In my formative years, our government waged an unjust war and we compelled our politicians to end it.
Black Americans were denied voting rights and equal access to public institutions, and enough people stood up and got legislation passed to ensure basic civil rights for all Americans.
We faced up to the inequities of employer-based health insurance and created Medicare and Medicaid.
We created public broadcasting, which has enriched my life greatly since childhood.
We put a man on the moon, and I remember watching it live along with millions of people around the world.
We sponsored public service announcements that told us “People start pollution. People can stop it.”
We made abortion legal and safer, to protect countless women who suffered while terminating unwanted pregnancies.
We found the malfeasance of our 37th president so intolerable that we forced him to resign.
These were not easy times.
But they were times when acts of citizenship were stronger and more frequent. This was before the corporatization of America sucked all the oxygen out of the civic environment — when people with shared values found each other and worked to better our laws and our government and our lives.
Public libraries as sites of civic engagement
I give a damn about public libraries because they’re among the few places left that can serve as sites of civic dialogue and action. They’ve been beacons of good government and freedom of access for decades. They represent ideals and aspirations for millions of Americans, even those that have not stepped inside one for years.
We’re now at a pivotal moment, for our country and our libraries. Let us dedicate our time and shared values for both. There is lots to do, even using past achievements as a guide.
- We’ve got two wars that must be ended.
- We’ve been discriminating against people-of-color by singling them out for sub-prime mortgages, toxic waste dumping and food deserts. We must band together to stop this injustice.
- We must confront the dysfunctional health insurance system that will bankrupt this nation and enact Medicare-for-All as a first step toward meaningful reform of our health delivery systems.
- We must stop devastating our environment.
- We need to run scoundrels out of public office. They don’t seem to be taking money in paper bags anymore but they’re taking insider stock tips1, breezing through the corporate revolving door and probably doing a whole lot more to work for their own interests instead of the public interest.
Over the past 30 years, we have come to accept the decline of our communities and livelihoods and become accustomed to government gridlock. It wasn’t always this way. Just think about the amazing things we accomplished from 1964 – 1974. We can do it again.
It’s possible. It’s necessary. It can start at our public libraries.
1Ziobrowski, Alan J. “Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of Members of the United States Senate.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. 2004.
hear, hear!
Yes, but how?
For starters, I think we need leadership for the citizenry and for the library community – to put vision out there that people can gravitate toward.
On the citizen side, we need to get beyond our individual and collective alienation/angst/distraction/complacency and relearn how to more meaningfully engage with each other. I wonder if the economic hardships many of us are facing will be a catalyst here.
For libraries, it seems time to accept that the founding structures (strictly local, collection based) have begun to outlive their usefulness and take a look at how the founding values can inform new organizational structures to last another 50-100 years. I see cultivating context (not collections) as an exciting new role for librarians. It draws upon their existing skills in research, critical thinking and intellectual neutrality and would have enormous impact for a public overwhelmed by information.
WRT the cultivation of civic information, can you see yourself and your library doing the type of work described toward the end of this 2002 call-to-arms by library director Michael Baldwin?
“I see cultivating context (not collections) as an exciting new role for librarians. ”
Interesting that you say that because I’ve had an essay titled something like “Librarians as Context Professionals” on tap for a while now. It needs to be edited but it’ll be going up on my website sometime soon.
Re: “cultivation of civic information” and Mr. Baldwin’s call to action. It’s definitely an uphill battle — for example, at my old library in the middle of Hollywood, we invited the League of Woman Voters to do a program explaining ballot initiatives etc., pushed it in the community, and still got 0 people. Librarians “give people what they want” because there’s a large gap between that and “what people don’t want” — moving folks from one category to the other is mostly a mystery to librarians. As a profession, I don’t think we are aggressive salespeople.
On principle, I agree with you and Mr. Baldwin but since I’m new to this library/community, I must take slow steps. If they keep me here long enough though, I’d love to commandeer our meeting room for a lively political (some would say civic) debate full of shouting and chair-waving. Having our library be a polling place would also be a start, but we’re just a branch of a huge system (3rd biggest in the United States) and with all that I have to do, pushing us to become a polling place isn’t a huge priority (frankly speaking). I’d have to live at the library if I were to do everything I want to do. Might not be a bad idea even if the County wouldn’t like it.
Can’t wait to see “Librarians as Context Professionals” – I’ll keep an eye out of it.
Oleg, how I wish the NPL was a real entity and I was a senior manager within it. One of the first things I’d do is recruit you and the libarians over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe. I see the future when I catch glimpses of your work!
I believe the consensus among those in our field, and those who support us, agree that libraries are being stripped in the process of budget cuts throughout the country. I’m seeing far too may coworkers and students in the field suffer and become discouraged.
Whatever happens to libraries in the future it still needs to be a place open for both sides of an issue. Supporters of one side should not be intimidated as to feel that the other side has dominant use of libraries. There are plenty of those who are pro-life, pro-defense, and have a desire for limited government who need to use libraries as a site for civic dialogue and action just as much as anyone else.
Hi Stele – I so agree about libraries being safe places to respectfully explore ideas, now and in the future.
What do you think about people using public libraries as places to exchange civic-oriented information? What role would you envision librarians playing?
Libraries, and their contents, like most political issues, have more than two sides. A library is a building that holds the record of human knowledge and makes it available to those who enter. If there are sides to be found in the vast record of human knowledge, these are in the eyes and mind of the person seeking knowledge. I hope that those who enter a library will be open to the multiplicity of perspectives offered there by all who have made contributions to our collective human knowledge. Would those in favor of limiting the reach of government also want to curtail funding for public libraries? These public libraries are, after all, supported by public funding – taxes. Would a privately-funded and administered library limit its holdings to those of interest to its owner, and would such a library also charge a user fee?