Don't Let 'Elites' Lock the Doors to the Library

The headline was a shocker.

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

I read about the possible closing of the Philadelphia Free Library -- in the city where Benjamin Franklin helped invent the public library in 1731 -- with shock, sadness, and dismay. And more than a little anger.

Angry that a nation so dependent upon free expression, learning, technology, information and access pays lip service to these ideals but always looks for ways to deny them to the people who need them most. This is a woefully repetitious story. The library is at the soul of a democracy. Yet we constantly look to snuff out that soul.

The truth of the library's essential value in our civilization was driven home for me last week when I visited two of New York's great cultural treasures -- both of them libraries. In two grand buildings, only a few blocks apart, I saw a rare Gutenberg Bible, illuminated manuscripts more than 800 years old and the art and poetry of William Blake. In two brief visits, I was treated to some of the greatest treasures of the western world.

Very wealthy men created these libraries. But one was meant for private use. Financier J.P. Morgan built a library (and art collection) in his private study. Fur trader-turned-real estate mogul John Jacob Astor built what became the New York Public Library. (Nowadays, of course, the NYPL is still free; going to the Morgan Library and Museum will cost you 12 bucks; 8 for students.)

The illuminated manuscripts were displayed -- coincidentally -- in the Morgan Library, part of the treasure trove of European artwork that the "banker's banker" turned into his private museum of riches. It was not unusual for men of his wealth to cart Europe's cultural treasures back home to America -- very expensive souvenirs.

These manuscripts were created by monks and other clerics, to be seen by a handful of people. Written in Latin, they could be read by even fewer. Whole Bibles, psalms, sacred music, papal decrees -- it was information, tightly controlled and available only to the select. The laws, sacred words and rules of a culture were in the hands of a very controlling "elite."

The Gutenberg Bible, one of a few dozen in the world, stood under glass at the entry to the Public Library's Main Reading Room. The Gutenberg was open, and its black ink was vibrantly readable after more than 500 years. Admittedly, this book was in Latin too. But Gutenberg's technological "great leap for mankind" would later turn out Bibles in German and other vernacular languages, opening the way for the Reformation, Enlightenment and a great revolution in literacy and learning.

As a writer, as a lover of books and reading, as a lover of learning, I know that the public library and school libraries in Mt. Vernon, New York where I grew up, shaped me. A trip to the public library was like a visit to a sacred shrine. We cannot afford to take that away.

So why, in a country that professes to value the importance of free education, free information, and free expression do we always look to destroy the best places to nurture those fundamental American necessities? Yes, Necessities. Public libraries, like schools or the fire department, are not luxuries. Politicians, who may have never darkened a library door, do not understand that basic fact of life. The public library is more than just our soul. It is our lifeblood too. And you can see that when you stop in any library where droves of people --more during the Great Recession -- are not just checking out bestsellers, but clamoring for information, education, answers and direction.

What commodities, what resources, are more valuable? We can keep information available to all. Or we can let the true "elites" keep it for themselves -- locked up in their private studies.

Here is a link to the New York Public Library:
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/
Here is a link to the Morgan Library and Museum
http://www.themorgan.org/

 

 

Follow Kenneth C. Davis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kennethcdavis

Comments

[marinara]

If you present education as a 'right' you polarize the issue.

[Ventoi]

all of...

I am sure I typed ...all of

[Ventoi]

Noticing some of my jokes going missing in here...
even after I've posted them in my facebook..­.

I must mention that to maintain ownership.­..
one should assume that all my writing...

is between QUOTES.

[Ventoi]

What a novel idea...
libraries merging with shelters..­.

you can go inside...
you can nap in a cubicle...­if you are polite and tidy...

24 hrs.

you can read...

if the fiction is bothering you...
you can try biographie­s...or history...

someone should pay attention to our history...
and what relevance is has to today...

and most of us...
who are at home with a computer..­.
WANT to go to the library...
but CANNOT ditch that monkey on our back to get there.

[classicalgeek]

We all need libraries. When I was in school the library was my lifeline to art, music, history, anthropology, cultural studies--all the things I was interested in but couldn't afford, as a twelve-year-old, to travel around the world and see first-hand. (And of course I would never have access to a time machine for the historical events, but I could read about them from people who were there, centuries ago.)

The library was also my refuge from home when things were not going well, from school and the people who harassed me there, and from the cares of everyday life. The quiet and the rows and rows of orderly books, gave me the resources necessary to marshal my thoughts and the inspiration to exert some kind of control on my own life. Now, with interlibrary loan, internet access, and the CDs, DVDs, and artwork available, the library is more important to me than ever. When I need research, it's the library and my relationships with the research librarians that come to the rescue, finding the information for me in minutes that it would take me hours to find, if I could find it at all. It's the libraries that supported my graduate work (and not just the school libraries). It's the libraries that have shaped and defined my life as I moved from country to country, working--I always knew I lived someplace, as opposed to staying, if I had a library card.

[Rogan]

For several years recently, as part of the fallout from a chronic illness that (big surprise) I had a lot of trouble getting diagnosed and treated, I had to live in my mother's basement (literally!), and I couldn't work at all, and had no income.

The Worcester (Massachusetts) main branch/downtown library afforded me most of the books and music and DVDs I had access to, during that darkest period of my life. I live in Miami now, and live well, as well as someone bearing chronic illness and pain, can. But I might not have "made it through," and ever arrived here, in my presently improved circumstances, if that library hadn't been there to help me along. For the rest of my life I'll trace the source of personally important musical and literary discoveries, to that library, and that time - Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels, for instance, and "pre-Castro" Cuban music - these and others were like bright lights piercing impenetrable darkness, in those days, for me.

To think that there are people in exactly analogous positions, about to have their library taken away from them, disgusts and frightens me. Unfortunately, for the United States, of late, it seems about par for the course.

[Kenneth Davis]

Thanks for your extraordinary personal story and valuable comments. I wish you well.