I think it was the book Generation 
X that provoked the extended riff with the circulation clerk at my local library. As she ran the book and a couple Beatles re-mastered CDs through the barcode reader for me, she asked, “If we didn’t already have libraries, do you think we would invent them?”
She proceeded to suggest her own answers along the lines that Gen Xers take everything for granted, including public lending libraries. Isn’t it highly improbable that our society would today create something as pinko and weird as a lending library? she asked. After all, aren’t today’s mantras individualism, personal responsibility and for-profit models?
True, I thought. If libraries didn’t exist and someone proposed such an invention today, can you imagine the outcry on online forums? Josephine Voter (JoVo in her online identity) would hammer out a protest so fast her fingers would hurt: “We are going to buy books and Blu-ray disks and stuff, with my tax money, and lend it out for free? And pay more taxes to staff the place? Uh uh.” Or something more vitriolic. With six typos.
So it was that I left with new books and new questions. As it turned out, simply checking Generation X out of the library didn’t help. Nineteen years after its publication (reader’s advisory to Douglas Coupland, please avert your eyes), I still haven’t read it. I had six other books under my wing, you see, and my computer crashed that week, and soon I was on an extended trip out of town.
I would think, though, that Gen Xers (or Ys or Millennials for that matter) don’t have any monopoly on taking things for granted.
Today I’m in a different city, reading Stephen King’s On Writing. A public library copy, of course. King, whose novels suggest a man intimate with the many ways in which hell could be interesting, writes “If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or another, I guess I’ll be all right as long as there’s a lending library.” (If there is, it’s probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books so the joke’s on you, Steve.)
Libraries make knowledge affordable – for me, for you. For every
one. They are here thanks to our public-spirited parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin and others started the first North American libraries as book lending clubs and co-ops. In the 1700s and 1800s, libraries were powered by an exciting concept called democracy. If every adult wields a vote, the thinking went, we better do something to spread knowledge and wisdom. No more keeping it all in the castles and cathedrals.
Which brings to mind last summer and the month I spent amid the ragged round-the-clock ringing of cathedral bells while writing and mangling Spanish in the central Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende (SMA). I was in my element, which by definition includes a great library.
In SMA, the public library is a relatively recent creation with a treasured role in community life. In the mid-1950s a small Spanish and English lending library was launched from a resident’s home with donated books. It has since reclaimed a colonial era building that previously served as a church annex and slaughterhouse. A place of prayers and death: Mexican history is always intriguing.
Last summer, I not only browsed their collection but sipped cappuccinos in the sun-drenched courtyard, caught a movie flick in the library’s dark, deep little movie hall, bought an anthology of local writers at a shop run by volunteers and signed up for a tour of local homes and gardens. La Biblioteca also publishes the city’s weekly community paper and, perhaps most importantly, funds scholarships for kids who couldn’t otherwise access education.
In my life and the lives of others, libraries are about much more than inexpensive borrowing. Yet the question remains: would we citizens of the 21st century invent public libraries if they didn’t already exist? Will we even make the effort to keep our current libraries ticking?
The same techno wave th
at is challenging printed newspapers, magazines and books is poised over libraries. Google, e-books and online downloading are growing exponentially. Many libraries are trying to keep up, and online visits are beginning to rival in-person visits. But what is the future for digital access? It is not likely to consist of thousands of small-town libraries each trying to create unique portals to the same knowledge base.
“Libraries are only taking up valuable real estate after all,” writes Michael Elcock in a recent edition of BC Bookworld. “Who will need downtown libraries when the world’s intellectual works are available in everyone’s home? Eventually we may need only one library… and that may be Google.” As Elcock points out, “Google may be many things, but philanthropic is not one of them.”
Take a look at your public lending library and decide: is a future without it OK with you? While you’re answering that, I’m going put a new reserve on Generation X. I must get it read before a 20th anniversary commemorative edition comes out.
Photo Credits
Library in San Miguel de Allende by Lorne Michaels
“Library of Love” photomequickbooth @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Well, as a member of Gen Y, I can say that there is a chance that we would want to have public libraries. First of all, as most of us are at least college age, I can say that yes, we actually do use libraries. And I think it would work economically. Sure, you would have people complaining about “throwing their tax dollars away”, but for all of us bibliophiles, we would see this as a much thriftier option.
Yes! Yes! We will still have libraries – we must! I’ve never really figured out if I’m a Gen Xer or Y…right on the cusp I think. But I certainly appreciate my library. Perhaps cause I’m cheap. 🙂 and I don’t like reading books on computer screens…
Let there always be libraries. Please!
Without them where will we go to find the written word
to help educate ourselves and our children?
”Written’ … being the all important word……because you ask?
Because, … if we lose our taken for granted power, then it is back to pencils, charcoal or whatever to have a scripted history for future generations.
Verbally carrying our history is and was possibe, but it will differ each time it is spoken..
In the meantime, without power but with hope, libraries could and should still exist..
Yay for libraries with scripted or charcoaled contents.
Honestly, the greedy generations are the Boomers and Millennials, the Xers are the ones in between, appearing not to care because they’ve grown up without the option being raised by boomers who were raised to believe that the world revolved around them (innocently enough done by their parents who wanted to give their kids everything after themselves being deprived in the depression and war years)
But I digress – would we start public libraries now? The Right would strongly oppose it, the Left would strongly support it, and the middle I think would bend more toward supporting the idea if the Left put any thought in explaining the idea. And depending on where the middlers are from/living.
I also haven’t read Generation X, but I suspect, like all generalisations and stereotypes, it’ll well describe some, but totally miss the mark on others, and for the majority, be an over-simplification of overall trends. I am heading to my public library to check it out though!
Great article!
I love libraries, and visit one at least twice a week, by myself or with my family. If we lose libraries because we can no longer afford them, that would truly be a shame.
If this happens, I will happily blame it on the excesses of the baby boomers who invented modern entitlement, taught it to their children, and accordingly ran up government debts (or elected those who would).
I much prefer David Foot’s books on demographics to that of Coupland. Apples and oranges, but there you go.
I value free public libraries so much, especially since spending part of my 20s in Europe where many libraries are not free and only open to subscribers.
As a life long bibliophile, I could never afford the hard or digital copies of all the books I want to read or consult. Hopefully if libraries didn’t exist today, people would still want to create a version; somewhere to go to find people who can help you access the information that is inscrutable or unknown to you.
Just because the information is there digitally does not mean that people have access to it, can analyze and synthesize it, or understand it. That is the role of a good library, in my opinion.
I’ve often said that if someone proposed the idea of starting public libraries now, they’d be laughed out of Parliament or Congress or wherever.
Good thing we don’t have to reinvent libraries … yet. Our materials change but our jobs as InfoGuides remain necessary. I can Google significantly better than my patrons, and even think of a few options beyond Google.
Lise, librarian
I think there’s an atmosphere libraries have that cannot be replaced.
It is first and foremost the reason that I go there. The peace, the stimulating environment – the ability to learn for free.
I highly doubt that libraries will ever disappear. They may change, adapt, and look different – but I strongly believe that they will remain. (At least if I have anything to do with it.)
Good question/s. I use the public library in my hometown (Winnipeg) for book borrowing and more. Often on a Friday I’ll go there to work at a study table set alongside a big bank of windows. The light is wonderful, and the ambiance oozing from the shelves of books so conducive to my work (writing). The day of digital dominance is coming, and libraries will have to reinvent themselves as community centres of some sort or other. The will have to be much more than portals to information. Perhaps, alas, the future of some will be as museums … quaint collections of antiquated artifacts.