A protesting quote from Jim Duncan, Executive Director at the Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC) that the U.S. Postal Service failed to mention libraries as a potential place to provide 3D printing services got me to thinking: Is the library as a public institution haring off after every new fad because they deep down fear books just don't cut it any more? I am not saying that there aren't ancillary services readers benefit from, such as photocopying and faxing, and the like. Those, I maintain, are related to the use of books and reading materials. Libraries may end up losing their unique standing if our focus gets too diverted by tangential technologies.
Just and dangerous is the sentiment underlying the statement by Shannon O'Grady, also of CLiC, that "Libraries are evolving, and one of the things, in some ways, that happens is they're less about books, they're more about communities." One could say something similar about almost any public institution and get away with it. But is it a bit tautological? Is she in some ways saying "this public thing (a library) is about a thing that is public", that is that belongs to a community?
I wonder if there's sort of a populist anti-intellectualism insidiously making its way into discourse about libraries. If it can be about communities rather than about books, then maybe you can still get benefits from a library if you don't read. Any fool can be a member of a community, but it takes a literate person to read.
This can lead to another insidious tendency -- to brand readers as elitist. "What do you mean I can't use the library if I can't read? How dare you take MY tax money and then say I can't use the service if I can't read, or don't want to?" It doesn't take much for some to use any excuse to reduce funding to public libraries, and one should be chary of giving them any such encouragement.
I think the reason say such things is be be inclusive. They are purposely unchallenging. It inclusive to say "Everyone in the community gets something from a library" instead of "everyone benefits from having libraries." There is a difference, and it is both subtle and easily misstated. If everyone gets something from libraries (one gets DVDs, another gets books, another gets their 3D printing done), that's one way of dealing with the use of libraries. It's another to say "reading, and the abilities and talents they engender in people benefit everyone eventually", because the people to do the reading then go on to contribute to the greater good.
For example, if society benefits from having learned doctors, then it benefits society to support the education of doctors. If having libraries contributes to that effort, then society benefits. Not everyone becomes a doctor, but everyone can go to the doctor if they are sick. So if only doctors (in our hypothetical example) go to the library, and everyone (through taxes) contributes to the sustenance of the library, everyone benefits, even though everyone does not directly use the library.
Of course, this example is meant to show the relationship between funding libraries and the greater good. The particulars of how libraries should be administered are much more complex. This is also not to say that libraries can't serve a broad public with a multitude of services. It is important to be aware, though, that libraries should not be justified with populist pedantry, but with a more nuanced sense of what truly benefits society over all.
Books, and the skill of reading they inculcate, are vital to good citizenship and quality of life. It is a mistake, however innocently intended, to downplay the importance of books in libraries. It is a slippery slope to a bleak future.
