Sshhh!

January 8, 2005 9:15 AM

Is this a library or a Borders?A Denver Post writer laments the availability of CDs, DVDs, and not so intellectually stimulating reading material at the Schlessman Family Branch Library (part of the Denver Public Library system), and calls into the question the library's purpose. Should libraries give the people what they want, if what they want is an Ashlee Simpson CD?
posted by schoolgirl report (121 comments total)

Whoa, depressing article alert.
posted by josh at 9:24 AM on January 8, 2005

Public libraries have a kids' section in books, they can have something other than classical music in their CD section.

Besides, such things would be a godsend to a mother who can't afford a the new CDs her kid might want but can still bring them home for a week or two so her kid ca nhave music and spend that $20 somewhere else. Not that that's what libraries need to be for, but it isn't hurting anyone.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:34 AM on January 8, 2005

reminds me of the story of some of the music settlements and how libraries suddenly found themselves inundated with the industry's surplus supply of 1988 Whitney Houston christmas albums..
posted by virga at 9:34 AM on January 8, 2005

Sounds like a common and depressing scenario. I work in an academic library which serves a totally different community, but I get the feeling this is very common in public libraries.

Last year I returned some stuff for my parents to their local rural-turned-suburban public library and poked around for a few minutes. I overheard a young child asking his mother if he could look at books, to which she replied "No! We're here to pick up movies.."
posted by p3t3 at 9:34 AM on January 8, 2005

If the library can afford it, yes, yes it should. I suppose if budgets get cut too much, libraries should probably limit their scope, but the point of a library isn't to expose the community to books, but to make available ideas, whether they're in CD, DVD, book, or tape formats.
posted by drezdn at 9:38 AM on January 8, 2005

I, for one, am glad there are music departments in libraries. I filled in huge gaps (esp. in blues, country, etc) in my collection with stuff taped from library copies, when I was a teenager. And FWIW, I took out tons of books, too.
posted by jonmc at 9:38 AM on January 8, 2005

It's on these visits that I typically spot an unfortunate soul in his mid-30s checking out a half-dozen episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," or some such thing, and instantly I question the function of the library system - and humanity's mental state in general.

I don't personally watch Buffy much but many people consider it one of the best shows on TV in recent years. So it seems like this guy is already starting out judging with the opinion that popular and high-quality can't or don't coexist. A popular opinion, itself, among many, but I don't think it's that simple.

Nevertheless, even assuming his dichotomy, Borders would be perfectly happy to lure you in with low-profit items just to have you sit around for a while, drinking their coffee and sitting in their comfy chairs, eventually making it a regular hang-out of yours where you'd become interested in their high-margin items. This is what data mining is all about, and I have no doubt there are Borders execs thinking right now about how to achieve that.

If we assign the classification "high-profit" to classic works of literature and "low-profit" to popular recent TV shows and music, then perhaps it makes good "business" sense from the library's standpoint to lure the kids in with free Buffy DVDs hoping they'll decide to check out their other more "profitable" wares eventually. How many kids will get their first library card just to rent a set of DVDs? Later on when they're looking for something to do, maybe they'll find their library card in their wallet.
posted by BaxterG4 at 9:42 AM on January 8, 2005

When I was 12 (that would be 1981), you could check out music tapes and records from my local library as well as Super 8 films and even framed posters. I remember sitting in my library with big fat ugly headphones, listening to Bill Cosby's comedy albums as I read one of those Time-Life books about the planets (written by Carl Sagan, actutally, before he hit the big time).

So I guess my question to this columnist would be: How long has it been since he's stepped into a library? As far as I know, offering up all kinds of media has always been part of the library's mission.

These days my local library has a fairly extensive selection of DVDs and CDs (as well as Internet access) to go along with the books. I think that's just fine; for me, libraries aren't just about books, they're about being local repositories of culture and information. Limiting a library to words between covers seems pretty stupid. This guy's just being a snob, and an ignorant one at that.
posted by jscalzi at 9:43 AM on January 8, 2005

Speaking of depressing library stories...

I remember hearing (can't find the link, if there is one) that the actual publishers are turning against the public library system.
The publishers don't think it's "fair" that libraries can pay once for unlimited "use" of their material. They want it switched to a "pay-per-checkout" system, so that instead of paying for the book outright, the payments keep comming in forever.

Seems perfectly capitalist to me, but the fact that libraries aren't rolling around in wads of unused cash, this would basically be the end of the public library system that we know today.

Has anyone else heard something similar?
posted by Balisong at 9:57 AM on January 8, 2005

The only point he has that seems valid is that some library branches are noisy. Regardless of what materials are loaned out, a library should be a place quiet enough to read or study.

What the author seems to not realize is that a library cannot become "a noisy place" overnight. Back in the day, if you walked into a library with a group of people and proceeded to be all noisy, you would be shushed and perhaps talked to and possibly even asked to leave. The only way for a library to become a noisy place is if for there to be not enough people inside who care about making it quiet.

What he should be up in arms about is not that libraries in his area are loaning out DVDs. He should be upset that people just don't want to hang out in libraries anymore.
posted by 23skidoo at 9:59 AM on January 8, 2005

Should a library be in business at all? Should it compete with Blockbuster? Or should it provide a basic level of educational and research services for the community?

This article frustrates me to no end. I am a librarian and every day I run up against this argument - that a library should cater to some archane notion of what a library should be. I have a bent, I know. This is how I make my living. But what the hell is this guy talking about? I agree that libraries shouldn't cater to our advertising-fed tendencies towards overconsumption, but at the same time libraries are faced with the charge of reflecting the wants and needs of the communities they serve. A library is a place for the free exchange of ideas and information -- without limitation. I would love to be the aesthetic czar of the county's libraries; to be able to pick and choose what the people read, watch, listen to, etc. I think I'd be a pretty benevolent dictator. And I think this guy believes he'd do just as fine a job.

I don't know, maybe libraries look too much like a social program to him. Boy howdy, we sure wouldn't want to put any more money into that sort of thing!

I ask: Is the state now on the hook for my entertainment, too?

No. But some people who don't have the means to participate every day in the holiest of holy Free Market find their only outlet for "entertainment" at the library.

Or should it provide a basic level of educational and research services for the community?

What I'm concerned about here is "basic level." The whole idea of a library is to get as much information as possible (we can talk about quality of information in another post) to the public. Why limit it to "basic level"?

Finally, I think what David Harsanyi really wanted to say was contained in this article from New Zealand.
posted by punkbitch at 10:02 AM on January 8, 2005

[from the article]
it's only fair to ask: What exactly is the role of the library? What kind of product should be stocked on its shelves? And where are we headed?

Call me crazy, but I've always thought the role of the library is to make as much material available to as many people as possible, not make judgement calls on what their patrons are reading, viewing, listening to or surfing. A library works best when it's an open, aggregate representation of culture -- local, national, worldwide.

This sounds like the same argument that people use when they want to install filters on library web browsers. Usually, there's some sort of "for the children" cry that springs forth, as if it's ok for "the state" to keep watch on the children but heaven forfend that role fall to "the parents". For all the talk of "personal responsibility" we get shoved down our throat by certain politicians, I sure do wish they'd stay the hell out of my library.

This guy's just being snooty and, worse, disingenuous when he takes up the mantle of the librarians and "the humiliation they must feel checking out an Ashlee Simpson CD to some punk who could care less about Melville Dewey." Librarians I know love what they do because they get to help people, not because they get to stare down their noses and lament the loss of culture amongst the proles.

There's plenty of room for cultural critique these days, I'm not sure I want libraries as battlegrounds, though.

On preview, what punkbitch said.
posted by jimray at 10:04 AM on January 8, 2005

Some libraries have a fairly sane policy of not buying popular DVD releases for 6 months, partly because brand new releases often get checked out and never returned. Once the "hotness" has worn off, that DVD copy is much more likely to stay in the collection for people to use in the long run.
posted by gimonca at 10:04 AM on January 8, 2005

Wait a second, how have we gotten 13 comments into this without using the word "elitist?" My first in-page-find attempt was "elitist fuck."
posted by scarabic at 10:06 AM on January 8, 2005

I think movies and music are a great resource as well. But I think the depressing thing for me is the larger social trend toward dumbing everything down, decreasing attention spans, and hooking kids on sugar.

To be fair, it's not up to the libraries to try to change what people want (as the author of the article seems to think), but it's also hard to sit around and watch it happen. Especially when I know the staff at the local public library, and they confirm that they are basically a video borrowing service.

on preview - what almost everyone said ;)
posted by p3t3 at 10:08 AM on January 8, 2005

For someone pretending sympathy with librarians, he sure doesn't know much about how libraries are run. The folks checking out books are clerks, not librarians. The dirty secret of public libraries is that most of the work is done by part time, no benefit employees.

The purpose of a public library is to get people the information they need in a format they can use. Danielle Steel fits into this as well as DVDs of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Unfortunately, state aid, grants, etc. are given based, in great part, on circulation. So, the more you can circulate things, the more money you get. This is broken, and is what has led to some libraries buying Buffy, 24, Michael Bolton and such, not to mention Danielle Steel.

I have no objection to DVDs and CDs of non-pop things. Next year, who will check out 24 or the Foo Fighters? These items tend to have a very short shelf life.

When I started the CD music collection at my old library, I was told to buy a little of everything. So, I did, from pop to blues to world music to lesbian rock, etc. Much to my surprise, after 6 months, the top circulating CD wasn't kd lang or Michael Bolton. It was a CD of Inuit throat singing. The pop went out, but what really circed was world music, classic blues and medieval music. This was in an inner ring suburb where the average education level was 8th grade.

So, when librarians buy recent TV shows, popular music and such, they are buying stuff with a short shelf life, possibly underestimating their patrons and giving in to a broken system of funds distribution.

Fix library funding and fix librarian training (which is now largely irrelevant), and we might get more interesting libraries. Maybe.
posted by QIbHom at 10:11 AM on January 8, 2005

I'd much rather my library didn't have "novels" by Harold Robbins than DVDs of TV shows like Buffy and Midsommer Murders. If that's not, you know, a false dichotomy. Oh wait, it is. They manage to have both, and also, incidentally a highly efficient interlibrary loan system that gives me access to dozens of collections all over the state, including a few nice academic ones. I can walk into my tiny little branch library and pick up a scholarly translation of the Mahabarata from a university 50 miles away. I can find this book by searching the shared catalogue system that shows me what's available to circulate and other libraries. Learning how to do this took me all of five minutes. Maybe Denver does something similar? Maybe acquisition budgets can be used in different ways because of this exchange system? Maybe in addition to Buffy, they also have criterion edition DVDs of important films by Kurosawa and others (like my library does)? Maybe this whiner needs to do a little more research?

Behind the bright smiles of the librarians, there is tension. They've worked their tails off to earn master's degrees, only to be forced to subdue the ancient art of shushing and become mere clerks. The humiliation they must feel checking out an Ashlee Simpson CD to some punk who could care less about Melville Dewey is probably unbearable.

You can't write a paragraph like that, projecting your little elitist wankings onto the minds of others, and not be some kind of asshole.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:15 AM on January 8, 2005

Good God. I imagine the MeFi Librarian Posse is slowly rousing themselves from the dead faint they fell into when they read this most controversial piece about libraries. After all, how can their shushing, classical loving selves possibly withstand all this excitement - especially as they're already so overtaxed by trying to supress those shushing tendancies.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:18 AM on January 8, 2005

If this were 1965 instead of 2005, this guy'd probably be complaining about all the Beatles crap that litters the music section (had there been one). Tastes change... sometimes for the better, sometimes not. It's not the library's job to give you taste.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:19 AM on January 8, 2005

Call me crazy, but I've always thought the role of the library is to make as much material available to as many people as possible, not make judgement calls on what their patrons are reading, viewing, listening to or surfing. A library works best when it's an open, aggregate representation of culture -- local, national, worldwide.

Exactly. Well put, jimray.
posted by 327.ca at 10:22 AM on January 8, 2005

It's funny that he makes 'Buffy' one of his main examples, and not just because (as BaxterG4 points out) it's a poor example of what he wants to complain about. One of the running themes of the show was the role of the library: scene after scene in the first three seasons took place in the high school library, which was a social gathering place for the characters. The show dealt a lot with various and complementary methods of information gathering -- the role of the internet, the strengths and the limits of book research.

So, um, yeah. All my other points have been made exceptionally well by others.
posted by climalene at 10:24 AM on January 8, 2005

Oh no. A library stocks some items of which he does not approve. The horror. The horror. Even worse, other people actually desire these items, and go to the library for them. How will civilization survive?

What an ass.

There are, of course, some reasonable questions that could be raised along these related lines - what is the best use of a library's limited shelf space? What are the best items to purchase with a library's limited budget? Given non-infinite space, what's the best balance of the classic and the new, the popular and the obscure or specialized, books and new media, etc. etc.

But that isn't what this guy is on about. He's not upset that the Ashlee Simpson CD is taking up space that could be used for Moby Dick. He'd be equally upset if both the CD and Moby Dick were both readily available. He's upset that they stock the Ashlee Simpson CD AT ALL. Because god forbid someone should want something he thinks they shouldn't want.

Ass.

On preview: yeah, that too.
posted by kyrademon at 10:27 AM on January 8, 2005

The problem would never be the presence of an Ashlee Simpson DVD, or any other particular pop culture hit (although the sixth month policy gimonca mentioned seems really smart. Maybe a year would be better). The problem would be if there were Ashlee Simpson CDs -- and no Chopin or Gorecki. Harry Potter -- and no Tolstoy or C.S. Lewis. Norah Jones -- and no Ella Fitzgerald or Nat King Cole.
posted by weston at 10:30 AM on January 8, 2005

Sell the Public Libraries with article.
posted by aerify at 10:32 AM on January 8, 2005

It's too bad he didn't do something to substantiate his argument... you know, like actually interviewing some librarians for a primary source or anything.

" Behind the bright smiles of the librarians, there is tension."

How the hell does he know? He doesn't.

(also, do people actually listen to Ashlee Simpson?)
posted by buriednexttoyou at 10:36 AM on January 8, 2005

Absolutely not, buriednexttoyou.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:41 AM on January 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

I will let the librarians speak for themselves - "Don't close the book on libraries"

Taken from librarian.net.

I don't think the argument should be about which CD or if CD's in general should be made available, the issue is librarianship is disappearing.
posted by fluffycreature at 10:43 AM on January 8, 2005

Whoa. I disagree with everyone on this thread.

There are, of course, some reasonable questions that could be raised along these related lines - what is the best use of a library's limited shelf space? What are the best items to purchase with a library's limited budget?

Exactly. I don't see that the article is elitist, and even if you feel it is, the issues it raises are very real and not about "elitism." Ashlee Simpson is everywhere--on the radio, on TV, in record stores, on the internet. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is beamed into your home for free every night. Great literature is not everywhere, it is not a 'push' medium, and it ought to have a space allotted to it in our society, just as great art lives in museums and great music in concert halls. In fact, as a nation, we now read much less literature than we have in the past. The point of the article is that these spaces that have previously been set aside as space for quiet reading and learning are being assimilated into the larger culture industry.

I have nothing against Buffy (I think Ashlee is pretty lame). But Buffy does not need help, in the form of public funds and public space, getting into the hands of regular people. That's why he compares the library to Borders; Borders is a space already set aside for Buffy. Why do we need another one?

Call me crazy, but I've always thought the role of the library is to make as much material available to as many people as possible, not make judgement calls on what their patrons are reading, viewing, listening to or surfing.

The truth is that every single decision a library makes is a "judgment call" of some kind. Turning libraries into outposts of Borders is not a culturally neutral decision. If you allow people to treat the library as a social space for talking and listening to popular music, you're making a judgment about the relative value of popular culture and literature. The library he profiles is not just 'being a library,' it's emulating a retail environment designed by thinking people who have arranged it so that people buy things.

There is not infinite space in the library, and so making "as much material available" as possible necessarily means that librarians are making judgments about what should be available where and in what contexts. And these librarians have decided that the library should be more for hanging out, listening to CDs, and flipping through magazines than it should be for experiencing worthwhile culture. I disagree with that decision. Why are the tables in the library covered with trashy books? They should be advertising the best books, not the most mediocre.

If you feel that librarians should just get out of the way and become impartial conduits for culture, then you're forgetting that culture is created by people with specific values. Emulating Borders is not getting out of the way. It's accepting a set of values created by very specific people and promoting some types of media over others. Anyone who's gone to a really good independent bookstore where people who love great books promote the literature that they love, and then to Barnes and Noble, which is all calendars, self-help books and magazines, knows the difference between them immediately. It's not good that those independent bookstores are disappearing, and it's not good that the library is becoming more like the mall.
posted by josh at 10:57 AM on January 8, 2005

[from article] But should the library give people what they want? Most people, myself included, want junk.

I quite like the highbrow stuff. I adore classical music. So clearly people's tax monies should go to fund only my interests because I have class and taste unlike all you unwashed rubes.

Seriously - the library in the town where I live is a model of perfection. We have approved every referendum they've asked for. As a result our library is a large well-used but clean facility pleasing to the eye and ear with fountains and other decorations as well as art (which you can check out) with up to date equipment and rows of internet computers.
It is well stocked with a wide variety of materials (one might even say 'vast' as we have several floors and a rare book collection that rivals' the Chicago library) that anyone of any taste can enjoy. Our community has heartily embraced this aspect of the commons.
I'm unclear on the problem with that - or indeed the 'solution'.
Libraries are supposed to somehow refine our tastes? Wasn't one of our earliest mottos (in the U.S.A.) "Mind your own business?"

But I suppose there have always been asshats who disagree with what is in the library and want to prevent others from accessing "junk." Just ask the folks at Alexandria.

Pseudointellectualism and ego aside...how is this guy a writer? I can see a man of business or religion or the military thinking this way, but he operates under the free dissemination of ideas.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:08 AM on January 8, 2005

Why are the tables in the library covered with trashy books? They should be advertising the best books, not the most mediocre....

Anyone who's gone to a really good independent bookstore where people who love great books promote the literature that they love, and then to Barnes and Noble, which is all calendars, self-help books and magazines, knows the difference between them immediately.

First off, promoting good books won't get them read. People who come to a library looking for Tolstoy are not going to change their mind and read Danielle Steele, and people looking for Steele aren't going to be swayed by a display. In addition, making available Buffy or Ashley isn't preventing the Libraries from owning the Classics. They already own copies of the literary cannon. It might cut down on the numbers of copies available of new releases, but libraries have never been the best places to go for new releases. Allowing people to check out movies and CDs does not make a library more like the mall.

Secondly, I'm not sure what Barnes and Noble you're talking about but, the average store has far more space devoted to fiction and literature than it does self improvement books or calendars. The book sellers are usually on par with independent bookstores. In my experience, the major difference seems to be the attitude in independent bookstores, the same stuffy vibe that emanates from record store clerks. Sure, an independent store is far more likely to have 3 copies of an obscure graphic novel in stock. But usually they're missing midlist titles and things the more average book customer might be interested in.
posted by drezdn at 11:15 AM on January 8, 2005

My argument at my public library has always been that we should try to offer material that complements what is available in our community generally, not 100% duplicate it. So, we have DVDs [but no music collection yet] and I wish we collected more stuff that wasn't also available at Blockbuster, but we have both, as well as lots and lots of popular fiction and graphic novels, and it's mostly just great. I do outreach so a lot of my job is figuring out why people don't come to the library, and you know what? They think it's for old people, or they don't know what we have, or they don't like that the librarians [and circulation staff] are often MEAN TO THEM, this is especially common among teenagers.

My issue is more about the service end of what we do. Our older staff hate the public access computers that we provide for people and only grudgingly provide support for them [and don't know how to use them when they can provide support] this is a system failure. Denver [as noted in the article] has a shiny new library but is severely curtailing staff hours and book buying, this is a system failure. Most people in our community have no idea how the library runs, how we make decisions or what we do all day [the clerk vs librarian thing is a huge reminder of that] despite the fact that we exist only because of their support, this is a system failure. On the other hand, Denver's decision to turn the library into a Border's knock-off isn't really pushing the best of what the public library has to offer, ideology-wise, so I can see this reporter's confusion. You can't pay a public librarian a bookstore clerk's salary, the two institutions are not in any way comparable except that people use them for the some of the same reaons. I hate when libraries become fake businesses and start to call their patrons "customers," I hate it. On the other hand, we have an obligation to our patrons to provide services based on our mission statements and the fact that an item is popular or readily available elsewhere means fuck-all to someone who can't afford to rent/buy it. We should exist independently of market culture, at some level public libraries exist to be an antidote to all that.

kyrademon nails it, it's a high culture/low culture snobbery at work here. One of the real challenges in a public institution is making the snobs and the general public and the downtrodden happy with what you offer. Since the snobs aren't happy even rubbing shoulders with the downtrodden, you already have your work cut out for you. So guess what? The snobs go to Borders where they can pay money to not have to rub shoulders with common people, or not have to wait for a popular book, and everyone else stays at the library because they can't afford not to. Over time, this division gets more accentuated and it's hard to turn around. That's no solution either, the library is for everyone. I'd really like to see the local librarians or local library association come out with a well-crafted response to this article, it's begging for one.
posted by jessamyn at 11:16 AM on January 8, 2005

My library system stocks pop materials, offers wireless hotspots, and in some branches sells coffee. Member libraries host book clubs, origami lessons, Harry Potter clubs, families with ten grubby children...and they still manage to keep things orderly and educational. Yes, I can get Eminem from the library, but I can also get Philip Glass -- and I have. The library's diverse CD collection was my only source of music in high school, giving me a chance to (legally) try out music without wasting $20 a pop.

And last year the state and county cut library funding by 50%.

Never fight the funding of libraries. Instead, fight to fix them. Campaign for quieter libraries. Start a reading campaign for a good book -- my city holds an annual "If All of Rochester Read The Same Book" to highlight literary novelists. Change the library; don't kill it.
posted by NickDouglas at 11:19 AM on January 8, 2005

Josh, there's a major flaw in your logic. Sure, "Buffy" is readily available at Borders. So is Infinite Jest, Les Miserables, Bleak House, Ulysses, etc., etc., etc. Which makes your argument that there is no space for great literature in our society seem a little, well, odd. The actual difference would seem to be that all of these works, including "Buffy", cost, you know, money at Borders.
posted by kyrademon at 11:24 AM on January 8, 2005

Well, the library across the street from me is a model of what this guy is talking about. It has a big old movie section (all on VHS, unfortunately), a big old CD section of music that was popular a couple of years ago that nobody listens to anymore, and a pathetic selection of real literature. It never has any copies of the newest serious books about politics, history, science, literature, art, or what have you--but it always seems to have a couple copies of the newest biography of [insert tycoon / starlet here]. And the big Barnes and Noble near me is about 70% non-literature. It has a poetry section about the size of my closet. If I didn't have a university library, and all I had were the local library and B&N, I would have to order those books sight-unseen from Amazon. That would be expensive and risky.

Smedleyman, you can put "junk" in quotes all you want, but junk really does exist and it is marketed to us aggressively from every angle. Why should the library be yet another conduit for the same stuff that's already available everywhere? You're taking an issue that is not black-and-white at all, and turning it into an all-or-nothing argument in which you accuse librarians who would make value judgments about books of, essentially, censorship. but I think these decisions to make the library more like Borders are themselves value judgments. If it's censorship and against the free dissemination of ideas to put Alice Munro's new book of short stories or Toni Morrison's new novel or Jared Diamond's new book at the front of the library and put the Ashlee Simpson in the back, then isn't it an equivalent cultural decision to present the junk before the literature?

I'm not saying that popular music and DVDs of TV shows have no place in a library. Turning the library into the Borders Cafe, however, is not just giving the popular media a place--it's giving them pride of place, when they already have it elsewhere. This seems needless to me, and I don't think wanting a quiet space for reading and knowledge makes me a snob.

And drezdn, I too have met plenty of stuffy and offensive clerks at independent music and book stores; but that doesn't mean that the principle behind those stores is wrong or that they aren't immensely valuable. There are lots of stuffy and offensive people everywhere.
posted by josh at 11:29 AM on January 8, 2005

(Metafilter: Lots of stuffy and offensive people everywhere)
posted by Balisong at 11:35 AM on January 8, 2005

Behind the bright smiles of the librarians, there is tension. They've worked their tails off to earn master's degrees, only to be forced to subdue the ancient art of shushing and become mere clerks.

Working their tails off in library school. LOL. On the serious side, libraries are a vital link to information and entertainment for people who really can't afford even a copy of the Foot Book. Libraries end up offering many vital services far more basic than TV, namely shelter and washrooms, contact with social service organizations.

Underlying this observation is an attitude that is common, even in library school: a deep desire to ignore the circumstances and needs of library patrons.

If this observer had spent a little more time watching, he would probably been very impressed by the clerks-- they end up doing a lot more than sushing. My hat's off to the vast majority of public librarians. They are very good at helping people find the information they need, and the entertainment they want to make their lives a little more bearable.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 11:35 AM on January 8, 2005

My local library shocked me when I discovered they had the Japanese import version of David Sylvian's "Blemish." I could argue that this CD has more cultural value than the Smashmouth disc sitting in the same bin, but that's not my call. Same goes for literature versus music or film.

Related: it does make me crazy to see 60 copies of The Day After Tomorrow and 1 copy of The Sation Agent in my local Blockbuster.
posted by davebush at 11:36 AM on January 8, 2005

jessamyn, when you say You can't pay a public librarian a bookstore clerk's salary are you saying that a librarian doesn't bring in as much a book store clerk? Or is it the other way around? The bookstore clerks I know (current and former employees) made crappy money - slightly higher above minimum - and I hope a professional, committed librarian makes more. As a lifelong library nerd I have a great deal of respect for librarians and would like to think they're getting more out of it than just love of literature and a (woefully underappreciated) contribution to the community.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 11:38 AM on January 8, 2005

kyrademon, my argument is not that Ashlee replaces Auden in the library (though sometimes it does). My argument is that the library sends a message, in the way it's organized and in the items it highlights, to the people who go there about what's available and what is good. The message that Eminem is awesome is trumpeted from every corner; why should the public library also trumpet it?

The NEA report I linked to shows that literature could use some trumpeting, because the number of people who read it are declining. That's not my assertion, that's a result of the study. It's especially declining among young people. The transformation of libraries into outlets of pop culture, rather than outlets of literature, is relevant.

It's not as though pop culture is the underdog here, oppressed by stuffy old literature. It's exactly the opposite: literary reading is declining in favor of music and movies. I would think that encouraging literary reading would be something libraries could help with.
posted by josh at 11:39 AM on January 8, 2005

I live in a rural community without broadcast television, twenty miles of winter roads from a video store and better than 40 from a bookstore.

What we do have is a library with a big fat endowment and plenty of cash. Unfortunately, what we don't have is a librarian. We have a woman whose last job was at McDonalds after she got fired from the local gin mill for smoking weed at work. This woman is entirely unsuited to her job but, by virtue of being related to the library boards director (the son of the woman who created the trust), is essentially fireproof.

She's real big on pop culture -- for example, when surveyed about periodicals I requested what I thought were library staples -- Scientific American, Harpers, The Atlantic, Architectural Digest, JAMA and the like -- what we got was People, US News and World Report, and Victorian Home.

She does a real nice job with DVD's and VHS tapes too. No six month rule here, we get the latest releases as soon as they hit the store shelves -- just so long as it's Pixar, Disney or anything else that appeals to her seven year old. Not that it matters since they promptly vanish into the depths of her double wide 'modular' home where they are available by request -- providing you know they exist in the first place.

So, in order to obtain anything worthwhile I have to request an interlibrary loan. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, the regional system is wonderful and I can generally get what I want in a few days, they even email when it's been delivered. But, since this woman is unable to distinguish between the five accounts in my household she slams an overdue notice on my card each time a kid has a book a day late, this means the system won't accept my request.

I'm not really sure what this has to do with anything, and I'm sure this rant would have been better on my blog, but it frustrates me to no end that the my enjoyment of what should be a valkuable public resource is hindered by an uneducated inbred hick who, if not for small town nepotism, would be spending her days watching Jerry Springer and monster trucks.
posted by cedar at 11:40 AM on January 8, 2005

What strikes you immediately as conspicuous, however, is the departure from traditional library silence. Schlessman is noisy - really noisy.

noise? you mean there are people in this library? being exposed to a variety of ideas and other (presumably noisy) people? how awful!

don't those folks know libraries are supposed to be solemn cathedrals, built on the tombs of dead writers?

now will the literate elite cloister themselves? we're running out of room in massachusetts!
posted by es_de_bah at 11:48 AM on January 8, 2005

noise? you mean there are people in this library? being exposed to a variety of ideas and other (presumably noisy) people? how awful!

wha??
yes, libraries are meant to be quiet! It has nothing to do with sanctity; it's just meant to be a place where you can think and read!

Actually, I was in a public library a few days last week because my school library was closed, and was also quite surprised by the amount of noise, including the clerks talking amongst themselves or on the phone.
posted by mdn at 11:59 AM on January 8, 2005

Please people, don't tell this Harsanyi guy about Project Gutenberg. He might have a cow.

The works of Mark Twain and Jules Verne were considered popular fiction at one time too, and it was believed by some that they'd not outlive their creators. Henry David Thoreau used to self-publish because no one else would touch his stuff, and he couldn't give his books away to libraries because his ideas were considered dismissive and unrealistic, yet people still read him today.

We can dismiss Ashlee Simpson and Joss Whedon as popular modern tripe all we want. History will determine what will stay and what will go. I've seen essays and college level theses written about Joss Whedon's work. His stuff stands up to close scrutiny. Ashlee Simpson? Not so much. I've yet to find anyone under the age of thirteen say anything nice about the Simpsons. However, those thirteen year olds will grow up, and one of the Simpsons may actually accomplish something meaningful someday. So I would bank that Whedon's productions will still be seen by new audiences long after we're dust. However, that's an opinion and not a fact. A century from now, maybe people will remember Urkel and Alf but not know their Simpsons from their Whedons. We can only guess.

When the original Library of Alexandria was lost so many centuries ago, the future lost so much about past cultures. A library's purpose is not to decide what deserves preservation. It's supposed to preserve the past and present for future generations to decide for themselves what's useful and informative. Perhaps if I were king I'd order every Whitney Houston Christmas CD burned and destroyed, but I'm sure there are other people out there who feel the same about Billy Joel's greatest hits volumes one two and three. I love Billy Joel's stuff. So I wouldn't want any one person to decide what's worth keeping around and what's not.

But when this David Harsanyi guy argues for the removal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because he thinks Dr. Seuss deserves a place in libraries while Joss Whedon does not? He's just as wrong as the bastards who destroyed the Library of Alexandria. A librarian's job is not to decide what is remembered and what is forgotten. That's what conquerors and politicians do. It's why they say the victor gets to rewrite history. They burn the libraries that they don't like.

There was a time when there were more scrolls in a library than leather bound books. Then scrolls were slowly phased out. I'm sure in those heady days there were David Harsanyis out there bitching and moaning about how scrolls were great and how dare these newfangled gadgets appeal to younger generations? Thank God those David Harsanyis didn't get their way, and I hope this David Harsanyi doesn't get his way either.

Egon Spengler was wrong. Print is not dead. However it may be in need of a retirement home soon, as other formats take over. A time will come when books will only be available in digital format, because all the books will get too old to use. Seen the original Constitution of the United States recently? It has survived a little over two centuries but only because it's now encased under glass. Most books and scrolls made during the same time no longer exist at all. Although we're learning now that some CDs have longevity problems, they're still not as delicate as paper. So whether it's text or audio/visual presentations, chances are digital forms of literature will outlast conventional books. Mel Gibson's portrayal of Hamlet will probably outlast most deadwood copies of the play. Yes, Shakespeare's no doubt spinning in his grave.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:30 PM on January 8, 2005

I don't see why libraries shouldn't carry that stuff. Who's to say the new Ashlee Simpson is more or less virtuous than Valley of the Dolls or any other trashy book that libraries have carried over the years. Information is information and we've reached the age where libraries need to go beyond books. However, we've also reached an age in which libraries are being closed and having their hours severely limited. First things first, I guess.
posted by Arch Stanton at 12:31 PM on January 8, 2005

What is the role of the Schlessman Family Branch Library in the overall library system consisting of more than a dozen different branches. Is the Schlessman Branch intended to be focused on multimedia, popular culture and conversation in contrast to The Central Library? Personally, this guy seems to have an agenda, and I'd like to see more prespectives on this branch.

josh: kyrademon, my argument is not that Ashlee replaces Auden in the library (though sometimes it does). My argument is that the library sends a message, in the way it's organized and in the items it highlights, to the people who go there about what's available and what is good. The message that Eminem is awesome is trumpeted from every corner; why should the public library also trumpet it?

Well, there seems to be a hidden ideology behind your arguments on the subject. There is a pretty old fossilized position in regards to literacy which holds that the wrong kind of literacy is worse than illiteracy.

The other position is that getting people to read, listen, or watch anything these days is a good thing. Public libraries are caught in a catch-22 in that they are expected to both "serve the community" and "be educational." If a library stocks only Austin, Bronte and Shelly, then they are not meeting their mission to the community. However, they also get shit for shelving Stephen King.

I think you need to consider two things. First, not everyone has economic access to Buffy or Eminem. The idea that one can simply get that if they want it by flipping on the television or buying the disk at borders reveals some middle-class blinders. Second, a few years down the road, Buffy and Eminem may be artefacts that are important for that kid doing the first research paper.

mdn: yes, libraries are meant to be quiet! It has nothing to do with sanctity; it's just meant to be a place where you can think and read!

What a library is "meant" to do depends a lot on that library's particular relationship with the community it serves. Most libraries I've seen have both a noisy group space, and a quiet individual study space. My own University library system actually has floors devoted to group work, while keeping the stacks silent.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:33 PM on January 8, 2005

god forbid a taxpayer funded institution should actually give the taxpayers what they want ... what struck me as false about this article is that there's no indication that he walked past the displays and into the book racks to see what kind of worthy literature they did have ... if he can't be bothered to look for it, what gives him the idea others should be?

a lot of pre-1900 literature is downloadable ... if people really want it, they'll have it ... i've been going to a lot of library booksales lately ... it's a little disturbing to see the kind of thing they're discarding ... but their loss is my gain

one thing this reporter's mindset seems to forget is that our times have seen an extraordinary explosion in culture, unmatched in quantity and quality ... this IS the golden age of western civ ... why shouldn't libraries indulge in it?
posted by pyramid termite at 12:51 PM on January 8, 2005

You know, I think I'm going to change my mind -- I'm somewhat persuaded by josh's arguments, especially after reconsidering exactly how powerful american pop culture already is, and the tendency it has to subsume and marginalize other stuff... and its messages are not having any trouble getting out.

The mere presence of Ashlee Simpson in a library collection still doesn't bother me... there are a number of useful purposes it can serve, as others have pointed out in this thread. But on balance, I agree that a library that looks like the one josh or cedar describes isn't really worth having.
posted by weston at 1:01 PM on January 8, 2005

What libraries ought not have: computers and other new-fangled crap

What libraries should have: a place for the homeless to hang out in

A place to meet girls

A cozy spot for cell phone calls
posted by Postroad at 1:01 PM on January 8, 2005

what struck me as false about this article is that there's no indication that he walked past the displays and into the book racks to see what kind of worthy literature they did have

Indeed. If increasing circulation numbers brings more money to the library, then great! And if DVDs get kids into the library at all, great! And if people who can't afford $18 to buy a CD can listen to it for free at a library, great!

I don't see anything in the article that indicates this is taking away from the research/reading value of the library. Funding is down, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the DVDs and CDs represent a net loss to the library. As mentioned above, more card-carrying members and more items circulated can mean more funding for the library.

In this day and age, anything that keeps them open is a good thing. I guess the knob who wrote this hasn't felt the blow of losing any of his hometown's libraries yet.
posted by scarabic at 1:01 PM on January 8, 2005

god forbid a taxpayer funded institution should actually give the taxpayers what they want .

While the civic principle of taxation being tied to representation seems like a sound one, it doesn't at all mean "customer is king" in a public context.

our times have seen an extraordinary explosion in culture, unmatched in quantity and quality ... this IS the golden age of western civ

There's a lot of fantastic work produced in the 20th/21st centuries, and I'd bet that even in the most staid and stuffy library, you'd find the majority of materials are in fact from this time period. But are Ashlee and Buffy the highlights of what we've produced as a culture? Do patrons need any help discovering them? Those are the kind of questions that have to be asked, rather than shoved aside with the idea that "Well, modern times are the best anyway! What's wrong with our culture? Emininem r00lz!"
posted by weston at 1:08 PM on January 8, 2005

I would welcome the writer to spend some time volunteering in my library. He needs to truly see what goes on behind the scenes.

We buy the latest releases of DVDs here. When I started I was against doing so. I thought the library should buy only those expensive sets most people can't afford or would only watch once. What really changed my mind was checking out a few DVDs to two parents who arrived with their wide-eyed children. They'd saved up and purchased a $49 DVD player for the family Christmas. They knew the library had hundreds of DVDs they could check out. Without cable or a VCR they hadn't seen a commercial free movie in years. Who am I to say what they should or shouldn't watch? SO we buy a little bit of everything and what is never checked out we sell in the Friend's Room and order more of what is requested.

Our new DVDs are returned. They check out often. We get a nice jump in circulation, which justifies our requests for funds. Which enables us to purchase a wider variety of materials.

As a side note, out librarians also check out books. Our clerks help out in the computer lab, and our IT people help with cataloging. The best way for a staff to understand the needs of the patrons is to deal with the patrons.

(On preview: Postroad: we have all that you are looking for plus the new fangled crap. Patrons can even read your website if they choose.)
posted by ?! at 1:10 PM on January 8, 2005

weston: The mere presence of Ashlee Simpson in a library collection still doesn't bother me... there are a number of useful purposes it can serve, as others have pointed out in this thread. But on balance, I agree that a library that looks like the one josh or cedar describes isn't really worth having.

I've looked through josh's posts and I don't see a description of a library. What I see is a pretty uncritical acceptance of a description in an op-ed that really needs further discussion.

The Dever Post article cites exactly one, ONE title at this library branch's collection. We don't know what other titles might be surrounding Buffy. We don't know the full scope of the CD and DVD collections at this branch.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:10 PM on January 8, 2005

cedar: I wish I worked in your library, though in some ways it does sound like the library I work in.

jessamyn, when you say You can't pay a public librarian a bookstore clerk's salary are you saying that a librarian doesn't bring in as much a book store clerk?

I mean that if you follow the Borders model you can't afford people like librarians to work in your bookstore-like library and the model all falls apart. And as gesamtkunstwerk says, they often provide pretty good service. It was a confusing sentence, admittedly. Many libraries are unionized and librarians who have been around a while make an okay amount of money, not comparable to other jobs where people are required to have Master's degrees, but at least in bigger systems, it's not poverty level wages either.

And josh, that NEA article got a lot of press but what the NEA narrowly defines as literature isn't necessarily what people are reading, and the fact that people are reading less of what the NEA defines as literature [no non-fiction, for example] doesn't mean they are any less literate, which is also a studied result. I think you and I are on the same side of the fence on this argument generally, but I just wanted to make sure people know that there are multiple interpretations of what the NEA study means for the future of libraries, literature and the effect of alternative media and the effects of the Internet.
posted by jessamyn at 1:15 PM on January 8, 2005

He mourns the dumbing down of libraries, how nobody uses them correctly anymore, and then to prove his point he goes and writes an article without doing any research whatsoever.

There are lots of things you could complain about with modern libraries, and lots of little hypocrisies and shocking things people don't know that could be brought to light, but this article doesn't make any of those valid points, and the guy clearly has no clue what he's talking about.

Let's have this debate with somebody who is worth debating, is all I'm saying.
posted by Hildago at 1:18 PM on January 8, 2005

If I didn't have a university library, and all I had were the local library and B&N, I would have to order those books sight-unseen from Amazon.

You could order the book through the B&N store and take a look at it with no commitment to buy it.
posted by drezdn at 1:20 PM on January 8, 2005

He should be upset that people just don't want to hang out in libraries anymore.

Back in the mid-80s when I was visiting friends in Denver and tried to see what the main library downtown had on its shelves (one of my favorite travel hobbies), they wouldn't even let me in the front door because I didn't have a card. "I don't want to take stuff out," I said, "I just want to look at it." "Nope," they said. "You can't come in." Don't know if this is still true, but it's always put Denver at the top of my 'America’s Worst Libraries' list.
posted by LeLiLo at 1:32 PM on January 8, 2005

I don't see why libraries shouldn't carry that stuff. Who's to say the new Ashlee Simpson is more or less virtuous than Valley of the Dolls or any other trashy book that libraries have carried over the years.

The point isn't what they carry--it's what they promote, highlight, and organize themselves around. The article isn't about the contents of libraries--or, at least, my argument isn't about that--it's about the ways in which libraries are designed, the ways in which they present information, and the behaviors they encourage.

a hidden ideology . . . . First, not everyone has economic access to Buffy or Eminem. The idea that one can simply get that if they want it by flipping on the television or buying the disk at borders reveals some middle-class blinders.

Again, my argument is not that libraries should not carry Buffy or Eminem. This is not about content; it is about presentation, which is, of course, a kind of content. My argument is that libraries can chose how they present what is on offer, that that choice matters, and that they should not chose to highlight our already extremely visible popular culture at the expense of their other worthy offerings. Popular culture is widely advertised, yet it is only a small fraction of what is valuable in our culture and of what is available in the library. Why does it deserve, as I wrote above, pride of place, rather than a place, in the design of libraries?

I'm not opposed to having the Buffy DVDs, or to having lots of comfy seating--lord knows that's great. I'm opposed to the Borderization of libraries, which is different.

The idea on offer in this thread, an idea I don't get at all, seems to go something like this: libraries should be a 'neutral' cultural space that offers something for everybody. A good example of a neutral cultural space is the Borders Books Cafe. Therefore, libraries should become more like the Borders Cafe. And in fact, to the extent that libraries are not like Borders, they are repressive promulgators of stuffy, calcified, bourgeois values.

I don't believe this at all, because there is no such thing as cultural neutrality. If a library has a big table in the front piled high with books by dead white guys, this means, "We promote the reading of these books at the expense of other books." If they have a cafe with free coffee and listening stations and tables piled high with magazines, this means, "Please listen to our CDs and read our copy of Rolling Stone." Neither is a culturally neutral statement--both are making a statement about values. I disagree with the statement of values the library is making.

From the article:

In Schlessman, the display tables situated in your path to entice you don't feature anything approaching a classic work of literature. As Jackson explains it, "the library is not set up to make judgments about what to make available." I suppose that's why I'm left staring at a stack of Tatum O'Neil's new bio, "A Paper Life."

The argument here is that a table of "classic literature" would be making a value judgment about what's worth reading. Well, that's true; but a table full of books like Tatum O'Neil's biography is also making a value judgment, and to pretend that it's not is silly. There is no such thing as a neutral cultural decision, especially when you're doing things like stacking books on a table in a public library, or installing listening stations for the newest Slipknot CD. So, to choose to model your library on a bookstore cafe is to chose certain kinds of works over others. It is just as much a value judgment as stacking the tables with great books. So why should we chose to stack our library tables with pop culture over anything else? It's not as though the tables aren't stacked with pop culture everywhere else already.

Popular culture is not the underdog, in desperate need of help in the fight against all those dusty old books by dead people. As that NEA report, and many other reports, show, literature is losing. Popular culture is immensely powerful in our society, much, much more powerful than quote-unquote literary elitist culture. Libraries should offer popular culture; but if they're going to chose to promote something, then why chose to promote Ashlee Simpson et. al.?

Now again, I'm not arguing for censorship or something crazy like that; I don't think libraries should say, "We won't carry that book because it sucks" if they can help it. Everyone's points about how libraries are archives, how they should serve the community, how they should avoid censorious positions, all those points are true; but, unfortunately, every decision a library makes implicates it in some sort of cultural evaluation. Now, I have been in many libraries that use their power in a sensible way to offer visitors a range of options. And what I'm arguing is that the use of power described in the article is not sensible at all. Decisions like the ones described should be recognized as a use of power to influence people, and evaluated as such.

jessamyn--yes, I should clarify--the NEA defines "literature" as "imaginative literature," i.e., poetry and fiction; lots of people are reading non-fiction, though I'm not sure if that number has increased or decreased if you look at 'serious' non-fiction. But, I'm a grad student in English lit.; I think it's really important that people read "imaginative literature" and I think the decline matters. So I stand by that study.

And on preview: it's definitely true that there are lots of libraries not like this one--but there are lots like this one and moving in this direction that I've been to, so I think the discussion isn't entirely groundless.

A lot of the rhetoric getting thrown around here has a 'sticking it to the Man' quality, the man being books that are not best-sellers. Well, Ashlee is the Man nowadays.
posted by josh at 1:49 PM on January 8, 2005

It seems to me this article and the whole debate over what a library should and should not be comes down to personal taste. For instance, when the author of the article David Harsanyi says "It's on these visits that I typically spot an unfortunate soul in his mid-30s checking out a half-dozen episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," or some such thing, and instantly I question the function of the library system - and humanity's mental state in general," what he is really saying is "Some people enjoy different things than I do so they must be crazy."

Harsanyi does raise some interesting questions:
Is this what a library has become - a ghastly postmodern structure filled with espressos, listening stations and "Buffy" DVDs?

'Ghastly,' eh? Again this is a matter of personal taste. And the answer is yes, this is what one library has become. This library, not all libraries everywhere.

Big business? Should a library be in business at all? Should it compete with Blockbuster? Or should it provide a basic level of educational and research services for the community?

A library exists to serve the community, not profit from it. So no, a library should not be in business and should not compete with Blockbuster. Yes, of course a library should provide a basic level of educational and research services. But if a library has the budget to go beyond the basics and also toss in a movie or a CD or two, so much the better.

I remember back in the days right after University when I was a broke-ass bookstore clerk and a special Friday night treat was a twenty-five cent popsicle and a free flick from the library. Let The Good Times Roll!

I loved those free movies. I checked out books as well, and CDs, and the bookstore I worked in allowed us to borrow anything in the store for free-- so I had plenty of reading material, but after a long week of work it was awfully nice just to be able to kick back, unwind and watch a movie. What's so wrong about that?


But should the library give people what they want?

Yes. Community tastes should determine a library's holdings. My closest library branch is near Chinatown, and guess what? They've got books, magazines, newspapers and movies in Chinese! If taxpayers are paying, the taxpayers should get what they want. That means Buffy DVDs for some, Moby Dick for others, and "Where is Baby's Belly Button?" for David Harsanyi and his children.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:57 PM on January 8, 2005

People still don't understand how much a library will do for a patron. I am sure that Mr. Cranky Harsanyi could have asked for pretty much anything in print, and his librarian would found it for him. It wouldn't be as fast as Borders, but it would have been free, and I bet the library staff would have been thrilled to help him.

Sadly, the clean, patrician atmosphere of libraries seems to be a thing of the past, but the actual availability of high-brow books has never been better. That is, in places with publically funded libraries.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 2:08 PM on January 8, 2005

Mel Gibson's portrayal of Hamlet will probably outlast most deadwood copies of the play.

Seems to me that Shakespeare's work has made it on dead wood for four hunred years so far. Are you aware of this argument:

The computer files may survive but the equipment to make sense of them might not. This era could become a "digital dark age" - a part of its collective memories forever lost.

See also here.
posted by piskycritter at 2:23 PM on January 8, 2005

Josh: My argument is that libraries can chose how they present what is on offer, that that choice matters, and that they should not chose to highlight our already extremely visible popular culture at the expense of their other worthy offerings.

I would tend to think that the items highlighted are highlighted due to trends in borrowing that show the library that those things are what the majority are looking for.

I'm sorry, but your argument about presentation is just as elitist as an argument about content would be.
posted by Bort at 2:35 PM on January 8, 2005

This is as good a place as any to relate this true conversation. I used to staff a desk in a section of the library that contained fiction books and videos. People would come up to the desk asking for "The Grapes of Wrath" and I'd be halfway through the transaction, on my way to get the book for them, when I realized they wanted the movie. So I often started asking people when they blurted out a title if they wanted the book or the movie. The following conversation ensued:

Patron (high school kid): Do you have "The Red Badge of Courage?"

Me: The book or the movie?

Patron: It's on video? I'll take that!

I hand him a copy of the Audie Murphy version of the movie.

Patron: Oh, it's in black and white. Do you have the Cliff Notes?
____________________________________

For whatever that was worth.

I've worked in several different library systems, and it was always a constant battle between buying what people "should" read and what they wanted to read. People would get pissed off in an elitist kind of way if we did not have a copy of "Moby Dick" on the shelf the same moment they walked in the building. People would also get pissed if we did not have the newest John Grisham book on the shelf: "Its #1 on the bestseller list! What kind of library is this?" Libraries have limited funds and I've known lots of conscientious, professional librarians who have agonized over how to allocate their meager budgets. I know the DVDs and music bring in lots of traffic, and you can take those numbers with you when you go asking for money from the county or city.
posted by marxchivist at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2005

I can only dream that someday our city will build libraries which cater only to people with my educational level, my income level, my political and religious affiliations, my sexual preference, my skin color, my age, and, of course, my tastes. We must, for once and for all, rid ourselves of the foolish desire to make libraries "public."
posted by CrunchyGods at 2:45 PM on January 8, 2005

I would tend to think that the items highlighted are highlighted due to trends in borrowing that show the library that those things are what the majority are looking for.

I'm sorry, but your argument about presentation is just as elitist as an argument about content would be.

As weston pointed out above, only if you assume that the job of the library is to be entirely 100% dependent upon what its customers want. As the 'the library is an archive' argument points out, libraries have many functions besides the most immediately obvious ones.
posted by josh at 2:51 PM on January 8, 2005

Mel Gibson's portrayal of Hamlet will probably outlast most deadwood copies of the play.

are you kidding??
first of all, paper lasts longer than most electronic media (tapes & cds "die" after 10 or 20 years; books can last for hundreds). Second, books are much easier to 'decode'; all you need is sight & a broca's area, while electronic media would require figuring out how to build a cd player from looking at a cd... but most important, do you really think more people/institutions own copies of mel gibson performing hamlet than own copies of the play itself? I doubt I know anyone who owns the former, while I'd bet the vast majority of people I know have a copy of hamlet somewhere.

Most libraries I've seen have both a noisy group space, and a quiet individual study space.

I wasn't in a "group study" space. I was in a reading room, and it wasn't that people were studying together, it's that people would randomly talk now & then & no one would 'shush' them. A clerk would come from upstairs and have a conversation with one of his peers at normal voice levels, or some guy would pass a table and ask a question about the newspaper. It didn't seem to be different in the room upstairs. I didn't check everywhere, but they were simply much less concerned about keeping the space quiet. Maybe it's their policy; all I'm saying is that I noticed it and was surprised (and am glad I have my school library to return to, where they are more aware of trying to maintain a study environment).

I don't think there's anything wrong with stocking pop culture at the library; generally I agree it's good. But I agree with josh about emphasis.

The works of Mark Twain and Jules Verne were considered popular fiction at one time too,

Twain was pop fiction the way john irving or martin amis or dave eggers were pop fiction, not the way danielle steele was (is?). Jules verne was 'good genre', like philip k dick or dashiel hammett. There have always been many levels of lit. vs. pop.
posted by mdn at 3:04 PM on January 8, 2005

Bort: ... I guess I just think that libraries should be, and in fact are, more than free, lending-based book-, video-, and music stores, and that librarians are way more than the equivalents of clerks and branch managers, if only by virtue of the fact that they're always making value judgments based on limited space and funds. So the 'value judgments=elitism' argument doesn't hold water for me.
posted by josh at 3:08 PM on January 8, 2005

Well if we're going to go all out and subject libraries to market forces then the entire model is broken.

These people complaining that the poor can't afford Eminem and so somebody must provide his music must surely realize the absurdity of this argument. If libraries are naught more than social welfare then we should focus completely on efficiency. Libraries, with their continual decline in membership, can hardly be regarded as efficient. We'd be better off offering tax breaks to purchases in support of "culture" or just offering tax incentives directly to the people who produce "cultural artifacts" thereby lowering the price for all.

If you truly take a library's mission to be nothing more than providing as much information as possible to the masses then really you should be willing to throw out the entire system. There are more economical mechanisms to get the latest Ashlee Simpson to everybody who wants it. Heck, if we take libraries to be just like Borders except free then it'd probably be a whole lot cheaper to work out a deal with Borders directly.
posted by nixerman at 3:26 PM on January 8, 2005

What's being ignored is that libraries offer something for EVERYONE. Find me a more economical mechanism to get to as wide a range of "the public" the information/training/materials/computer time/online databases/publishing capabilities/services/quality events/and so on and so on . . that they want, nixerman.

Hell, in February my library's bringing Seymour Hersh to speak and anyone can come and listen, interact and learn.

Some libraries are very efficient. I think your tax incentive ideas are ludicrous. The production of cultural artifacts? Libraries are vital repositories and places of learning as well as lending institutions. They are not cultural artifacts or museums.
posted by punkbitch at 4:00 PM on January 8, 2005

Josh -

I understand your argument, and I sympathize, but I also disagree. I just don't care all that much about the presentation. In fact, if the presentation will attract more people into the cash-strapped libraries, I'm all in favor of it.

Are some of the books I want to read relegated to the stacks in the back? The upper floors? The twisty, out-of-the-way corridors? Fine with me, as long as they're there. I'll find them.

And maybe the people browsing through "Rolling Stone" out front will wander back into the stacks some day. And maybe they won't. And maybe they would never have come inside in the first place if they couldn't browse through "Rolling Stone". And maybe they would. I don't really care. What I care about is that people who can't afford to buy their own entertainment and enlightenment can find what they want - whatever that may happen to be, and wherever it may happen to be stored. To me, the only problem is when they can't.

On preview: nixerman, it's already been pointed out that libraries serve as cultural archives, public meeting spaces, and research facilities as well as providing social welfare. But they also provide social welfare, and seem a reasonablhy efficient way to do it anyway. You really think that giving everyone with free CD's would be cheaper than providing a public repository for a finite number of shared, community-owned CD's? How?
posted by kyrademon at 4:01 PM on January 8, 2005

Should libraries give the people what they want, if what they want is an Ashlee Simpson CD?

It depends how much money the library has and what they already have on the shelves and whether the library is buying for the long term or for the short term.

If a library has unlimited funds and shelf space, it should buy everything. Fun With Fondue. Felcher's Quarterly. Buffy. Jody. If it can buy Shakespeare or Buffy but not both, however, it should buy Shakespeare (assuming it doesn't have enough Shakespeare) for a good long-term investment. A library's place should be first to make long-term investments for the good of the community, to focus on education before (or in conjunction with) entertainment, and certainly to work in collaboration with the local schools (which also have problems with funds and shelf space), and then, if there's the money and the shelf space, the libraries could buy subscriptions to Pikachu Digest and the Cap'n Crunch Decoder Ring Collector's Club Annual and so on.

People can go to video rental joints and crappy mall book stores for pop ephemera, they can watch it and listen to it on television and radio for little or nothing as it is broadcast, and friends and family are frequently good for borrowing such material if you can't afford to buy the entire Everybody Loved Raymond collection, but it isn't as easy to find good poetry in the nearest shopping mall or on your neighbor Phyllis Stein's book shelves.
posted by pracowity at 4:03 PM on January 8, 2005

josh: The article isn't about the contents of libraries--or, at least, my argument isn't about that--it's about the ways in which libraries are designed, the ways in which they present information, and the behaviors they encourage.

So what we have here is a library branch that is designed around and presents information around what you call a "Borders" model. Of course, what you ignore is that the Borders coffee house is a modern incarnation of a venue for literacy that is older than the public lending library: the coffee house. The coffee house can be credited as an important venue for the popularization of the enlightement, the novel, and the periodical press. (The public lending library in contrast is cedited alternately with Benjamin Franklin and Robert Owen.)

If they have a cafe with free coffee and listening stations and tables piled high with magazines, this means, "Please listen to our CDs and read our copy of Rolling Stone." Neither is a culturally neutral statement--both are making a statement about values. I disagree with the statement of values the library is making.

And again, what we have here is an op-ed from a person with a distinctly non-neutral agenda: opposing an expansion of library services. As a result, I'm not willing to make a judgement on the statement of values the library is making.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:08 PM on January 8, 2005

But it isn't quite as simple as that, pracowity. It's not a choice between one title and another title.

You have X dollars and Y shelf space. You could easily fill the whole thing either with classics or with new media. Do you only go with classics, as a good long-term investment? But then you're losing a wide body of patrons, the long-term interest of much of the youth, and the dollars that come with increased circulation. So do you only go with new media? But then you're losing your purpose as an archive, as a research facility, as the only place to go for out-of-print materials, and a quite good-sized body of patrons that wants access to older literature. So what do you do?

Clearly, you've got to have a certain amount of both. And that probably means losing a certain amount of both, too, due to limited funds and shelf space. And I suspect what to acquire and what not to is one of the hardest and most important decisions people who run libraries have to make.
posted by kyrademon at 4:12 PM on January 8, 2005

kyrademon, indeed, that's precisely what I think. Tax incentives work. They are a tool used by governments all over the world to promote certain behaviors in a society. But the economic value of libraries, when it comes to providing the poor with the latest and greatest pop, is pretty dubious. I'm sure you could serenade me with anecdotes about that one poor family that can't afford the $5.99 bargin bin at Best Buy but this is worthless. If libraries are to be presented as cultural welfare then I want to see a serious economic justification for this use of tax dollars.

As I mentioned above, looking at it this way, the entire system looks like a wash at best. If libraries are just free Borders then let's just make a deal with Borders directly. I'm sure we could work something out where the poor are kept in all the latest DVDs and governments save money on the whole.

What's being ignored is that libraries offer something for EVERYONE.

It's clear that libraries cannot please everyone so, at best, we'd have to settle for pleasing as many people as possible. I'd propose that the free market already does this more efficiently, both at the production and the distribution level, and thus again, libraries must be considered redundant to real cultural repositories like Borders. Again, if you're making the economic argument that libraries offer something for everyone who couldn't otherwise afford Border's prices I'd accept this but then the entire value model of libraries must necessarily be questioned and put to more thorough economic analysis.
posted by nixerman at 4:34 PM on January 8, 2005

Old, cranky snob hates pop culture. News at 11.
posted by bshort at 4:42 PM on January 8, 2005

Nixerman - OK, I'll accept, for the moment, that if the sole purpose of libraries was providing everyone with the latest and greatest pop, libraries are an inefficient way to do it.

However, that was never my argument, and I doubt it's the argument of most people here. What we've been saying is that is one of the many and varied functions a library has.

The primary function of police is not to, say, give directions to lost children. In fact, they are a highly inefficent method of directing lost children. But that does not mean either that the police department should be scrapped, or they should refrain from directing lost children when called upon to do so, no?
posted by kyrademon at 4:48 PM on January 8, 2005

nixerman: These people complaining that the poor can't afford Eminem and so somebody must provide his music must surely realize the absurdity of this argument.

Which is a pretty bad mangling of the argument being presented to the point of being a straw man.

The basic principle is that inclusion on library bookshelves should not depend on mass-market availability. And to some degree, the worthiness of inclusion in a collection is based on demand. After all the mass demand for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is likely to be a sign that particular book is likely to be influential.

kyrademon: And maybe the people browsing through "Rolling Stone" out front will wander back into the stacks some day. And maybe they won't. And maybe they would never have come inside in the first place if they couldn't browse through "Rolling Stone".

And lets be blunt. Love it or hate it, "Rolling Stone" is a barometer of popular culture and worth archiving and preserving. If I had to pick one periodical from that whole genre of music magazines, "Rolling Stone" would win. I'm not fond of Eminem but a library with a music collection that does not hold and archive the most popular disks of the year is not doing its job.

I met a guy who was doing his dissertation stuying the evolution of Cosmopolitan from being the equivalent of The Atlantic or The NYT Magazine in the 20s to fluff marketing vehicles in the 30s. You never know what might be important to someone doing research somewhere down the road.

nixerman: But the economic value of libraries, when it comes to providing the poor with the latest and greatest pop, is pretty dubious.

I don't see anybody advancing the argument that the purpose of libraries is to supply the "latest and greatest pop." The argument being made is that any library collection of value is going to include popular recent works as well as older works. The same argument can be applied to Moby Dick as well as Eminem. After all, I have my choice of 5 editions of Moby Dick at Borders.

I'd propose that the free market already does this more efficiently, both at the production and the distribution level, and thus again, libraries must be considered redundant to real cultural repositories like Borders.

In what way is Borders a cultural repository? Certainly Borders offers me a wider selection of periodicals, but it does not hold them on the shelves after the next issue is distributed. I'm unlikely to find Titus Andronicus (just to pick one of the less popular Shakespeare plays) at Borders, or an out-of-print edition of a Pittman shorthand dictionary.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:53 PM on January 8, 2005

Taxpayer here: Yes, I'd like my local library system, which I support with my huge real estate taxes and my donations to provide some goodies.
posted by fixedgear at 4:57 PM on January 8, 2005

Wait wait wait. libraries are nothing like Borders, despite what Mr. Harseanyi says. Borders does not give me free access to newspaper and acadmeic archives/databases from around the world. Borders does not give me literacy programming, cultural events, research services etc. while still providing lending services.

Why do we continue to want to throw greed at every problem to fix it? The Market is not pure, it is profit-driven at best. Is profit-driven "in the best interest of the people?"
posted by punkbitch at 4:57 PM on January 8, 2005

make that "merely profit driven." "at best" was stupid. Sorry.
posted by punkbitch at 5:04 PM on January 8, 2005

kyrademon, looking through the thread I see two basic arguments: (1) libraries are Borders for the poor (2) libraries should provide as much information as possible (without making value judgements). Both arguments are stupid and dishonest, (we all know libraries can't buy everything and the economic value of libraries to the poor is pretty damn questionable) but the real danger in both arguments is the simplistic notion libraries as just a tax supported, point-of-sale for pop music and movies (what, according to market analysis, people in a community really want).

I don't quite agree with the author of the article (for one, I love Buffy! Yay Buffy!) but I would very much agree that libraries should not serve as just "a free Barnes & Noble" nor should its goal be higher and higher circulation numbers. In this sense, the article is on point.

On preview, KirkJobSluder, sorry to be a shill, but you should talk to a Borders clerk. You'd have absolutely no problem getting any of Shakespeare's plays or his complete works through the store. The notion that individual libraries can provide access to rare and "unpopular" books better than the market is pretty suspect.
posted by nixerman at 5:17 PM on January 8, 2005

Nixerman:

1. Borders only has books in print. Libraries have many out of print books. So I cannot find say, Simone de Beauvoir's Les Belles Idees there and they cannot order it.

2. and the economic value of libraries to the poor is pretty damn questionable

Are you on drugs? It is free information. These days, when it seems that access to info gets more and more expensive, the library is where it's at.
posted by dame at 5:41 PM on January 8, 2005

kyrademon: However, that was never my argument, and I doubt it's the argument of most people here. What we've been saying is that is one of the many and varied functions a library has.

It's a misunderstanding of something I said a while back, which was a misunderstanding of what josh said.

But to address the issue, I have doubts that vouchers for a local bookstore can provide cheaper service than a public lending library. Why? The list price for the next hardcover Harry Potter is $30.00. Sharing this book among 50-odd patrons means that the cost per patron runs about $0.60 cents per person. I really don't see the seismic shift in the publishing industry that will beat this cost.

nixerman:

I don't think people are making the arguments that you claim are being made. What you seem to be doing is moshing together two unrelated arguments:

1) Libraries provide valuable resources to people without the economic means to purchase them.

So for example, when I was a kid, I got about 4 books a year. Two for Chistmas and two for my birthday. Having a library card enabled me to feed my brain at a rate of 5 novels a week. Libraries enabled me to read quite a bit more than I would have if I didn't have access to a library.

2) Library collections should include current popular works along with the "classics."

Of course libraries make value judgements about what to purchase (and do you really think that Borders does not?). I think however, that popularity is just as valid a criteria for inclusion as critical reviews or appearance on a recommended purchase list. A broad collections policy will include popular works (such an Eminem and Buffy), as well as obscure but critically approved genre works.

Somehow you turned this into "Borders for the poor." I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how.

On preview, KirkJobSluder, sorry to be a shill, but you should talk to a Borders clerk. You'd have absolutely no problem getting any of Shakespeare's plays or his complete works through the store. The notion that individual libraries can provide access to rare and "unpopular" books better than the market is pretty suspect.

Well, certainly I can put in a special order for most works (assuming it is in print). I do put in a fair number of special orders. However, why should I purchase a copy of a book that might be of limited use and I only need to read once? The problem gets worse when you are talking academic works that can cost an arm and a leg. I work hard enough to make a living that I only slap down $20-80 for a book only when necessary.

In regards to "individual libraries" well, two words: "interlibrary loan." And you still have not addressed the problem that while I can get last year's NYT at the library, I can't get yesterday's NYT at Borders.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:14 PM on January 8, 2005

And lets put a price on it:

Movies: Of course I do get Netflix as well but I also check out a lot from the library. We do about 10 from the library a month, assuming $3 a rental that comes to about $30/month.

Books: There really isn't a book rental service. So lets say an average purchase price of $10 a book: I read about 5 a month, laura goes through about 12. So $170/month.

Periodicals: Scientific American, In These Times, PC World, PC Magazine, Utne Reader, National Geographic, Discover, occasional issues of The Progressive, National Review, E (environment magazine), and Science News. Lets just say $10 a month.

So, putting a price on these things, it would probably cost us about $210 a month to replace the services and resources that we get from our local library.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:28 PM on January 8, 2005

Touchy subject!

Basically, you would probably want enough, that is to say, to furnish the makings of the average college freshman paper. It isn't always happening.

My parent's local library is called the best library in Monmouth County New Jersey.

It has a whole shelf of Barbara Cartland.

They don't have a thing by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Here's a peeve- Travel books? Annual where-to-stay-and- eat-and-shop books, that is. I mean, if you can afford to go to, say, Borneo, Katmandhu, Paris, Buenos Aires, surely you can afford to buy the tour guide. If not, then why are you reading Fodors in the first place?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:48 PM on January 8, 2005

well, an item's original intended use (travel book for example) might not be what a patron uses the item for. Some kids use the history sections out of the travel books for reports and such. Its concise information if you're writing a story about a place you've never been. Or maybe a reporter uses the guides for background information.
posted by punkbitch at 6:58 PM on January 8, 2005

?! wrote;

As a side note, out librarians also check out books. Our clerks help out in the computer lab, and our IT people help with cataloging. The best way for a staff to understand the needs of the patrons is to deal with the patrons.

That happens in smaller libraries, or in libraries with smart librarians. Gods know, I spent hours working circ every day when I held the job title of librarian. It is the only way to see if you are buying the right stuff to serve your community. You can run all the reports you wish, but you'll learn a lot more working a few hours at circ and talking with patrons as you do it.

Still, most places, most of the people working circ are not MLS librarians. And I've run into way too many MLS holders who wouldn't be caught dead checking out books. It is one of my big pet peeves.

Another, as Jessamyn noted, is librarians who have "customers", not patrons. Patrons are people you are helping. Customers are people you are trying to get money from in return for some service. There is a huge difference.
posted by QIbHom at 7:47 PM on January 8, 2005

Public Libraries exist to collectively purchase information and access by pooling community funds. It is inarguably valid for us to measure our success by the amount of community use we are able to deliver with the resources available. The opposing Fuddy-Duddyism may merely be the throes of a quickly retiring work force, but society can still arbitrarily declare that the Library should try to have interesting content even if it may be less in-demand. Does it?

It's not an either-or choice. Successful libraries build a collection that is as broad, deep, and responsive as possible, but all three axes are subject to available funding. They promote the interesting stuff. The popular stuff doesn't need promotion, but hiding the Dan Brown behind the Pynchon will only result in the Pynchon getting repeatedly knocked over. Both selected and demanded materials are usually on display in the lobby. Really, Borders does the same thing, only they select what to push based on margin, not quality.

If Public Libraries had been responsive in the early 80s, there wouldn't be a Blockbuster, but Suncoast might still be in business. Where we are now, my greatest fear is that the content industry might pull its head out of its ass someday and make the consumer an offer they can't refuse... that fulfills all their content needs, and doesn't include us. If we won't buy what a shallow teenager wants, that teenager never even thinks of us when they're grown up and looking to read What Maisie Knew.... or would like My Many-Colored Days for bedtime. If we lose them, we won't have their support when we need it.

besides, did he miss that it was the FAMILY branch library, not the ELITIST PRICK branch library
posted by ulotrichous at 7:51 PM on January 8, 2005

My mom lives within walking distance of this library, and she loves it. It's always busy, and hard to find parking. I think she told me it's the busiest one in the Denver system.
posted by beth at 8:05 PM on January 8, 2005

All the libraries I've seen in the past 15 years are, frankly, crap. I don't have all the answers, but clearly they are not getting it right. If they don't establish a niche for themselves now where they excel, then they are going to be eliminated in short order as the type of ephemera they are trending towards becomes ubiquitous online. If they can't do books AND other media well, due to insufficient funding or what-have-you, then they ought to choose books and let someone else handle the other stuff, because it's certain that no one else is going to choose books. You can't be all things to all people, and you'll only disappoint everyone if you try.
posted by rushmc at 8:15 PM on January 8, 2005

Look, the bottom line for me is this: Do you believe that some literature, music, and film is better than other literature, music, and film? If so, how do you justify putting the worst before the best?

Clearly, say I, Hamlet is better than The Da Vinci Code. Ray Charles is better than Ashlee Simpson. Casablanca is better than The Day After Tomorrow. It may be the case that today's trash is tomorrow's treasure, but that doesn't stop me from making judgments. It's called being critical and having a critical approach to culture. It's what we all do, more or less, all the time. If they decide that Danielle Steele is the Jane Austen of the 20th century, that will be because they've made a judgment, not because some objective test has "proven" it. And so we have the right and the obligation to make judgments too.

That's culture. Culture is judgment more than it's product.

Libraries have limited space to advertise books. If you believe that some books are better than others, why advertise the bad ones over the good ones? If you know that Tatum O'Neil's biography is worse than J. M. Coetzee's new novel, why advertise the O'Neil? Sure, carry Ashlee Simpson and Tatum O'Niel; but don't re-design your library around them because they're popular. They're already popular, they don't need your help. If you'll look for the good books even when they're hidden away, then the argument cuts both ways: if people really want Ashlee, they'll look for it in the stacks. Meanwhile, maybe they'll happen to see something worthwhile on the way back there.

This is not rocket science, and it's not elitism, which is everyone's favorite epithet. I think it's a recognition of the simple fact that whenever there is culture, there is judgment. When the librarian says that "the library is not set up to make judgments about what to make available," all he is doing is passing the buck. Somebody else is making the judgment then: a record company, a publishing company, a movie studio. And, by implication, the library is saying that those judgments are the right ones. When they do this, they are working against their better judgment.

Should libraries offer a wide range of literature, music, and film, from 'high culture' and 'low culture'? Definitely. Should they give up completely and decide that in order to stay relevant, they need to stop making deliberate judgments and pass the buck on to "popular culture"? Definitely not. That's what this article, at any rate, portrays, and what some arguments here have said as well. The inevitable presence of judgment means that libraries cannot work only as 'Borders for the poor,' as popular culture outlets. That's a terrible phrase, but it comes from this comment:

I think you need to consider two things. First, not everyone has economic access to Buffy or Eminem. The idea that one can simply get that if they want it by flipping on the television or buying the disk at borders reveals some middle-class blinders. Second, a few years down the road, Buffy and Eminem may be artefacts that are important for that kid doing the first research paper.

I don't and never have disagreed with either of those statements, but simply carrying Buffy and Eminem is different from making it the loss-leader, or lure, or focal point, or whatever, of your library.

The truth is that only a few libraries in the world serve the purpose of archiving our "culture," i.e., the total sum of printed, filmed, and recorded matter output by human beings. Even the huge library at the university where I'm a graduate student only has books they consider worthwhile on the shelves. It's an enormous library with seemingly infinite shelf space and funds, but even it is making judgments about what's good and bad. The 'non-judgmental' library is an illusion, and a harmful one, because it tries to wish away the essence of culture and pretend that culture just "is," that it's not made.

Ultimately that way of thinking just amounts to a kind of cultural populism. To my mind, cultural elitism and cultural populism are two sides of the same coin. In both cases, instead of judging culture on what we see as its merits, we pass the buck to a higher authority. There is a way to judge culture that's not elitist. Lots of libraries do it, but apparently not this one, which has given up. That's a shame.

(That said: all libraries should have comfy chairs and coffee. That's awesome. I fully support that.)
posted by josh at 8:35 PM on January 8, 2005

Libraries have limited space to advertise books. If you believe that some books are better than others, why advertise the bad ones over the good ones?

Because some people don't respond to your suggestions. They might decide that the library has nothing to offer them. Then they vote against taxes to support the library like they did in Salinas. That's the problem.
posted by calwatch at 9:59 PM on January 8, 2005

Huh. A lot of this discussion has implicitly defined libraries as archives of cultural artifacts. I would argue that the primary purpose of non-academic libraries, for most patrons, is as a kind of ownership co-op for books and other things like books. And when I say "things like books," I mean things that would spend most of the time collecting dust if they were owned by one person, and can be put to much better (more frequent) use by circulating in the community. This obviously includes other media, and isn't limited to specific types (or brow levels) of cultural content. In fact, the category includes things that aren't cultural artifacts at all.

Want an example? There's a lending library in Oakland, CA that circulates tools. Which seems like a tricky proposition to me, but apparently it works, and it must be invaluable to those who can't afford a complete set of wrenches and drill bits.

A more common example is furnished by the now many libraries that offer computer workstations. Those computers are in use for far more hours of the day than they would be in private hands, on average. They are also available to people who can't afford private ownership.

So I am all for libraries stocking Ashlee Simpson CDs, if it doesn't cut into the classics budget. What better place for the ultimate disposable? At least those CDs will pass through a hundred pairs of hands before being discarded, instead of just one or two. If I check out a Billie Holiday CD and someone else checks out Ashlee Simpson, good for us both -- we've helped each other out, economically if not culturally. That's the co-op way.
posted by aws17576 at 10:00 PM on January 8, 2005

Though others have had grander visions...
posted by aws17576 at 10:07 PM on January 8, 2005

josh: It's called being critical and having a critical approach to culture.

Wouldn't you say that being critical, and having a critical approach to culture means not accepting the characterizations of an op-ed piece with a clearly stated agenda at face value?

Should they give up completely and decide that in order to stay relevant, they need to stop making deliberate judgments and pass the buck on to "popular culture"? Definitely not. That's what this article, at any rate, portrays, and what some arguments here have said as well.

It's what the article portrays. The question (that no one has dared to address) is whether this article is a good view of this library in specific, and the Denver Public Library system as a whole.

The inevitable presence of judgment means that libraries cannot work only as 'Borders for the poor,' as popular culture outlets. That's a terrible phrase, but it comes from this comment:

Um, where in that comment, do you get the notion that we should exercise an absence of judgement?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:00 PM on January 8, 2005

So I am all for libraries stocking Ashlee Simpson CDs, if it doesn't cut into the classics budget.

But that's precisely the problem--it does.
posted by rushmc at 12:34 AM on January 9, 2005

Libraries have limited space to advertise books. If you believe that some books are better than others, why advertise the bad ones over the good ones?

Because after the first five people come up to one of the clerks and asks where the newest best-seller is, they'll realize they can save themselves time and energy by putting it in a display? People know that the library has at least a few copies of Moby Dick, what a lot of them want to know when they walk in the door is ... where's the book I just heard about and everyone is reading? Do they have it? Where is it?

You can't make people want to read Moby Dick by putting it on a display, if the book they walked in the door for is The Da Vinci Code. On the other hand, if I walk in the door to get a copy of Moby Dick and pass a display for The Da Vinci Code, I will see there is a new book that people are reading in numbers, and if it looks interesting, I might check it out as well. I probably wouldn't have just "run across" it in the stacks, and if it's back in the stacks, I might not realize that it was new and popular. Popular books, movies and music influence the current culture, and you do have to have some exposure to it. You can't just read the classics or the obscure.

Moby Dick, while highly recommended for reading, isn't going to tell you what's influencing the culture and mindset of the current population. Herman Melville was pretty "popular" in his hey-day, but by the time he died, he was mostly a nobody. It wasn't until later that it was decided he was an "important" author. If we were having this same conversation in the late 1800's, you might be complaining that the library is stocking Moby Dick at the expense of Shakespeare (or whatever they considered "classic" and important at the time).

So to have the new and popular on display helps both the people looking specifically for that item all their friends say they have to read, see, hear and those of us who like to keep up with current culture but aren't likely to be at the library looking for something written this century. I don't see a problem with them either having these things or even promoting/displaying them.
posted by Orb at 1:42 AM on January 9, 2005

Orb, you might not see a problem with it, but I do.

I generally agree with Josh’s previous posts and those of a few others, but there are some distinctions and further arguments that I would like to make.

What really bothers me in many of the responses to the posted article is their essentially reactionary nature. Haryani seems to be making a basic conservative argument: things (at the library) are getting worse. I think that most of us sense his bias and react not to the validity or cogency of his argument, but to what we see, rightly or wrongly, as the conservative/elitist position that underlies it. The result is that, rather than examining the institution of the library and considering what it is, along with what it could be, or what it should be to our culture, we miss the point of the editorial only to limply defend the status quo that we (wrongly) identify with some breed of center-left democratic populism.

It is disingenuous to simply shake our heads at the sorry state of culture today, or to provide a cost-benefit analysis demonstrating the utility of providing books, cds, and dvds to the poor. That is avoiding the problem.

So, the question is first, can the library actually be neutral in the conflict between traditional culture and consumer culture? If it can, should it? People can only do so much; at any given moment a person can either watch the latest Mandy Moore film or read Plato's Republic, but not both. The culture industry (the complex of media and advertising conglomerates that feed us what is misleadingly termed "popular culture", along with the built-in demand for its hollow wares) would prefer that we not make any choice at all, but simply absorb the products on sale. Mass media and consumer culture want nothing more than that the vast majority of Americans spend all their so called "disposable" (was there ever a better indication that most consumer culture is garbage than this term straight from the mouths of the corporation's own economists?) income and their leisure time lusting after and consuming their products. They don't care if we do so in a passive/uncritical or an active/critical manner. Simply that we see ourselves first and foremost as consumers and that we identify ourselves by the products we consume. For some people (they are usually called philistines or some other derogatory term) this is no different than how traditional culture is employed. Thus, there is the unfortunate shitheel who sits in the coffeehouse reading Marx or Ayn Rand, not to engage with whatever ideas are to be found therein, but so that people will see him reading Marx or Ayn Rand, and think of him as someone who reads Marx or Ayn Rand. Traditional culture once offered the option to engage seriously with serious ideas, or to use their simulation as a mere instrument for social gain in aristocratic circles. The difference is that consumer culture does not have substantial ideas with which to contend, and so there is no other option than to be the Ashlee Simpson fanatic, or the chucklehead who loves Slipknot.

There is a clear and real conflict between the life envisioned by traditional culture, and that envisioned by consumer culture. That is not an elitist statement. It is elitist to reserve autonomous culture (a culture that allows for a conception of the individual as anything other than the particular manifestation of a group demographic) for yourself and those of your class, while you celebrate the happily enslaved poor who demand the very same cheap and disposable Cds and Dvds that serve to rationalize their own impoverishment.

Just as there are a limited number of things that people can do, as many have noted above, there are very clear limitations on what a library can do. Having only so much shelf space, a library cannot hope to have even a fraction of the books and other media that are currently in print, let alone all those works that are out of print. They can and do make up some of the difference with microfiche or -film, but, have you ever tried to read a novel on microfiche? A novel the size of Clarissa? Add to this the necessary budget restrictions that will force every public library, save the Library of Congress, to make choices. The local county or municipal library will always be playing a zero-sum game. Every library acquisition means that some other item cannot be purchased. This is a very important point because it means that the library really cannot retain classic works and cater to the “demands” (btw, does anyone really think that there are people who demand Ashlee Simpson or their own volition? Does anyone truly believe that Ashlee Simpson’s music is a matter of taste, rather than one of manufactured desire?) of the public. The logistics are impossible and will continue to become more impossible. Because the advertising industry has been able to create almost unlimited demand, the culture-mongers have been able to ratchet up production to unheard of levels (by contrast, if memory serves, the library at Alexandria had about 800,000 scrolls, at two to three thousand lines per, when it burned for the last time; this represented the literary output of several cultures over eight centuries) which means that hundreds of thousands of new books, cds, dvds, magazines and newspapers are produced each calendar year. This is the very definition of disposable culture. People don’t have time in their entire lives to meaningfully evaluate even a fraction of the culture industry’s output. As this output increases to keep pace with so-called “demand”, the library must devote more and more of its resources to purchasing these quickly forgotten goods. This means that when the branch library’s copy of the Aeneid gets lost, destroyed, or simply wears out they will wait until somebody actually requests it before they replace it (at the library of my large research University they don’t have a copy of Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti because some jerkoff didn’t return it. Because the university was listed as owning a copy they refused to interlibrary loan for it. They still don’t have it, seven years later.). If it is not on the shelves waiting to be picked up, many people will never find it.

For what it is worth, the public library, because of its pre-capitalist origins in noblesse oblige, offered the possibility of an escape, or at least a temporary exit from the economy of consumption and desire (it still does, in as much as it is removed from the standard system of commodity exchange) by giving access to a wide swath of information in a democratic (both in terms of its collection and in terms of its patrons) fashion. Any escape from the real and the everyday is completely compromised when the public library begins to imagine itself as a Borders or Blockbuster outlet for poor people and cheapskates.

The ideal public library would, like Alexandria or the Library of Congress, attempt to collect all written (and later audio and visual) information. Intrinsic to such a system is an organizing principle (dewey decimal or library of congress) that, although simultaneously arbitrary and biased, presents the information in a fundamentally equal way, without privileging any one author, discipline or ideology. However, this schema has the potential to go very wrong not only when items are removed from circulation for political or social reasons (censorship), but also when specific items are promoted and touted above others. Even worse is that this laughable ploy, the specially featured item, introduces the ideology of the marketplace through the technique of the adman to a place, the public library, that is one of the few remaining sanctuaries from the marketplace. The librarians who employ this and similar tactics have their rationales. But even they realize that the kid who goes to the library for the quick and passive gratification of the latest Ashton Kutcher vehicle is as likely to follow that up with Dickens as I am to accede to the presidency (This is a very apt and humorous metaphor because I am, as some of you have by now already guessed, Secretary of Education Ron Paige, and so there is only a very minor chance of this happening).

A library is never a simple warehouse of media. The library's job is, like that of the public school, to preserve and reproduce the values and attitudes that will insure the continuance of the polity it serves. Of course, the municipal public library is only one institution among many that further our current society. That said, the values of the polity the library serves will determine what kinds of things can be found therein. Likewise, the things that are found in a library will, in some small measure determine the future of the polity. Choosing what books are in a library will always be a political and ideological decision. That being the case, we have a genuine political stake in making certain that our libraries make better citizens rather than worse ones. There will always be differences of opinion about which books or other media achieve this more readily, but few reasonable people will suggest that catering to popular opinion actually serves anything but convenience and contrived desire. I posit that those people who are able to sympathize with and understand the real human emotions found in four-thousand years of world literature, are more likely to be better people, neighbors and citizens than are those who seek only to satiate their empty desire for the shallow and insipid imitations of feeling and the simulacra of personality that consumer culture serves us daily.
posted by mokujin at 3:18 AM on January 9, 2005

In the second to last paragraph I used the word "metaphor" where "analogy" is the more appropriate term. In the final sentence of the final paragraph the word "literature" should not be followed by a comma. These mistakes, any others you might find, and the generally insufferable tenor of my above essay are the direct result of checking out a Montrose album from the main branch of the Mesa public library in 1987 when I should instead have been memorizing irregular Greek verbs. I am very sorry.
posted by mokujin at 6:24 AM on January 9, 2005

Some kids use the history sections out of the travel books for reports and such. Its concise information if you're writing a story about a place you've never been. Or maybe a reporter uses the guides for background information

Yikes! Poor kids. Poor reporters.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:31 AM on January 9, 2005

Outstanding comment, mokujin!

Since you dangled this bit, I'll bite:

btw, does anyone really think that there are people who demand Ashlee Simpson or their own volition? Does anyone truly believe that Ashlee Simpson’s music is a matter of taste, rather than one of manufactured desire?

I think that appreciation of and desire for Ashlee Simpson music is not much more "manufactured" than any other matter of taste (disclaimer: no, I'm not a fan myself). Exposure is greater, sure, and the various and sundry techniques of marketing are applied with vigor, but I think too often this notion that affinity for certain pop products is somehow magically inserted into our minds where it could not possibly ever take root naturally on its own is wishful thinking by hipster elitists (in the true sense, not the way the word is usually bandied about here) who really just want to reinforce their case that your favorite band sucks. The reasons we respond to products, and art, and perhaps most of all music, are varied and complex, but to reduce or eliminate the role of the individual in the process strikes me as impractical and silly, despite how popular a thing it is to do on Metafilter. Marketing works precisely because it triggers favorable responses in our minds, not because it somehow engineers mental devolution (though this may prove to be a long-term side effect of a non-nutricious cultural diet).
posted by rushmc at 8:52 AM on January 9, 2005

Do you only go with classics, as a good long-term investment? But then you're losing a wide body of patrons, the long-term interest of much of the youth, and the dollars that come with increased circulation.

If you want to talk about bringing in money and supplying pop ephemera, a library could, for example, rent the ephemeral stuff (like Buffy, to continue with that tired example) for the first year or until it has paid for itself (or maybe paid for itself X times), but then make it free to all cardholders. That would be very simple to do, and it wouldn't hurt to bring in extra money to pay for things that are less popular in the short run but perhaps better in the long run.

The library could even buy extra copies to make extra rental money (and satisfy extra cardholder cardholder demand) while the item is fresh, but later give away unneeded extra copies (which are wasting shelf space) to library patrons. For example, if a movie is rented X times, one of the X library card numbers could be drawn randomly by software -- just click the "Raffle" button to automatically notify the winner and generate an ownership sticker to place on the item -- and the selected cardholder would get to keep the movie.

Similarly, libraries should be able to charge for use of their computer equipment at night -- run a for-cash after-hours internet cafe with a door opening directly on to the street -- but make computer use free to cardholders during library hours, when the computer room's street door would be closed and a door into the rest of the library would be opened.

If local regulations don't permit such activity -- and I have a feeling that this might be the case -- change the regulations, don't just say it can't be done. Then there would be Buffy galore for those who want it, and Buffy would generate money to provide good traditional library services.
posted by pracowity at 9:42 AM on January 9, 2005

Pracowity -

I don't have a problem with that idea, and in fact I have been to libraries that charged a nominal fee for some movie rentals - less than the video store, but more than nothing. Not sure if you were disagreeing with me or not, but that certainly isn't mutually exclusive with anything I was saying.
posted by kyrademon at 10:25 AM on January 9, 2005

mokujin: I think that most of us sense his bias and react not to the validity or cogency of his argument, but to what we see, rightly or wrongly, as the conservative/elitist position that underlies it.

On the other hand, neither josh, rushmc, or others have addressed the validity and cogency of his argument. Is this single branch, which is identified as "experimental" typical of the Denver Public Library System? And is the author, who cites a total of two items in the entire collection, presenting an accurate view of this particular branch?

But alas, continue to present your own equally reactionary arguments that don't address what is going on in the posted article and say you are engaging it critical discourse.

There is a clear and real conflict between the life envisioned by traditional culture, and that envisioned by consumer culture.

As someone who grew up in a musical family, with a father who studied and performed the popular music of the 19th century, I have to laugh at this. "Traditional culture" envoked in this way just means a utopian rose-colored vision of the past of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Dvorak in which the popular music of the day vanishes into a stack of decaying sheet music. Perhaps a lot of this should be forgotten. Minstrel songs written to be performed in blackface are not a genre I wish to see revived, even if they were found in every household with a piano. But when you invoke the "traditional" standard, I'm wondering which utopian era you are talking about.

The past was not without its popular culture. The same enlightement culture that fostered the American Revolution was also the breeding ground for one of the first major self-help cons in history, Onania; or, The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences.... Grenblatt documents that the proliferation of "books to be read with one hand" was as much a concern then as the content of our libraries are now.

Every library acquisition means that some other item cannot be purchased. This is a very important point because it means that the library really cannot retain classic works and cater to the “demands” (btw, does anyone really think that there are people who demand Ashlee Simpson or their own volition? Does anyone truly believe that Ashlee Simpson’s music is a matter of taste, rather than one of manufactured desire?) of the public.

I think you are fooling yourself if you see your "taste" as springing fully-formed from your forehead absent any social or marketing influence. But yes, I would raise a pretty strong argument that there has always been a demand for sweet, sappy, catchy music built around a formula and a beat. Furthermore, the fact that we see the minuet and the gavotte as "art" today rather than as formula works produced in numbers for consumption is a testament to the quality of the extremely small percentage of "classical" dance music that is still performed today.

For what it is worth, the public library, because of its pre-capitalist origins in noblesse oblige, offered the possibility of an escape, or at least a temporary exit from the economy of consumption and desire (it still does, in as much as it is removed from the standard system of commodity exchange) by giving access to a wide swath of information in a democratic (both in terms of its collection and in terms of its patrons) fashion. Any escape from the real and the everyday is completely compromised when the public library begins to imagine itself as a Borders or Blockbuster outlet for poor people and cheapskates.

This is, for about the forth or fifth time, a proposal that has not been made in this discussion.

The suggestion that has been proposed is that part of that "wide swath of information in a democratic fashion" includes the acquisition of current popular works in addition to critically received older works. I may not have a particularly high opinion of The DaVinci Code. But given that it has become a work of important enough significance to be featured on the cover of US News and World Report among other "news" magazines, and adaptation into a feature film, I would be suspicious of a library that did not have at least one copy available.

It would be nice if we could discuss the ideas that have been proposed, rather than a set of straw-man ideas that have not been proposed.

Even worse is that this laughable ploy, the specially featured item, introduces the ideology of the marketplace through the technique of the adman to a place, the public library, that is one of the few remaining sanctuaries from the marketplace.

Well, there is an interesting contradiction there. On the one hand, there seems to be this complaint floating around that people will not discover good works if they are burried in the stacks. But here we have a complaint that educational displays that feature items are also bad. The way I have seen these marketing displays done is collecting a set of books by theme together. So for example, the Earthsea miniseries inspired a display of Le Guin's work.

Choosing what books are in a library will always be a political and ideological decision. That being the case, we have a genuine political stake in making certain that our libraries make better citizens rather than worse ones. There will always be differences of opinion about which books or other media achieve this more readily, but few reasonable people will suggest that catering to popular opinion actually serves anything but convenience and contrived desire. I posit that those people who are able to sympathize with and understand the real human emotions found in four-thousand years of world literature, are more likely to be better people, neighbors and citizens than are those who seek only to satiate their empty desire for the shallow and insipid imitations of feeling and the simulacra of personality that consumer culture serves us daily.

Which is, from what I can tell, setting up a false dichotomy. Either we cater to popular opinion, or we push the virtues of classic world literature. No one seems to be willing to seriously argue with the basic common sense position that a broad collections policy should include a balance of both. That 4,000 years of world lit. includes a few books of value published in the last year.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:28 AM on January 9, 2005

Some very interesting arguments so far. I just want to give a quick shoutout to interlibrary loan, which has been mentioned but I think under-appreciated as a facet of modern library services...

Just as there are a limited number of things that people can do, as many have noted above, there are very clear limitations on what a library can do.

The gorgeous thing about the modern public library is that it is only the local representative of an enormous aggregate collection. If x library can't afford to buy more than one or two copies of some rarely read classic, then trust that other public libraries will have more in their collection-- and usually it only takes a few clicks for you to request that that book be delivered to your local public library. In looking over the past 20 or so titles (mostly books but yes, some DVDs) I can see that only 2 out of 20 were actually owned by my own local library. The other 18 were all owned by public libraries in the county, or the next county over. There's issues with this just-in-time vs. just-in-case service of course, but as long as I can get the stuff I want, whether it's some out-of-print tome or the collector's edition of Blackhawk Down, it doesn't bother me.

Some library systems execute this concept better than others, of course.

Regarding the library as an archival institution... I know for a fact that my library has town records and the local high school's yearbooks dating back to its inception. No other library is likely to hold this town's yearbooks, and given this library's municipal responsibilities, you know it's not going to give these up. A copy of.. well, they better have Moby Dick, so let's take maybe Typee or Omoo as an example.. it isn't necessarily of local archival importance, and hey, maybe only one person a year requests a copy. I'm cool with them not buying the book themselves and just requesting it from another public library that has found the funds for it, and from that area university that definitely should have it in their collection.
posted by bricsot at 10:35 AM on January 9, 2005

Sorry, in case that's not clear, that should be "the past 20 or so titles that I've checked out."

And to admit some bias, I work in a library but an academic library not a public library. I check more books out at the public library though, because their system tends to have what I want...
posted by bricsot at 10:38 AM on January 9, 2005

Sorry to post three times in such quick succession, but here are some numbers that might be interesting. Now these are for two titles that I just pulled out of my ass, so take them for what you will.

In my local public library system:

21 copies of Troy on DVD (with 4 more on order) - 256 holds pending.
22 copies of Omoo (across 3 versions) - 0 holds pending.

I can request a copy of Omoo and probably have it in my hands in 3 or 4 days. Requesting a copy of Troy though? How broke-ass must you be to be willing to wait through 256 other people?
posted by bricsot at 10:52 AM on January 9, 2005

this is an excellent discussion, thanks everybody
posted by matteo at 10:58 AM on January 9, 2005

Reading through the numerous comments made thus far, I keep hearing the same argument over and over again - that such and such stance or policy proposal is "elitist." To this I have to ask, well then, what's wrong with elitism, at least of the intellectual variety? If all forms of elitism are evil by definition, why don't we just start tearing down institutions like Harvard or the National Academy of Sciences right now?

I for my part cannot see any justification whatsoever for the use of public funds to subsidize other people's Eminem and Ashlee Simpson listening. That tax money has to come from somewhere, and there's an opportunity cost to collecting it that a lot of people on here refuse to acknowledge, much less reckon with. If one's vision of what a public library should be is of a glorified coop for popular ephemera, then I see no reason why private libraries can't be started to cater to such tastes, raising endowments of their own to subsidize the poor if need be.

By the way, as someone who was raised in financial circumstances far worse than is even imaginable by nearly everyone else on here (think Third World), I think it's rather revealing that a lot of folks take it for granted that making a stand in favor of more educational and higher quality reading material is somehow sticking it to the less well off, when in reality it is just such people who are most in need of subsidized access to the best that the world of ideas has to offer. Bright kids are much less well served in the long run by giving them the chance to watch "Buffy" for free than they would be by providing access to books like Hardy & Wright's "Introduction to Number Theory" or Randall White's "Prehistoric Art", and to pretend otherwise in the name of "egalitarianism" is to do them a tremendous injustice. Intellectual curiosity is not a monopoly of the middle and upper classes.

This particular article may or may not have a particular axe to grind (not that there's anything "neutral" about the assumption that public library funds should be expanded), but that doesn't alter the fact that its author touches on an important issue: to the extent that public libraries only serve to provide cheap access to the same old stuff one sees and hears all the time anyway, they are redundant, and librarians who allow themselves to be seduced by the call of popularity are simply engaging in empire building at the cost of what ought to be their central mission.
posted by Goedel at 12:09 PM on January 9, 2005

Minstrel songs written to be performed in blackface are not a genre I wish to see revived, even if they were found in every household with a piano.

That, of course, is not a musical judgement but a political one.

If x library can't afford to buy more than one or two copies of some rarely read classic

I don't think this really captures the reality of the situation. I know that I went to the library system in Las Vegas (metropolitan area of well over 1 million and growing faster than any in the U.S.) and looked for the books on this list, they only had 10 out of 100 (in the system, not on the shelf). This is unacceptable by any reasonably standard.
posted by rushmc at 12:55 PM on January 9, 2005

Goedel: Reading through the numerous comments made thus far, I keep hearing the same argument over and over again - that such and such stance or policy proposal is "elitist." To this I have to ask, well then, what's wrong with elitism, at least of the intellectual variety? If all forms of elitism are evil by definition, why don't we just start tearing down institutions like Harvard or the National Academy of Sciences right now?

Actually, I did a search for "elitist" in this discussion, and it is interesting what I found. The only people using the term are josh and mokujin raising apologies for elitism against arguments that have not been raised.

But, since this came up, I'll respond to this argument with a single sentence:

Elite libraries have a broad acquisitions policy that samples from all genres of human literary and artistic production, including so-called "pop ephemera."

I for my part cannot see any justification whatsoever for the use of public funds to subsidize other people's Eminem and Ashlee Simpson listening.

What might be one person's recreational listening today, might be another person's research data next year. In addition, I don't particularly like to listen to Eminiem, but after reading George Clinton offer critical praise Eminem's work, I'm more than willing to accept that there are critical reasons for including him in a broad audio CD collection.

By the way, as someone who was raised in financial circumstances far worse than is even imaginable by nearly everyone else on here (think Third World), I think it's rather revealing that a lot of folks take it for granted that making a stand in favor of more educational and higher quality reading material is somehow sticking it to the less well off....

Here again, we have a false dichotomy. Somehow, we must either have good educational collection, or a broad collection, but not both. My argument is that a good library, an elite library should do both.

...to the extent that public libraries only serve to provide cheap access to the same old stuff one sees and hears all the time anyway, they are redundant, and librarians who allow themselves to be seduced by the call of popularity are simply engaging in empire building at the cost of what ought to be their central mission.

Which gets back to the argument that I made which has been twisted around into "Borders for the poor."

Hardy & Wright's Introduction to Number Theory is just as available from Borders as it is from my local library. Should this redundancy be considered as a factor in developing a library collection? I can get my choice of Moby Dick from Borders, as well as my choice of 5 different versions of Hamlet. Should a library not stock Hamlet, because it is currently on the Borders sale table for $2.99?

I think the basic conflict here comes down to what you think the central mission of the library should be. In my not so humble opinion, as a person who loves libraries, as a person who spends considerable time in libraries, as a person who supports the library financially, the central mission of the library is to make available the broad spectrum of human creative expression available to the public. Including work that I might not see as worthwhile, but other people might find interesting.

And here is a radical suggestion for you. All the libraries I've encountered have been more than happy to accept gifts and donations for special collections. If you feel that the library is lacking in a particular subject area, why not contribute to the greater good?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:56 PM on January 9, 2005

There are a number of distinctions here which are really not very clear. One is that there is a distinction between popular works that remain popular works and popular works which are quickly forgotten.

Agatha Christie, for example, is not now and never was literary, but remains popular, because her books are exemplary as well-plotted puzzle-type mysteries. Danielle Steele is the same way. These are good investments for libraries. Certain movies are the same way -- Star Wars, for example.

Then again, certain of the worst types of popular entertainment are quickly forgotten and not necessarily the best investment, unless their purchase price can be recovered by rental fees and they can be sold after a year (or maybe a month, knowing today's culture).

Of course, some people define literary value as something superceding continued popularity, hence Steele and Christie not qualifying. There really is no solution to this, because it's not a problem of libraries, it's primarily a problem of our culture: modern things which are termed "literary" appeal only to a very small minority, as they require a very specialized education to understand. Past this (and the ol' criteria of "the older the better" which is, not surprisingly, espoused by old farts) our society lacks clear standards of literary merit, which isn't the library's fault, nor its position to rectify.

There's also the assumption that people want "junk" but this can be solved by making "junk" harder to obtain and "good stuff" easier to obtain. This doesn't work. The only way to improve taste is through education, not through collection development. I'm a huge fan of Melville, but only because Melville was introduced to me in a brilliant way by a brilliant professor, not because it was put on a display or because I couldn't find "Buffy". One of the things about literature is that its value is not necessarily immediately apparent.

Also, if this branch has an "impressive" DVD collection, to me that's good. One of the things which impressed me about the Grand Rapids Public Library, for example, was the availability of obscure movies. They had the film of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (scripted by Terry Southern). They have the new DVD of the film of Ionesco's Rhinoceros which starred Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. There are also many, many international films, independent films... awesome, awesome stuff.

More specifically article-related: librarians don't generally check out books for people; library clerks check out books for people. No, it doesn't require a master's degree to check out and shelve books.
posted by dagnyscott at 12:59 PM on January 9, 2005

rushmc: That, of course, is not a musical judgement but a political one.

As is 90% of the criticisms of Eminiem I've seen.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:00 PM on January 9, 2005

I don't think this really captures the reality of the situation. I know that I went to the library system in Las Vegas (metropolitan area of well over 1 million and growing faster than any in the U.S.) and looked for the books on this list, they only had 10 out of 100 (in the system, not on the shelf). This is unacceptable by any reasonably standard.

This Las Vegas library system? Out of shock that a major metro library wouldn't have a good portion of the books on that list, I actually went and checked... and please don't take this the wrong way rushmc, but I found holdings for 25 out of the first 25. And out of the first 25, the only title the system only had one copy for was Darkness at Noon (#9).

Admittedly, that library system has one of the less usable online catalog interfaces I've seen, not to mention some bibliographic records that need some serious cleaning up. The John Dos Passos trilogy was particularly tricky to find, and their video catalogers don't seem to be following the same rules of capitalization as their print catalogers. Also, how that data is structured in the catalog in the first place... Ick. But those are whole 'nother issues for 'nother day.
posted by bricsot at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2005

I think I can respond to this a bit further. To start with, I think it is a strong fallacy to separate "musical" criticisms from "political" criticisms. Music has always been political to some degree, whether we are talking about Marriage of Figaro or Salome. So by all means, I do think that there are legitimate political reasons why a musical genre built around apologies for slavery should languish in obscurity.

However, my point was that invoking some "traditional" utopia in which people engaged in the consumption of art of refinement and taste is invoking a tradition that has never existed. Minstrel music is an example of a genre of music that, on the whole, was just as commercial, just as formulaic, and just as enormously successful as contemporary pop, it's composers made into houshold names by a sheet music industry that was the predicessor of the recording industry. There are a few examples that survive in modified forms, but the bulk of the genre consisted of relatively formulaic songs that were worthy of almost every complaint thrown at Ashlee Simpson.

Why does this matter? Well, part of the argument being presented here is that "comercialism" is a new thing that must be resisted at all costs by a restoration of "traditional" lit.. My argument is that the penny dreadfuls of the 19th century, and the medical self-help pornography of the 18th century are just as much a part of our publishing "tradition" as The DaVinci Code and celeberty biographies. In our memory of music, we only pick the most successful and memorable works. Mozart's entire catalog numbers in the hundreds, with only a few dozen performed on a regular basis. In looking at the golden age of cinema, we forget that for every Huston and DeMille, there were a dozen formula g-man and singing cowboy movies.

Why not popularity? Why not look at circulation numbers as one metric, among others, of the quality of service offered by a public library?

And there seems to be something that everyone here is forgetting. The person checking out Buffy is very likely to be a taxpayer, with just as much stake at demanding services from the library as everyone else.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:50 PM on January 9, 2005

There's also the assumption that people want "junk" but this can be solved by making "junk" harder to obtain and "good stuff" easier to obtain. This doesn't work.

I think this hits the nail on the head. There seems to be this very strange idea floating around that people would just gravitate to Melvile, Austin, Bronte, and Hemmingway if it were not for all of the low-brow contemporary fiction getting in the way. I think that if it were not for the contemporary fiction, periodicals and movies on the shelves, that many people would not even go to the library. So what if a particular library patron is picking up a book about skateboarding, an Alice novel, or a formula mystery? At least they are reading.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:27 PM on January 9, 2005

At least they are reading.

I wholeheartedly agree with that. Reading is a much more active mental process than watching a movie or listening to a CD, and any reading has a definite educational component to it.

As Kirkjobsluder is stating with elegance, you can't force the classics on people. Especially since many of the things which are considered classics aren't necessarily the type of book that will lead someone to read more. The right book for the right reader would probably make a great library motto, as a good book can open up doors in someone's mind, but the books that will do this vary depending on the reader.
posted by drezdn at 9:26 PM on January 9, 2005

All the libraries I've encountered have been more than happy to accept gifts and donations for special collections. If you feel that the library is lacking in a particular subject area, why not contribute to the greater good?

Be cautious about this. Libraries aren't necessarily overwhelmed with gratitude to recieve donations of each and every book you might care to hand to them. The reason? Adding books to a library collection costs money (processing, cataloguing, finding shelf room and so on). Often these handling costs are more than the actual price of the book. So donate, by all means, but donate good stuff - because it can be a waste of a library's meagre resources to process books that no-one is actually going to read.

(or, in short - maybe talk to the library before donating, see what their needs are).
posted by Infinite Jest at 9:38 PM on January 9, 2005

So what if a particular library patron is picking up a book about skateboarding, an Alice novel, or a formula mystery? At least they are reading.

Which I think is exactly what most librarians are trying to do, KirkJobSluder.

The two sides of this thread seem to be arguing not only the worth of material but the ideological factors in choosing material.

The only ideology I see in a librarians choice of material is whatever sparks an interest in literacy.

We can belabor the questions - are librarys better or worse? What is it's relevance in our culture - blah, blah, blah - whilst we ignore the huge sprawling juggernaut that is television.

Is it Borders? Who cares? The people are off the couch and in a place filled with information.
You show them bright pretty things in the front to entice them in further and hopefully nurture their minds.

One does not suddenly develop a taste for classical music or great literature in much the same way one does not enter a gym and begin bench pressing 500lbs.

Certainly we can shove as much refined material (Shakespeare and Mozart for instance) as we can at people and tell them to lay of the Bubble Gum Pop garbage.
It doesn't guarantee they will understand it or enjoy it.

This brings us back to elitism. Why would we attack poor Haryani for simply trying to point out to us the Borderization of our librarys (apart from his offering no solution whatsoever)?

Well, because he is attempting to show how superior he is.

You see, if I argued on this thread that most of you are a pack of ingrates who don't truly understand - say - classic literature - and should thus shut up whilst your betters discuss these things, y'all would be rather upset. (Again - I'm NOT at all saying that - it's purely for sake of argument)

Haryani is saying the library is not the place for pop culture - indeed he (albeit wryly) questions humanity's mental state in general.
The superior tone throughout the piece is obvious, those who check out Buffy at a place filled with far far more elevated media are dolts and by virtue of noticing this - he is above them all.
(Again - somewhat humorous tone there).

Clearly though he is - for sake of that article - being an elitist.

And why is that bad?

Put simply - the more educated individuals there are with more refined tastes the greater the demand there will be for that kind of material.

I like that kind of material - ergo I will foster the development of that taste in others.

If this means librarians have to at first lure them in with candy - so be it.

Librarians seem to for the most part follow that line of reasoning and seem to steer a course that will get the greatest amount of people off the couch and into the library where it is hoped they will look around a little after they have procured a Buffy DVD. Perhaps talk to a librarian.
"You like vampires? Have you read "Dracula?"

Perhaps they will read Dracula and go on to look into other classic Gothic novels. From there their interest is piqued by other things.

The objective is not to get them to read something that is of the "best" of our culture, the objective is to engender a love for immersion in and exchange of ideas of ever greater complexity and intensity.

...I suppose it's the "teach a man to fish" cliche.

While I agree it's debatable how well a library or libraries do this, I strongly disagree with the notion that one kind of fish is inherently more nourishing than another.
Some might starve before they eat a thing which tastes like poison to their palette.
(Reminds me of "Defending Your Life" with Albert Brooks - the really brainy folks' food tastes like horseshit to the small minded)

I agree there is a conflict between traditional culture and consumer culture, but the conflict is not a cultural one (perhaps it is one one level with consumer culture constantly trying to replace "something" with a hungry void).

I disagree with mokujin though that the library's job is to preserve and reproduce the values and attitudes that will insure the continuance of the polity it serves.
Although I do think many of his points are valid

In consumer culture ownership = value.
His (mokujin's) example is the guy being seen reading Ayn Rand in the coffeeshop. Dead on.

The library's job is in complete contrast to this. The value is not in the media but in the ability to learn.
(We see just how forceful consumer culture is as early as grade school when nerds get beaten up for being smart.)

But again, I would argue that the library's job is not to promote certain values, certain books, etc, but simply to promote literacy.

The difference between Borders offering Buffy and the library offering Buffy is - you can "own" Buffy if you get it from Borders.

....and yes that last bit is a metaphor, I don't simply mean the difference is you can buy it at Borders and you can't buy it at the library.
- put more baldly - Borders will give you a fish not teach you to fish.

So, despite having the trappings of Borders, the library is nothing like them (beyond this fish business).
posted by Smedleyman at 10:46 PM on January 9, 2005

KirkJobSluder said:

“Actually, I did a search for "elitist" in this discussion, and it is interesting what I found. The only people using the term are josh and mokujin raising apologies for elitism against arguments that have not been raised.”

You might as easily have said that you looked up elitist in the dictionary and you found a picture of josh or me. Funny thing, I did that same search for elitist in this post and I found oddly different results than you did. Scarabic and PinkStainlessTail both used the term elitist before Josh did. Shortly after Josh's first use of the term Bort accused one of Josh's arguments of being elitist. So, you might want to get your browser checked out (I am using Safari), because your search function doesn't seem to be working right. Your disingenuousness aside, pointing out my rhetorical strategies doesn't actually counter my arguments. Decreeing that a dichotomy is false, does not make it so; rather, you actually have to form an argument to demonstrate that it is false. The bottom line, for me, is that the public library is a civic institution at a local level that you and I both have a say and a stake in making better for our respective communities. Maybe I didn't highlight that enough. I think that the author of the original article (I won't write his name because somehow we literati have, in the course of this post, managed to repeatedly and horribly butcher it) is trying to make the library where he lives better. What in the hell is wrong with that? From what I read, nobody really took issue with that central fact except to argue around it and to suggest that he was an elitist for wanting to improve the library. I happen to agree with his central point about about the encroachment of consumer culture into the civic space of the library. I would have (and did) made the point somewhat differently. You might not agree with this point but you really haven't done anything to demonstrate that it is incorrect. Faddish consumer culture and the vicissitudes of the marketplace really really are a threat to the institution of the local public library. I think that I and others have pointed this out rather effectively.

You also wrote:

“However, my point was that invoking some "traditional" utopia in which people engaged in the consumption of art of refinement and taste is invoking a tradition that has never existed. Minstrel music is an example of a genre of music that, on the whole, was just as commercial, just as formulaic, and just as enormously successful as contemporary pop, it's composers made into houshold names by a sheet music industry that was the predicessor of the recording industry. There are a few examples that survive in modified forms, but the bulk of the genre consisted of relatively formulaic songs that were worthy of almost every complaint thrown at Ashlee Simpson. “

Here you simultaneously undermine your own argument and elide over the whole point of what I have been saying. There has definitely been crap written, recorded, and filmed in the past; it really isn't much of a revelation for you to point that out. One thing worth noting is that, in the past, such ephemera was generally excluded from libraries. This was not always the case, and many authors that were considered important enough to include in the collection at an earlier period are now largely forgotten; likewise, many past authors have only been deemed significant for inclusion in libraries at some time after their deaths (e.g. Sulpicia, G.M. Hopkins, Emily Dickinson). Underfunded libraries really can't afford to gamble on pop ephemera when there is so much of it and when its purchase will necessarily exclude something less glamorous but more substantial.When funding cuts are an issue, I would prefer that my neighborhood library cut back on the crap rather than on the good stuff. You have provided importance evidence to prove the very point that you have been bullheadedly arguing against.

You have repeatedly suggested that I and others are invoking an imaginary utopian past. That is a complete red herring. I would like things to be better than they are now, that is all. I have my opinions about what better is and we could argue about those all day. But instead of doing that by discussing current problems with the library and thinking about how to make libraries in general better, you have spent all this time lamely attacking anyone who doesn't celebrate the present in your panglossian fashion. I am well aware of the problems of traditional culture. It was reserved for elites, excluded women and minorities, and did very many other vile things. But, I really do admire many of its products. If I think about the most aristocratic of cultural products, say the Iliad for instance, I really do think that reading it would make just about anyone a better person than would absorbing the productions of so-called popular culture, like the latest Mandy Moore movie (Saved is actually quite good). I would like to see the content of traditional culture available in a democratic fashion to all, because I think that that content is better than the content provided by today's culture industry. Libraries, along with other civic institutions really do have the potential to make the world a better place. I am not trying to invoke a utopian past that never existed, but a utopian future that might exist. Why are you so resistant to trying to make the world better?

The big difference between Ashlee Simpson and the Minstrel singer, is that Ashlee Simpson has a multibillion dollar industry ceaselessly promoting her bogus music in TV, radio, film, newspapers and magazines, while the minstrel singer had a few shills selling his inane sheet music outside the auditorium in the city he was playing at. That is a difference of several orders of magnitude. None of that excuses the vulgarity of the minstrel singer, nor does the existence of minstrel singers excuse the vulgarity of Ashlee Simpson (I never want to type this stupid name again).

I really dislike the hegemonic power of this so-called "popular culture" that is transmitted from east coast and left coast into any place that will have it. As recently as the sixties and seventies there were regional hit songs. Now most radio playlists are dictated by a few corporations. Why in God's name should we let those same corporations through MTV and their other shills dictate (through the fraud of 'popularity' created on madison avenue) what city tax dollars are spent on in the local library.


Smedleyman said:
“I disagree with mokujin though that the library's job is to preserve and reproduce the values and attitudes that will insure the continuance of the polity it serves.”

You may disagree with this, but this really is one of the essential purposes of the public library. It may not be the stated goal, and most people may not even realize that it serves this function, but this is the essential reason for its creation and continuance as a public institution. Think about how libraries worked in other cultures before the advent of the public library. Most libraries in the aristocratic cultures of Greece and Rome were private, open only to the privileged few. They believed in warehousing all knowledge, but they didn't trust the hoi polloi to meddle with it. The books they collected reflected and promoted their own values. Likewise, do you think that libraries in China or Iran choose their materials according to the same principles as libraries in our country (besides the obvious difference in language, of course)? It seems to me that the notion of acquiring, cataloging, and maintaining the objects created by a culture would only serve one purpose: the continuation of that culture. The library is an institution with a history, and that history is generally with the upperclass guardians of cultures who were conservatives interested in maintaining and/or propagating those cultures. Why do presidents found their own libraries? Obviously, to memorialize themselves and create a legacy. Why did Ptolemy establish the library at Alexandria? He did it as part of a wide program to establish and propagate Hellenic culture in a non-Greek land and to legitimize his regime. Obviously, your local public library was probably not founded as part of so lofty a project, but it shares this goal. The notion of "warehousing" knowledge is something we talk about very cavalierly in this age of computers and CD-roms capable of holding large amounts of data at very little expense. This was not the case fairly recently and so I really question why small towns would find it necessary to neutrally "warehouse" information at a rather high price per bit without any civic advantage. The potential for civic advantage that the library holds is what I think should be at the center of this discussion, and it seems like I am the only person who has mentioned it. Maybe I am a fool.

Smedleyman also said:
“The difference between Borders offering Buffy and the library offering Buffy is - you can "own" Buffy if you get it from Borders.... put more baldly - Borders will give you a fish not teach you to fish.”

I don't really think that this is the difference at all. Earlier in this post somebody nailed it when they pointed out the difference between a customer and a patron.
I would rephrase your formulation as follows:

"Borders doesn't give a shit if you fish or starve."

Now, I like borders. I think it is the best chain bookstore around. But the simple fact that they specialize in selling something I like, does not mean that they are acting to benefit me or my community. Their sole purpose is to sell books. They do this by marketing themselves to their broadest conception of their customer. All the hot coffee and soft chairs are not there because they like me, or care about me, or because they want me to learn. They want what is in my wallet. The library, by contrast, is ideally there, like every other ideal civic institution, to serve the community by promoting and maintaining its values. It does for knowledge, what the police do for security and safety.

When the library adopts the strategies of the commercial sphere its character really does change.

KirkJobSluder said:
“So what if a particular library patron is picking up a book about skateboarding, an Alice novel, or a formula mystery? At least they are reading.”

I was wondering when somebody would mention Harry Potter and how it created a bunch of knew readers and how great that is. This statement reminded me of that garbage and how it floods the "Accent" page of the Tucson newspaper whenever J.K Rowling pumps out another potboiler. This notion is just more marketing garbage. It might be a better thing to have more people reading than watching TV, but that really only depends on what the actual content of each activity is. Reading, as much as I enjoy it, is a value neutral activity. Which would you prefer, a six year old reading the side of a serial box, or a six year old watching Nova on PBS? As far as Harry Potter goes, it is yet to be seen if this series of books (by now the name and image have been licensed to action figures, movies, underwear, diapers, condoms) will really create a new generation of readers, or simply a new sub-demographic of consumers. Probably the latter.

Now, the real problem is not the library. It is, as I have been repeatedly harping, the culture dictated to us by the corporations who claim to be responding to our demands. Their dictate, the almighty dollar, means that complexity and ambiguity are cast to the side in favor of broad sensory appeal. They use statistical analysis and focus groups in conjunction with manipulative advertising and crosspromotion to seek out, magnify, and then sate our basist instincts and impulses. They have an enormous industry whose sole goal is to insure that we cannot differentiate between their desire for wider profit margins and our own desire to be distracted (btw, is it more generous to humanity to think that we are captivated by Ashton Kutcher's supposed "personality" or to consider that we have been duped into thinking we do?). Changing the library isn't going to fix this situation. To the librarian's credit, the library is only adapting to the changing mores of an increasingly consumeristic culture. The problem I have with it is that this cultural change is being mandated not at the local level, but from the boardrooms of multinationals that do not care about the broad effects of this change so long as their investors and shareholders are kept happy with increasing profits.
posted by mokujin at 8:56 AM on January 10, 2005

I'll back up what bricsot said about interlibrary loan--and lengthen it by saying that who can access a library, and how, also contributes hugely to how effective the system is and, I believe, to the problem of limited resources, shelf space, etc.

When I was a teenager, my family moved to an unincorporated township that was too small to have its own public library, so we went to the public library in the nearest "city" (pop. 41,000), where I went to public high school. We found out that we couldn't use this library without paying a $40 a year fee (this was back in the 80s, so it was even more outrageous then). We didn't do it. Fortunately, we managed well enough--mainly because my mother was an academic and I was never without access to an college/university library while I was growing up. I have to wonder about other folks in the area who encountered similar problems and didn't have our easy solution.

Fast-forward twelve years when I moved across the country and discovered that not only was my hometown library free, but that I could use any library in the state with its library card. Not just interlibrary loan, which is, of course, available--but if I want something and I know it's not at "my" library but it is at the library in the town where I work, for instance, I can go straight to that library and check it out myself. Then I can even return those loans to my hometown library if I don't want to make another trip.

I live in a small state with a lot of public libraries, and I figure I use at least five on a regular, drop-in basis, and others if there's something I REALLY need right away and don't want to wait for I.L.L. I've noticed that some libraries are better than others in certain areas (my current hometown has a wonderful children's section and a great selection of offbeat DVDs, my former work-town has a wonderful poetry section, etc.) so the variety is really useful, and I think that *that* can serve as a partial answer to the distribution-of-resources and serving-specific-community-needs issues. Some academic libraries are even included in this system; the only ones that aren't are the big state universities. The library at the biggest state U. is even available through a $25/year community-borrower fee. I paid for that for a year, but have since found that the public-library resources have met most of my needs since I'm not doing extensive academic work anymore.

I don't know how feasible this is in a larger state, but for me, at least, it's something my state has really gotten right. I also don't know how useful it is to people who don't have easy access to transportation, can't navigate the on-line catalog readily, etc. I'm wondering if it's something that could stand more outreach and publicity (and I'm probably joining the library board in my hometown, so that might be worth discussing).
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:26 AM on January 10, 2005

mokujin: The bottom line, for me, is that the public library is a civic institution at a local level that you and I both have a say and a stake in making better for our respective communities. Maybe I didn't highlight that enough. I think that the author of the original article (I won't write his name because somehow we literati have, in the course of this post, managed to repeatedly and horribly butcher it) is trying to make the library where he lives better.

Certainly. And I also want to make public libraries better. I think the difference of opinion revolves around how libraries should go about serving their communities. As I've said repeatedly, I see that the mission of the library is to provide a broad sample of the literary and artistic production of our culture.

Underfunded libraries really can't afford to gamble on pop ephemera when there is so much of it and when its purchase will necessarily exclude something less glamorous but more substantial.When funding cuts are an issue, I would prefer that my neighborhood library cut back on the crap rather than on the good stuff. You have provided importance evidence to prove the very point that you have been bullheadedly arguing against.

Which again is just a repeat of the "Borders for the poor" straw man. The question is, what constitutes "crap" and who decides? We both agree that a selection process needs to take place. What I object to is the notion that popular music and video should be excluded because it is popular.

In fact, there are many times that I go to the library, just to read something I find to be crap. For example, about once a month, I try to pick up a copy of the Limbaugh Letter. Now in my not so humble opinion, Limbaugh is one of the worst political commentators out there. I don't say that because I disagree with him 98% of the time. I disagree with Buckley, Novak and Will quite frequently, but they are people that have something to say, say it well, and provide covincing arguments for their position. I pick it up and read it because while I think it is crap, I know that Limbaugh has the ear of millions, and part of being willing to engage in democracy as an ideal means listening to what other people have to say.

Now of course, while I think it is crap, others might think it is pure gold. That's fine by me as long as there is balance on the periodical shelves.

You have repeatedly suggested that I and others are invoking an imaginary utopian past. That is a complete red herring.... I would like to see the content of traditional culture available in a democratic fashion to all, because I think that that content is better than the content provided by today's culture industry.

Contradicting yourself in one neat paragraph. The reason why we see the content of our current literary canon as being better than the output of contemporary culture is because history has a nice way of filtering out crap. We don't see the content of "traditional" culture, (and please define what you mean by that,) what we see are a handful of exemplars from the past. By all means, your are envoking a utopian vision of "tradition", and at least, being pretty darn explicit about how you are cherry picking your examples to match your beliefs.

Libraries, along with other civic institutions really do have the potential to make the world a better place. I am not trying to invoke a utopian past that never existed, but a utopian future that might exist. Why are you so resistant to trying to make the world better?

Ad hom. abusive. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

I think we both wish to make the world a better place. I think that we have very different ideals about how to get there, and the role of the library in this process. My opinion is that the library best serves the community when it offers a broad sampling of what the world has to offer.

The big difference between Ashlee Simpson and the Minstrel singer, is that Ashlee Simpson has a multibillion dollar industry ceaselessly promoting her bogus music in TV, radio, film, newspapers and magazines, while the minstrel singer had a few shills selling his inane sheet music outside the auditorium in the city he was playing at. That is a difference of several orders of magnitude.

Which does not go to explain why it became a national obsession, an industry that in historic figures rivals today's music industry.

To my knowledge, I've never heard Ashlee Simpson so I'm not qualified to write about her as an example. But in other cases discussed here, there certainly seems to be a strong case made for inclusion.

Why in God's name should we let those same corporations through MTV and their other shills dictate (through the fraud of 'popularity' created on madison avenue) what city tax dollars are spent on in the local library.

This is a straw man. I think that librarians should use multiple criteria in deciding what to purchase for a general public library, with popularity one criteria among several.

As an example, one of my favorite journals is The British Journal of Educational Technology. But I don't think the public library should carry a subscription, because there are probably less than a dozen library patrons that would read it. (The University's education library is another matter.)

I was wondering when somebody would mention Harry Potter and how it created a bunch of knew readers and how great that is.

Well, I was not specifically bringing up Harry Potter but....

By all means, it is my belief, and my experience as an educator and reader that there is no such thing as bad literacy. If Johnny can't make the cognitive leap to identify with Hamlet but can make that leap to identify with Harry Potter that is a good thing. If Johnny wants to read books about skateboarding, that is a good thing. The skills he learns searching for information about his favorite hobby today, will serve him well in looking for other forms of information in the future. If he only wants to read the back of cereal boxes, then provide cereal boxes in large volumes, perhaps shelved next to the Hamlet in the hopes he will take a hint.

Looking at children's fantasy, I think Rowling stands as better than C. S. Lewis who is marred by his ham-fisted allegory, and certainly better than volume 5 of Tolkien's unpublished works which should have been left unpublished, or at least left as a specialty work for Tolkien scholars. Potter stands well against Baum's Oz works in my opinion. Of course I have a soft spot for LeGuin, primarily because her Earthsea novels stand as both good young adult and good adult works. I find it interesting that your objections to Potter have more to do with the marketing surrounding them than their quality.

By all means, I do think that Potter is worthy of inclusion in a library collection that includes contemporary childrens' fiction. Although I wouldn't spend money on the half-dozen imitators.

To the librarian's credit, the library is only adapting to the changing mores of an increasingly consumeristic culture. The problem I have with it is that this cultural change is being mandated not at the local level, but from the boardrooms of multinationals that do not care about the broad effects of this change so long as their investors and shareholders are kept happy with increasing profits.

Well, here is the other side of the coin. Public libraries are quite willing to help, and are starving for programming. You want to promote the Illiad? Then I'm certain the local library be more than happy to give you space for a discussion circle and make the posters advertising it.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:21 PM on January 10, 2005