“Liberal whingers are wrong – we should shut our libraries,” By John McTernan
When did you last go to a public library?
Last week.
No, really, when?
Last week. But to be fair, I work in a library, so I had a good reason to go. I might also count the library I went to more recently (Wednesday) to check out the book sale & meet my Dad, but I wanted to mention my bias: I’m a librarian. I have been recently trained with a professional library qualification and I've worked in libraries since 2005. That's my perspective.
It’s probably a good few years – and if so, you’re not alone. From one year to the next, nearly 60 per cent of us don’t go to libraries at all. In fact, fewer than one in five adults in England go more than once a month.
Put another way, more than 40 percent of people go to a library every year, and near to 20 percent of adults in England go more than once a month. Does everyone have to use a service constantly to make it worthwhile? Some might say yes, but in my experience if someone uses a library there’s a good chance they’re a regular library user, ie. those who go, go a lot.
The news that councils are closing libraries has prompted sickly and sentimental pleas from all corners of the nation: a long and star-studded campaign to stop Brent Council closing six of them is now set to go to the Court of Appeal. No less a figure than Brian Blessed recently described such closures as the “act of Philistines… atavistic nonsense… the nemesis of our country”. In one sense, this is a phenomenon familiar to anyone who’s ever had to cut public services: people will fight to the death to protect things they never use.
And also things they use a lot. But I'm already wondering about this guy's bias if he views the passionate efforts of his peers as "sickly and sentimental."
But there’s something bigger going on here. This is a fight by middle-class liberals to keep libraries open not for themselves, but for the less fortunate. This is partly out of condescension, and partly guilt – because the protesters don’t use libraries either, and feel they may have precipitated the closures by their neglect.
Leave it to a Brit to make it about class. Though this is a relief, actually—It means that when my middle class regulars come in to borrow books, or middle class travellers come in to use the internet or print their boarding passes or get information about the area, or middle class anybody comes in for council information, I can tell them they’re mistaken: they don’t use libraries. And when the poor want to protest library closures, I can tell them they're also mistaken: they don’t care about the service they use all the time. They should get on with things like rioting and drinking lager.
What this debate needs is some honesty. Yes, public libraries have been of huge benefit in helping us educate ourselves over the past 150 years. It’s an honourable tradition – but it’s over. Their defence depends on a deficit model, the argument that they fill a unique gap. But that’s simply no longer true.
The perspective that libraries have been in the same role for the last 150 years is alarming. If it were true, he’d have a great point. But it’s not true. Library service is changing. Saying that the horse-drawn carriages we used 150 years ago are no longer useful does not mean modern cars are no longer useful.
Take reference services, once the core of the public library’s educational role. Access to information has been transformed by the internet. Google a subject and you can become ridiculously well-informed ridiculously quickly.
At least you'll think you’re well-informed, and who’s going to tell you differently?
Engrossing lectures from the planet’s best minds are freely available on university websites, from the TED conference series, or on BBC iPlayer. Channels such as BBC Four or Sky Arts provide a wide range of high-quality documentaries across a multitude of subjects. We live in an information-rich society – so we should celebrate its availability, not yearn for a time when you had to go to the central library for it.
Absolutely. We live in a hugely information-rich society. And some of the information he’s talking about is online because libraries and librarians have made it available online. Google does not make information available online, it points the way to information already provided by someone else. He knows this, doesn’t he? Because it seems like he doesn't.
He also seems to think it's okay for someone without librarian-type neutrality to organize and present him all his information, for instance Sky Arts, owned by British Sky Broadcasting, controlled mainly by News Corporation, an American media conglomerate whose subsidies include News International, publishers of News of the World. But I'm sure they have our best interests in mind.
In recent years, libraries sought to reinvent themselves as information hubs. Hundreds of millions were spent to provide them with computers. What happened? Technology advanced, and soon the library computers were too old and too slow. That led to a demand for more investment. But why? Fast, cheap computing had spread to most homes, and to our whizzy new mobile phones. Where on earth is the gap that libraries are meant to plug?
Ah, yes. The idea that everyone in the world has a home computer and a smart phone. What a marvellous idea. Maybe someday. But not today.
Then there’s the argument that your local library is the gateway to a national and international network of literature and education. So it is – but so is your computer. Time was, to get hold of a particular book, you would have to go to a library and ask. Now, with Abebooks and Alibris, almost all the second-hand bookshops in the world are available to search. This is as true for new books as for old: more than 130,000 titles were published in the UK in 2009, and 330 million new books were purchased.
I can't express stunned silence via blog post, so I guess I have to address this point. No, "almost all the second-hand bookshops in the world" are very definitely not available to search online. That's just silly. And again, not everyone can afford to buy what they find on Abebooks, second-hand or no. Not everyone can even afford the postage, and if they could and they have the computer they still don't necessarily have the skills to access and understand these sources without help.
The final defence of the public library is that it is a place for the pupil who has nowhere else to study and revise. Once again, this is the 21st century. Virtually every kid has a desk at home – even if it often has a games console on it. And libraries at secondary schools are, in my experience, uniformly good and open places for young people.
Is that really the best he can do for a final defence? Maybe he should Google “arguments for the existence of libraries” and see what comes up. I sometimes hear this argument about a place for students to study, but not often. Most people agree that kids can find a place to study that isn’t the public library. And yet every year at exam time the kids appear. Weird.
Also: who puts their games console on their desk? Honestly.
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| Ancient Sumeria |
Few institutions are timeless. Most reflect the period when they were created, and have to change as society changes if they are to survive.
So libraries should reflect the time of ancient Sumeria? Or British libraries are totally unconnected from the institutions that came before it? In any case, yes: they have to change. Good point well made, sir. They have changed and they will continue to do so unless short-sighted fools decide that since they aren't being given the tools to change they're now totally useless. Like giving a doctor nothing but leeches and then complaining that she can't save anybody.
The crisis in our libraries is not because of the “cuts” – it’s because they are needed less.
Or because the people in charge of saving money are have to find it somewhere, and libraries are an easy mark.
John McTernan has an MA in librarianship from Sheffield University and worked in libraries from 1984 to 1994.
What would you call a professional who qualified nearly thirty years ago and hasn’t practiced for nearly twenty years? Not much a professional.
Of course he has a right to his opinions, as we all do. But I’m going to file his opinions in the same place I file the opinions of everyone who says they never use libraries but know all about them.
I like this post. Libraries are great. I'm middle class and I use my mine. I go probably a couple of times a month. And I only got a smartphone recently. The plans tend to be really expensive and I hate to talk on the phone, so it took me a long time to justify it to myself. I mostly use it for the data plan.
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