A flyer being distributed not too far from here, prior to a library board meeting: “We are coming to take back the library from the outsiders and technocrats. They are a discredit to Berkeley’s radical history–the library should be a place to get get away from the invasion of technology. And the workers are tired of being told what to do but never listened to for their good idea. This has gone on long enough and now our voice will be heard.”
I’ve been in this library, and the lines for computers are always pretty long. So exactly who would be served if the library were no longer “invaded” by technology–and I wonder what an “outsider” is, in this context? Plus, gee, I thought the Internet was a radical, democratizing invention.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Sentence First, Verdict After: Quilting Bees and Amazonfail and Censorship - 2009
- But is it Good for the Episcopalians? - 2005
- New Appeal for Cuban Librarians Launched - 2004
Bookmark to:
Your post has been nagging at me all day because, while I share your enthusiasm for ‘library 2.0’, I am also aware of how many people in my community are uninterested, disengaged, or even (perhaps especially) afraid of the upsurge of technology in their library. A library is so many different things to people—you know this better than I do—but that means that those people who still want to read a print newspaper, check out a printed book or simply relax in a reading/learning environment can feel threatened by the serried ranks of computers where they used to see books. It is still an important hearts and minds issue that your response slips over. It seems to me that the public library needs these pamphleteers as well as those folks standing in line for the computers, and that those in charge need to keep reaching out to them, even listening to them because, like it or not, they too are stakeholders in this common ideal that we call the Library. It seems like a more liberal response might be an invitation to come on in and sit at the table, there’s room (there has to be room) for all of us.
(And I think that the internet is just as likely a tool of the establishment, bread and circuses for the 21st century, as it is a democratising invention, but that’s another posting.)
But what about when it’s the staff making those claims?