I do appreciate the range of thought Alberto Manguel brings to the status of libraries, particularly public libraries. But I have some thoughts of my own about his latest op-ed piece for the New York Times. Because books, with their number, size, and ranges of classification, have so dominated library spaces, it is easy to then think that libraries are about books.
They are not.
Libraries are about helping people find what they need to know, or want to know; their main purpose is not “to guide people to their books.” It is simply one service that libraries provide. They have never been simple “warehouses of books” as many people today would like us to believe.
For centuries, so much knowledge was held in books, and various formats of text, it made sense to collect a reservoir of facts, data, interpretations and speculations in print. Libraries made it possible to collect the best knowledge sources and arrange them so people could find them efficiently, preserve them so they could be found across time, and also, discard them when their information was replaced by new knowledge. So, yes, to paraphrase Manguel, libraries have preserved some of our social memory, maintained accounts of our interpretations of our experience, and perhaps, generated some symbols of someone’s version of our identity.
There are a number of us who struggled to be remembered, to be valued as contributors to a broader social context, to be part of the national story. But libraries have known, at various points in time, who those marginalized members are, and have recognized them, and included them. The history of public libraries, in particular, has evidence of that.
The librarians of the John Toman Branch (Chicago Public Library), for instance, as early as 1927, partnered with immigrant grass-roots community leaders to develop and present a social issues lecture series that lasted through the 1950s. Then, the librarians partnered with the “first settlers” of their community to advance a parallel local history. So, libraries have always been social centers.
During the 1960s, libraries developed and made available “community information files” — a directory of social, cultural, and health resources available within their local communities. That didn’t make them social workers — it made them information professionals.
When the Ferguson Municipal Public Library stayed open to allow an “ad hoc school on the fly” in the face of school closings during the period of social disturbance in that Missouri town, they were not acting as teachers. They were acting as agents of the educational process, something librarians have always done, either through “bed time” story hours for toddlers or holiday craft periods or even, in our contemporary times, computer classes.
There are lots of people out there — from educators to social commentators to philanthropists to federal agencies — telling libraries what they need to become, without ever having looked at what libraries have been, and are now. We have stories to tell. We should tell them. Feel free.
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