Every now and then, I’m reminded of how lucky we are to have public libraries.
In the Internet era, it’s not atypical for an online editorialist to sometimes ask: “Libraries — who needs ’em, right?” expecting a chorus of agreement from the 20-somethings who (presumably) receive all their information instantly and wouldn’t deign to do anything as arcane as visit a physical location to look something up.
A friend of mine used to live with a math major, who once asked him: “Why do you need to go to the library?” and then, after a pause, remembered, “Oh, right. Books.”
It’s not as silly as it sounds — even students don’t need to go to the library these days. Often they can access resources from online scholarly journals with their student ID, which in some disciplines erases the need to trek to the library for a tome.
As a history major, I would sometimes play this game where I would try to write a paper without going to the library. As a graduate student in history, I watched my students try to play that game, and I let them know they weren’t going to be able to win (and that was in Montreal, where getting to the library during term paper season was no easy task). You can’t get everything you need online, not yet, and even if you could, you’d still need the library. Hopefully, by the time a student has graduated, they have enough experience and training with proper research techniques to be information-literate, but not everyone is so lucky.
In some key ways, the skeptics are right — the Internet has outsourced a lot of work to our devices rather than buildings full of books. But libraries and librarians are still key. We have gone from having to look hard for the information we need to being overwhelmed with information, only some of which is useful, and much of which is misleading or harmful. Librarians were once the caretakers of information; now, they are wilderness guides.
Information literacy is a necessary skill, and many people don’t have it. It can be incredibly difficult to parse the reliable from the iffy, the appropriate from the unsuitable, the peer-reviewed from the sponsored-by-Big Pharma. As anyone who has ever reposted an unvetted story on Facebook can tell you, this knowledge is not unimportant. (What do you mean, they’re not making an 11th season of Friends?)
Libraries, therefore, are important — still relevant, even! — in the age of Google.
As a student, I moved over to the university collections, but I’ve recently rediscovered the pleasure of the public library (O sacred aisles of my childhood, keeper of the Babysitters Club books). This autumn, several of us chose to suffer through the agonies of standardized tests; among the four of us, we took a Graduate Record Examination, a Graduate Management Admission Test and two Law School Admission Tests. While coffee shops were great for group study sessions, more and I more I found myself in the public library, taking solace in the visual comfort of rows of books, reminding myself that withstanding my neighbour’s body odour would be good practice for test day.
Being back there reminded me how rare a space a public library is. I heard people ask the librarians all manner of questions. A knowledgeable person who is there to help you is a remarkable thing.
Quite aside from the “typical” services that libraries provide (books, magazines, newspapers, microfilm, research help, DVDs of movies that will never be on Netflix), where else can you go to access free Internet without having to buy a coffee first? Or get free help from pleasant, knowledgeable staff with your computer problems? Or sit for a moment in a warm, silent, well-lit space without having to pay for the privilege? Like all public spaces, it’s a trust.
My friend Tess once said of Grand Central Station that she liked it because it was both beautiful and public. Someone had thought that the people of New York deserved something beautiful, and built it for them.
Libraries are like that, too. They’re here for us, because we deserve to have nice places where services are free and accessible for everyone.
(Although I have to say that I visited the Carnegie Library when I was in Pittsburgh, and it has dinosaurs. Please file this under “General improvements for the Greater Victoria Public Library.”)
