The Changing Culture of Libraries

Citation

Duckett, B. (2002), "The Changing Culture of Libraries", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 5, pp. 274-276. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.5.274.9

“America, why are your libraries full of tears?” This quote by Allen Ginsberg at the start of this book of essays is one to make the librarian‐reader sit up and take notice! Another quote that startled me was by rookie librarian, Jocelyn, a tongue‐in‐cheek quote: “You’re a librarian, that must be exciting!”

Once again I give heartfelt thanks to those enterprising folk of McFarland Inc. When all about is seriousness and stress, how we do need inspiring, even those of us whose job it is to inspire others! McFarland is good at that. This book, like many of its others, is easily read from cover to cover, and to scrawl in! Editor Feinberg, retired librarian and professor, in her opening essay, says that scribbling in books is one of the pleasures that the new computer generations has lost (well, not as baldly as that, but we get the message). Not that Feinberg’s essay is unalloyed nostalgia for a lost golden age; rather it is a mixture of sadness and anger. Sadness that something good is being lost as the reading culture is dumbed‐down to a generation of channel switchers and mouse clickers; anger that she and her ilk did not do more to prevent it. Such anger and angst give the book an edge – nostalgia with bite!

Particularly interesting were the views of the several contributors at the other end of the career spectrum – at the start of their professional life. A strength of the book is the personal element which makes the contributors such real and memorable people. Thus there is Tony and his diatribe against Library School (“The general atmosphere was like boot camp”); the sad story of David, who despite losing his sight, was determined to qualify as a librarian, but having done so, has not yet got a job; Jocelyn (“I love information. I love that I can answer questions”) who was told she couldn’t be a librarian because she was too small to reach the top shelf, but she wasn’t too small to reach a keyboard, as her views on the future of the Internet reveal; and activist Bruce, who takes to task the patronising attitudes and ignorance of some of our Libraryland “betters”.

But inspiration comes from the retirees as well. There is Lina: “good librarians are the best advertisement there is for the profession”; Ruth, a community newspaper editor, who “didn’t like seeing libraries undervalued” and did something about it. “The same love of books, reading and libraries that pushed us into forming the library is a force that inspires people of all ages and background.” This theme, of generating and maintaining library services against the odds, is graphically described by Gracelyn (no, not Jocelyn!), who was “a disappointment to my father” by becoming a librarian. Every time she beat the odds to establish an archive, an oral history resource, information service, a community library, they were defeated by floods, hurricanes or volcanoes. This was Monteserrat. But she got them back up. Then the indomitable Gracelyn was, herself, knocked down – made redundant – but she got back up as well! The poor communities of black South Africa did not have it easy either, and the growth of local resource centres became a successful alternative to the establishment library services. Faye, in this more consciously political piece, suggests some of the lessons to be learnt from such locally based energy – another case of committed people with vision battling against the odds.

A very different theme, this time from the First and Second Worlds, is the importance of the library as place. Carey, Professor of Humor (!), describes some of the libraries he cherishes, and some of those he does not. He stresses the importance of ambience and the inspiration it can give. This theme is followed up by globe‐trotting lecturer, Michael, whose essay is redolent with memorable phrases such as: “The library was a focus – it empowered us”; “The library is the heart beat of local life”; and, of his time overseas, “In all of these new cultures the libraries were the universal constants … see them as the first buds of globalization.”

A contribution I particularly warmed to was Geraldine’s. Hers was an open attempt to delve deep into her psyche in an attempt to understand what it was that books and libraries meant to her. With the help of such thinkers as Jacques Lacan, Terry Eagleton, Richard Rodriguez (must get his Hunger of Memory),Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Harold Bloom – Geraldine is a Professor of English! – the attempt is rewarding. Memorable is the ambivalence she feels: despite reading and scholarship being solitary activities requiring library silence, there is a strong camaraderie among the silent crowd. “I had joined a lonely community … united by a common respect for the written word.” Her reflection on the William Blake‐inspired statue of Newton at the British Library provides a nice finale to her essay. Don, an ex politics lecturer and jazz musician, describes more discursively how he used libraries and what he found. More a denizen of functional reading rooms and study carrels than a fan of architectural masterpieces, he recalls how he reacted to libraries and the types of use he made of them. Using libraries was “a sort of intellectual wanderlust, a strong longing to travel in the geographies of an author’s mind that were far from mine.”

Janet, librarian‐turned‐teacher, has never lost her radicalism and commitment to alternative library provision. Although “I had shed my overalls for a suit”, this Dean of Libraries and child of the 1960s protest culture is as committed as ever to the view that libraries change lives: “everything we did in our worklives could make a difference”. Echoing the editor, too many “librarians have become sycophants applauding the ‘information age’ … I try to resist and help others to resist the commodity‐driven vision of ‘information’.” Sterner stuff comes from another social activist and former Peace Corps worker turned Dean of Libraries, Carla. Considering our role in the new digital environment, and reminding us that libraries traditionally perpetuate the dominant culture, we are exhorted to use the new technology in creative ways, to empower the marginalized communities. I found Carla’s uncompromising activism uncomfortable and her attitude to the “dominant culture” unforgiving, but her views on librarians as knowledge managers are the first I have seen that develop the role beyond the usual platitudes. At a tangent is government documents librarian Barbara’s inward look at our own profession. She contrasts the commendable way in which we deal with our patrons, encouraging all‐comers to sample our wares, with how poorly we recruit members from non‐white backgrounds. How many black reference librarians do you know?

The penultimate essay is rather sweet. “I’m a very small fish in a very small pond” says shy, non‐activist, one of the “little people”, Marie. “I’m not entirely sure why I’m here.” But “even little fish flapping make a difference!” Just by being there, listening, supporting, talking, and doing our job, we make a difference. You do not have to be “a heroic librarian facing the world’s ills with an activist’s courage and strength …”. The final word is given to young reference internee, Nancy. In a strikingly lyrical piece, Nancy views the library as greater than the sum of its parts, though each element is an essential part of that whole. Even the Red Books, the Library of Congress subject headings, criticised by two earlier writers as tools of the dominant culture, are lauded as essential building books of the total structure of our experience. The preservation of this whole is the very justification of having libraries. I am still struggling with “The syndetic structure of the library, this matrix of language and ideas” which “generates a kind of poetry of the library”, and also its “epiphanic quality”, but I’m getting there, and the journey is rewarding.

If the book has a fault it is that it is a Tower of Babel with a confusing variety of visions. There is a notable dissonance, for example, between the cultural heritage brigade luxuriating in the womb‐like comfort of the bookstacks in London, Harvard or Heidelberg, and the community activist missionary waging the just war against the establishment from the ghettoes and backwaters of the world. The work needed someone to bring together the rich and heady mix of insights and visions. Perhaps Gracelyn, who “did” archives and oral history as well as puppet displays and reading groups in Montserrat, comes closest. Overwhelmingly, though, this book is an excellent tonic for the battle‐weary troops of Libraryland, foot‐soldiers and generals alike. It is certainly essential reading for new and potential recruits to our ranks. The general public too. More books like this and maybe Joyceline’s tongue‐in‐cheek greeting, “You’re a librarian, that must be exciting!” will become commonplace. Recommended reading for everyone.

I do hope blind librarian David gets a job soon. I do worry about that.