In Defense of Libraries

 

I don't post much these days, but this week is National Library Week, and in view of current events, I felt the need to say something in defense of our public libraries.

First, a little history. I suppose libraries, in one form or another, have been around since people first began to write things down, but here in America we owe most of our public libraries to one man: Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant, amassed a fortune in the steel industry in the late 19th century. A philanthropist who believed in giving away most of his money to good causes, he used much of it to establish public libraries.

I have always been an avid reader, so I have always had a close relationship with libraries. When I walk into one, it's like walking into a time machine. The hushed atmosphere and the smell of old books takes me back in time...

…to 1958. I'm three years old. My parents have just moved from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to the nearby town of Warsaw. I'm walking with my mother from the apartment house where we are temporarily living to the old Carnegie library in the next block. The building is not large, but to me it seems a vast palace of high ceilings, tall windows, and shelf after shelf of books. My mother tells me I can pick out a children's book to borrow. I choose The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, by Dr. Seuss.

…to 1968. We now live in Goshen, Indiana, and they've just opened the new library right across the street from our house. I just have to walk a couple of dozen steps from our door to be in this beautiful new steel and glass palace of—not just books, but record albums and movies. There is even a row of state of the art turntables with headphones, where I can listen to record albums in glorious stereophonic sound. (I still sometimes dream of that place!)

…to the late seventies. I'm with my father at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's the biggest, most glorious library I've ever seen, and it still doesn't have enough space to display all of the books. Many of them are in storage: you go to the card catalog, look up the Dewey Decimal Number, write it on a small sheet of paper, and give it to the librarian, who has the book sent up from the basement. But this time we're here to visit the library's genealogy department, where Dad is pursuing his hobby of researching our family tree. Genealogy doesn't particularly interest me, so I wander off and discover a rack of EC comic book reprints. I'm in heaven.

…to the early 90's. Loretta and I have been married for just a few years. We've just purchased our first home in North Tonawanda, NY, and we can barely afford the mortgage payments. We have no money for books, but luckily we live just a couple of miles from the public library. When the weather is nice, we ride our bicycles there. I've checked out Stephen King's latest, The Dark Half, and I can't wait to read it.

…to November of 2002. Loretta and I are visiting her Aunt Jean Carol, who volunteers at the Riverside Public Library. Knowing I'm a fan, she's invited us to attend "An Afternoon with Ray Bradbury." Bradbury, a passionate supporter of public libraries, has done scores of such events, donating all proceeds to the library, which he deems "the center of our lives." When he signs my copy of The Martian Chronicles, I want to tell him how much his books and his support of libraries mean to me, but all I can get out is, "Thank you."

…to a few months ago. Our power has been shut off for two days, a precaution the electric company has taken to prevent fires due to the fiercest Santa Ana winds we've seen in our thirty years in California. Following a neighbor's suggestion, we go to the Moorpark Public Library to charge our phones. A friendly librarian directs us to a table in the fiction section, with comfortable chairs and multiple outlets. We sit down, plug in our phones, and relax. The light, the warmth, the quiet, the smell of the books, are all comforting. It feels more like home than our home, which is presently a cold, dark, cheerless place. After reading for a while, I get up and explore. There are books, audio books, music CDs, DVDs. There are a few other people. Perhaps some, like us, are without power, and are looking for light and warmth. Perhaps some are without homes. At the end of a shelf, I see a poster with a list of "Tough Topics"—abuse, pregnancy, drugs, etc.—and their respective Dewey Decimal Numbers. At the bottom is the message, "Librarians are here to help, not judge."

Libraries are funded by tax dollars, which means that some people think that, as taxpayers, they should be allowed to determine which books go into the library and which people can take them out. Other people resent any of their tax dollars going to fund any library at all.

This is absurd. We need libraries for so many reasons. Of course they're places where people who can't afford to buy books can borrow them. But they're also places where people who don't have access to the internet can go for information, where people can find light and warmth, where people can charge their phones, where people can go for help and not be judged.

To quote Ray Bradbury, “Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”