By Andy Kubis and Cristy Meiners, producers
“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” – Walter Cronkite
Our library series ends today with two stories that are rather depressing. The first is about the trend towards privatizing libraries. A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about the issue and we spoke with two librarians caught up in the imbroglio. Stephen Klein works for the Los Angeles County Library System and Jackie Griffin is with the Ventura County Library System. The two talk about what it will mean for their communities, for their jobs and for their patrons (now customers) once the private firm takes over next year. The CEO of Library Systems and Services, Inc., Frank Pezzanite, is quoted in the Times story as saying: “There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries. Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.” Many people couldn’t agree more.
Next we turn to the subject of banned books with Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The OIF tracks formal requests to remove a book from a library or classroom because of an objection to the book’s content. A link to the most frequently banned and challenged classics – including Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte’s Web – is here. High on the list is Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. A teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma was fired In 1960 for assigning the book to an eleventh grade English class. The teacher appealed and got his job back, but the book was removed from the school’s library. And just last year, the book was challenged in the Big Sky High School in Missoula, Montana. You can see a list of the most challenged books of the last year here.
I’ll Take Moby Dick and a Back Hoe
Our initial brainstorming session for this series produced a list so long that it needed its own Dewey Decimal number. One of the stories we couldn’t get to is about all of the unique libraries out there, serving their communities in interesting ways. At the Taylor Community Library in Taylor, Michigan, patrons can check out fishing gear – tackle boxes, rod and reel combos and a wide assortment of hooks, lures and sinkers. The Richmond Public Library in California has a seed-lending library, the Iowa City Public Library loans art, Pittsburgh has a Toy Lending Library, and the Seattle Public libraries loan portable Kill-A-Watt electricity meters so patrons can gauge how much power they are using at home. And in California, we visited the Tool Lending Library, attached to the South Branch of the Berkeley public library. Here’s an audio postcard that didn’t make it to air. Special thanks to Teresa Shelly for production assistance:
Banned books like Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye represent fear, and you know what Kennedy had to say about that.
Open minds, communication, the power of words to illuminate; books represent a path to greater understanding of what it means to be human, the key to world peace in my mind. Like philosophers, authors explore the common humanity and help us laugh at ourselves, uncover injustice, gain empathy for other people and share experiences we may never have to live through ourselves. Hoorah for books, and any controversy they engender. More conversation and debate is always better than less. Author of Catcher, Caught, a 21st century retelling.
I had read the NYT article on this controversy, and was frustrated with the way the article slanted the issue. There was only one quote from the management firm, a particularly outrageous quote at that.
But the _Times_ article was excellent journalism compared to the _Bob Edwards Weekend_ piece. The program featured two librarians opposed to the government contracts with LSSI, and no attempt at balance at all. There were even a couple of times when the interviewees offered up their (highly slanted) opinions as to "what LSSI would say" about a certain issue.
This was not just poor-quality journalism; it was an unfettered hatchet job. It reflects poorly on journalistic standards of NPR.
The privatisation of the libraries, and the sneering attitude of the head of the firm mentioned in this report, is but one of the fruits of a generation-long denigration of the public sphere and the lauding of activities pursued for selfish interest. Margaret Thatcher said that there is no such thing as 'Society'…well, after years of her way's (and that of Mssrs Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama to one extent or another) prevalence we will in fact have no Society worthy of the name: we will be in a privatised future where one's actual, practical, freedom, will be determined exclusively by one's financial resources. (For example, you have no freedom of speech on someone else's land, so if there's no public land….)
The interests of the corporations do not conform with the existence of an informed, critically-thinking, population; at best they want people competent at what they are hired to do who will never exercise critical moral judgement of it. As such, they should be allowed nowhere near our public libraries and schools. Less generally, the fiduciary obligation to maximise value for a corporation's shareholders, with (in practice) no attention paid to the 'public good' cited in their charters, will always supervene the ostensible mission of the institutions they run, whether that be education, the dissemination of information and thinking skills, or the provision of health-care.
Simply put, they hate what we love, and consider any power we hold, be it the power of government to restrict them or our own abilities to make think and to know and to judge, to be inimical to their interests.