Libraries Misunderstood | Blatant Berry
They knew that you could not depend on the marketplace John N. Berry III May 15, 2011Many of my colleagues were upset and angry when Mike Shatzkin told a Montreal audience gathered in a library that libraries would be unnecessary and disappear in ten to 15 years. Shatzkin is the scion of a distinguished book publishing and bookselling family. His substantial expertise did not prevent him from misunderstanding the founding mission, the “core purpose,” of public libraries when he predicted their demise.
Shatzkin was quick to add that he didn’t wish for that result, only that he sees it coming. While both Shatzkin and his distinguished father, Leonard Shatzkin, deserve respect for their contributions to both the old print kind of publishing and the new electronic version, both carried and apparently still carry that one bias that corrupts so many predictions about American society.
Like most in book publishing, the Shatzkins want to sell what libraries were founded and designed to give away: access to information. That bias means that they get it wrong when they describe what purposes libraries were designed to serve.
Shatzkin put it this way in Montreal and later on his blog: “The core purpose—the founding purpose—of a library, around which other things have grown, is to deliver access to printed words.”
Here’s how the founders of the first real public library in America put that core purpose way back in 1852:
It is of paramount importance that the means of general information should be so diffused that the largest possible number of persons should be induced to read and understand questions going down to the very foundations of social order, which are constantly presenting themselves, and which we, as a people, are constantly required to decide and do decide, either ignorantly or wisely.
While those founders used the word read, neither books nor print was mentioned in the document that led to the birth of the Boston Public Library. It is obvious that they truly meant all “the means of general information” in whatever way it is delivered. More important, they believed the core purpose and the fundamental mission of public libraries was to inform democratic self-government and foster continuing education.
They believed that it was crucial to provide that service free to all by paying for it with public taxation. The public library was not created as a free bookstore, or as a building full of books, nor was it a community center set up in an abandoned storefront to entertain the masses. The exalted core purpose of the public library cannot and will not be served by a pay-per-use business model in an online marketplace now being promoted by Shatzkin and the ebook industry.
Libraries have always been the leaders in amassing the means of general information in any format they could get it. They have provided the forum where that information could be delivered by humans live, and where in-person programs and events could enable discussion and debate on the ideas collected online, in video and film, in print, and in any other medium.
Librarians need the building, as they always did, to work face-to-face with children growing up into citizenship in this democracy, immigrants arriving to engage in it, and older folks who need to upgrade and modernize their technology skills so they can continue to participate. They need the library as the place you enter without charges or fees; take part regardless of class, belief, or economic condition; and get full access to information for any purpose for free.
Forget about Shatzkin’s prediction. It is based on a basic misunderstanding of libraries. The founders knew that you could not depend on the marketplace to inform democracy without prejudice.
| Author Information |
| John N. Berry III (jberry@mediasourceinc.com) is Editor-at-Large, LJ |
