Public libraries are one of the world's two greatest bargains, and one of the best human inventions - better than Interstate highways, better than WalMart, better even than schools. Because schools narrow down the learning process, and libraries open it up. I would even go so far as to say that libraries are more important to the future of this country than the NFL and the NRA put together, although I know this is sacrilege.
The history of libraries goes back way before the printed book, and it's really the history of civilization. One famous early librarian was the Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century A.D. Abdul Kassem Ismail was reputed never to travel without a library of 117,000 volumes carried by a caravan of four hundred camels. Legend has it that they were trained to walk in alphabetical order, though not according to the Dewey Decimal System.
Librarians may think that they are working to provide a routine public service. But I decided at an early age that libraries are much more than that. In our moments of deepest need, when our career is on the rocks, when mice have eaten the inside of the German dictionary, when it's absolutely imperative to know the name of Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife or the migration patterns of the evening Grossbeak, there's the library and the librarian, always willing to help, usually smiling more-or-less patiently, finding the right answer much more reliably than a priest or a doctor. What could be more romantic than to be the guardian of all of humanity's knowledge, and all our best fantasies too? Our local library has a sign over the door: "Google can give you 100,000 answers, but a librarian can give you the right answer." Exactly.
A library is a wonderful place for kids and families, students, and senior citizens like me who are wasting time while pretending to do something useful. We can browse an Aladdin's cave of books and recorded books, read magazines, and even borrow movies and CDs, and it all seems to be free. How does that work? It works because we all go along every year and vote "Yes" on the library budget, and we're happy to do it.
Public Libraries are doing an enormously important job, bringing civilization to the urban and suburban wilderness and preserving books, like the monasteries in the Dark Ages. Of course, resources are scarce, that goes with the territory. When did you ever know government to put money into something socially useful? That's as it should be. The relationship between money and social value is always inverse. In libraries, as in public radio, we can take heart from the fact that our lack of funding is a measure of our real importance to society.
You may have guessed that I am developing a little metaphor here. Think of public radio as a library in sound. News, music, entertainment seem to come to you out of thin air, for free, just like library books. How does that work? There is a line in the budget for public libraries, but none for public radio. So we have to rely on your individual, voluntary contributions. And the moral of this story is…well, you know what the moral of this story is.
Copyright: David Bouchier
