case that Libraries habitually inflate their budgets, to attempt to ensure that they have sufficient money even if the request is cut down.  On the other hand, those who control the funding expect the grant requests to be inflated, and so cut down the grants even more than they otherwise would.  Matters are aggravated by the need Libraries perceive to increase usage of their facilities, and so Libraries tend to spend even more just in order to establish that there is a need for them.  Library funding, in other words, tends to spiral into a game, in which it is the Libraries themselves that are the losers.

When a funding agency has to choose how to divide grant money between different libraries, there is a tendency to fund big, well-established Libraries with sophisticated services over small local libraries with only basic services.  On the face of it, from the point of view of objective bang for buck, it seems as though supporting large Libraries with big delivery engines is a better choice, in important but intangible ways, the decline of small libraries is a bigger tragedy than that of holding back on the spending of big libraries.  A small library in a rural town is a more important part of the quality of life of that place than an already established library in a big city.  Why, you say, is it important to enhance --or keep from eroding-- the quality of life in small communities?  If you've ever deplored the drift of population into the big cities, you know exactly why.  To remove resources from small communities is to encourage the crowding in big cities; it's a no-brainer.  People are going to move into the cities no matter what; what we need to do is to ensure that we do not help that trend along in senseless ways.

Libraries are, of course vulnerable to the inexorable decline of literacy.  They're one of the first defenses against illiteracy, and particularly badly hurt when general readership declines.  Ironically, if literacy in a given region is in rapid decline, it is both a strong argument for increasing library funding, as well as decreasing library funding.  Since there are fewer readers, they're not going to need the library as much.  But if the library curtails its operations, literacy will decline still further.  The library is one of the most acceptable instruments of social engineering, behind public eduction.  If you want a literate and knowledgeable workforce and electorate (well, perhaps an ignorant electorate is all to the good, as far as some people are concerned), you must support the libraries.

Let's talk about how Libraries keep their book collections up-to-date.  Libraries continually look to replace older, out of date books, older editions, book that do not circulate, with newer books.  This is the job of the Acquisitions Librarian and his or her staff, for which they have an Acquisitions Budget.  Unfortunately, of course, there are a million idiots out there, spewing out valueless books, alongside fascinating new books that deserve to be read.  The job of the Acquisitions Librarian is difficult, but of course there are numerous "authorities" who are only too willing to make the choices --or most of the choices-- on behalf of the Acquisitions Librarian.  It is probably hard to resist ready-made book lists that a library can order from, without going to the trouble of hand-picking the new acquisitions.  If a Librarian is reading this, they would furiously challenge me to select books from the trillion whose publication they are notified of each week.  "It is humanly impossible!" they're probably crying, even now.

This is probably true.  So the agencies that must support libraries (in the absence of government support) are doomed to have to support the acquisition of books and other materials that may or may not have been filtered carefully by the library staff.  No doubt there is a principle that librarians must abide by, that the selection process must be objective, somehow.  I'm curious to know whether there are inappropriate ways in which the lists that libraries are offered are influenced by the publishing-house equivalent of that most vicious category of criminals: Congressional Lobbyists.

In summary, while I am, in principle, very much in support of libraries for the usual cultural reasons --especially for medium-sized libraries in medium-sized town, as one of the repositories of local culture-- I am getting increasingly suspicious of how well this public money is spent by these institutions.  I know that some Libraries make brilliant use of the few dollars they're given.  But is this the rule or the exception?  Must we fund Libraries at any cost?  How can we push libraries towards modernizing their buildings so that they require less, and less expensive, maintenance, and use energy and technology more efficiently?  And above all, how can we evolve a new sort of library that is less of a burden on public funding, but which still provides the same sorts of physical resources that traditional libraries do, of paper books, and physical spaces for meeting, and browsing, and community activities?  There are benefits in multipurpose facilities such as libraries, in contrast to numerous single-purpose facilities.

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