Lawrence Hall
The Second and
Most Efficient Memory Device
The concept of the free public library with access to all
is, like rural electrification programs, public roads, untaxed airwaves, public
schools, university agricultural extensions, and other outreach plans, an
expression of the burst of genius and energy that helped make this nation great.
The idea that all citizens, rich or
poor, should have access to learning, freedom of movement, the exchange of ideas,
and possibilities for self-improvement does not originate in America but this
is the nation that made it work.
For most of human history access to learning, to the
ability to read and write and measure the world and map the stars, to
participate freely in what the Romans called the res publica (the
republic, that is, the public life), was limited to a relatively small upper
class. England, for instance, gave the
world the genius of Shakespeare; America saw to it that everyone had access
to Shakespeare.
The stunning and inexplicable failures of access via
racial, gender, and class biases demonstrate the point that possibilities must be
available to all, and that a universally literate citizenry makes life better
for all of us.
Books have always been expensive, but the American
invention of pulping wood for paper in the 19th century made them
less so. The free public library meant that those still-pricey volumes would
circulate among the people as does the air, the air of freedom.
Libraries have changed, and in many ways not for the
better. In our time the successful and stabilizing repositories of knowledge
and aesthetics have been seen by some as weapons of ideology, with the
promotion of limited points of view and the attendant suppression of others.
Public libraries have sometimes been required by the governing authorities to
serve as non-emergency homeless shelters and as centers of political activity.
In times of crisis, yes, a library or any other building
can be used for shelter. A great many libraries in Ukraine, for instance, are
of necessity helping keep the dispossessed housed. But housing is not what a
library is otherwise for.
The freedom to assemble peaceably is an essential value of
our republic (with its very democratic systems of voting), but serving as the
headquarters of a political party or ideology of any kind is not what a library
is for.
Adult men and women are free to attend certain entertainments,
but those entertainments are not what a library is for. No one ever entered the Cheyenne Social Club
or Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon to demand that the girls cover up and the
boys put down their beers for an hour’s discussion of the Wife of Bath and Lady
Macbeth as symbols of feminist empowerment.
All things to their proper venues.
And let’s get real – news features about some guy
costuming himself as Elsie the Cow in makeup for a function staged in a public
library are news because they are as rare as they are inappropriate. It doesn’t
happen here, and it won’t. Librarians are guardians of civilization; posturing loudmouths
with bullhorns are not.
On the other hand, there’s all the unhappy content in the
MePhones parents provide their children.
You think the kid walking down the street with the little Orwellian
telescreen in his hand is reading Plato’s concepts of the good, the true, and
the beautiful?
Back to the books, everyone.
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