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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2009 > November > 06
Friday, November 6, 2009
What’s the library really for?
Since Wednesday, the Dayton Metro Library’s home page has sported a big, red-white-and-blue “Thank you” to voters for their support on Nov. 3 of the system’s tax levy — followed by, “We would hug you if we could. Really.”
That’d be about 80,000 hugs. The levy passed handily, throwing a $13.6-million-a-year lifeline to an institution that was foundering in the wake of heavy state budget cuts. The levy won’t make up for all that, but will help keep the doors open at the main library and its 21 branches.
Hugs and happiness aside, however, it seems worth considering what the victory says about us as a society — especially when you consider that according to the Associated Press, voters in Ohio approved levies for 30 library systems around the state last week.
Said the AP: “The Ohio Library Council had estimated that at least 15 percent of the state’s 251 systems had levies or a bond issue on Tuesday’s ballot and said only seven levies and one bond issue failed.” Those were by very slim margins.
Apparently, people still love their local library — even in our Wiki-Google-Yahoo age. With more information at our fingertips than we can possibly consume, why are people still so eager to pay for a big, expensive building full of books?
Tim Kambitsch, director of the Dayton Metro Library, has been musing on that very thing quite a lot this week.
He’s pretty sure there are two main groups who use the library and perceive it differently in this Internet era. One consists of people who want and need to be wired in but can’t afford it at home, and so use the library as their “only place to participate in the digital world.” That group, however, might not vote in great enough numbers to do the trick.
Then, he says, “there is that group of knowledge workers who are heavy Internet users, but may not be big library users for the things they used us for in the past — say, coming here to find that interesting piece of trivia you get so easily online now.
“But that group does see the intrinsic value of libraries; they know they’ve benefited from them in the past, and that other people do now, and they are supportive of that.”
That’s where this gets interesting — and a little abstract.
You may used the library for the audiobooks that make your commute a bit happier (I do), or a community group you belong to may meet there, or you may enjoy borrowing, rather than buying, picture books for your family’s young new reader. But after the practical, there’s something else, it seems.
The Internet, as it has broadened the web of information at our disposal, has also decentralized us — our interactions with each other are faster now, and less often face-to-face. We “meet” without actually going anywhere. We know more about each other, but seem to know each other less.
Do we still, possibly without realizing it, still crave a central place to go? Do we yearn for an emotional town square? And is the library the closest thing we’ve got?
“There is something to the idea of the library as that community gathering point,” Kambitsch said. “We found in our surveys that that informal interaction is one of the most important parts of what people think is important about libraries.
“There’s a writer who talks about ‘the third space’ people need, that isn’t work or home, but is somewhere else that you need to have, and I don’t think people get the same sort of intellectual satisfaction from having it be a lifestyle mall… But if you bump into somebody at the library, you almost feel proud of it — and you really aren’t celebrating the library itself, but the sense of community you both feel.
“It’s hard to nail down, but there is a sense of satisfaction, a sense of serendipity you get.”
Just think: If he’s right, a lot of people were willing to cast their votes, and put their money down, for something very intangibly, communally, cool. Either that, or the hugs.
They’re sort of the same thing, if you think about it.
