Spring 2007

Visiting Public Librarian

2007-06-04T20:27:26Z

The teen librarian from the Mt. Vernon Library visited our school last week encouraging (some may say bribing) kids to read this summer by participating in their summer reading program. Younger children receive a book, upon completion of their reading goal, and a chance to win a jar of candy and older kids receive a free book and a chance to win an MP3 player. They are pretty liberal about what constitutes reading. Listening to a book on tape counts as does reading picture books if you are in sixth grade. Reading the subtitles on the television set, however, does not count.
I learned two interesting things from this visit. One: Walmart usually donates three bicycles to their reading program and this year only gave a cash donation of $50. CHEAPSKATES!...and Two: Skagit County is one of the few counties in the state without a county library system-meaning that people just outside of Mt Vernon city limits have to pay for a library card:(

Infotopia

2007-06-04T20:20:34Z

Reading Reflection

]]> In his book Infotopia, Cass R. Sunstein explores (as the subtitle suggests) how many minds make knowledge. Sunstein presents three major methods of group information gathering: deliberation, prediction markets, and current trends in online information aggregates such as wikis, open source software, and blogs. It is fair to say that of these three methods the author is most optimistic about the last, with particular emphasis placed on wikis and open source software as hopeful pioneers in the information revolution.
Deliberation, though it has served for many years as a way to come to group consensus, is seen, by the author, as flawed. Sunstein points out four major flaws which cause deliberation to sometimes fail, these are: the amplification of errors, the inability to elicit all the information that a group holds (hidden profiles), producing a situation in which the blind lead the blind (cascade effect), and a groups' tendency towards polarization-becoming more entrenched in your original bias after deliberation. Indeed it is the later three issues that cause the first, and it is these three defects-hidden profiles, cascades, and polarization-that the author focuses on throughout the book. The only hope for deliberation expressed by the author is if contrary ideas to the group norm are encouraged, even rewarded, or if greater anonymity is withheld in deliberating processes, as in the case of wikis and other online information aggregates.
Sunstein shows slightly greater hope for the accuracy of predication markets for obvious reasons of rewards-when you have more at stake you are more likely to make sure you get your information correct.
Sunstein sites success stories such as the Iowa Electronic Market which claims a 75 percent accuracy rate on US presidential election polls since the 1988 elections. Through out his discussions of prediction markets Sunstein frequently references twentieth-century thinker Friedrich Hayek. It is Hayek’s belief that pricing serves to aggregate “both the information and the tastes of numerous people, incorporating far more material than could possibly be assembled by any planner or board.” (p.119) Although the market seems to more accurately incorporate the information of a group than deliberation can, Sunstein points out flaws in the market as well; taking into account the possibility of biases, bubbles, and intentional manipulation.
Wikis and the open source mentality are the obvious champions of the informational aggregates presented by the author. Because wikis can be edited by anyone within a company (or, in some cases, anyone with internet access) many of the inaccuracies held by deliberating groups are eliminated. People are less likely to feel pressured to conform to others’ ideas since it is a largely anonymous aggregate and issues of rank can also be alleviated because of this. Open source software, which can be used freely and improved upon freely only if you, in turn, allow your improvements to be improved upon, is likened to science and other disciplines which constantly build upon previous knowledge. These aggregates are successful, also, because they carry with them as many checks and balances as there are readers. New trends such as these portray human knowledge as the living, breathing, changing organism that it is and turn away from the idea of knowledge as a static thing entombed in books. As our ideas of what knowledge is change, our ideas of aggregating and organizing that knowledge are changing too.
“Is human knowledge a wiki?” asks the author, only as much as the human brain is a computer.

The Mysterious Flame

2007-05-29T04:51:14Z

"You know quotations are my only fog lights..." (p.63)

]]> Like Yambo, the main character in Umberto Eco’s 5th novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, the reader of this dizzying book might similarly feel lost in a fog- with random sound bytes of meaning (quotes) as their only light to see through the immense fog of literary blather.
“I said to myself: Yambo, your memory is made of paper. Not of Neurons, but of pages. Maybe someday someone will invent an electronic contraption allowing people to travel by computer among all the pages ever written, from the beginning of the world till today, and pass from one to another with the touch of a finger, without knowing any longer where or who they are, and everyone will be like you.” (p.88)
It is worth reading the first 88 pages of the book, if only to find this quote. Yambo wakes up from a coma to find that his memory of his personal history has been erased, and he is left with only his book knowledge, which, as an antiquarian bookseller, is still quite substantial.
“The other songs, too, made it seem as if life were running on two different tracks: on one, the war bulletins; on the other, the endless lessons in optimism and gaiety that our orchestras offered in such abundance.” (p. 201)
To quicken his recovery Yambo goes back to his childhood home (in Solara) to see if this environment will trigger his memory. He ends up lost in a sea of pop-culture paraphernalia from the Italian WWII era. The author devotes a tremendous amount of energy recounting this time in history, but this relentless focus seems almost like an aside.
Yambo recounts:
“Solara had not given me back anything that was truly and uniquely mine. What I had rediscovered were the things I had read, which countless others had also read.” (p.272)
For a time the reader might think that this is where Eco is going with the story. Is our memory ever our own, or is it dictated to us from our culture? What does it mean that a whole generation can hum the theme song of the Simpson’s but doesn't know their great-grandparents names? But the reader would find herself disappointed as Eco twists the plot (plot?) again and then again until Yambo, having recovered his memory, loses his consciousness. Having lost said consciousness Yambo wonders:
“What if Someone is projecting a film directly into my brain? Perhaps I am a brain in some kind of solution, in a culture broth…and someone is sending me stimuli to make me believe that I once had a body, and that others existed around me-when only my brain and the Stimulator exist.” (p.418)
Here the story takes a turn for the worse. Those without a high tolerance for chaos and kitsch would be advised to stop before it's too late. Is Yambo dead? Does he ever see the face of Lila? Who is Mandrake the Magician?
The reader may find that they do not care so much if any of the previous 448 pages have made any coherent sense or not, only that the story is over. Finished. And they smile a sigh of relief as the black sun sets in the sky.

Shelf Elf

2007-05-16T20:30:23Z

Remember shelf markers...

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The Professor and the Madman

2007-05-16T20:00:29Z

"There was never a great genius without a mixture of madness" -Aristotle

]]> In his book The Professor and the Madman author Simon Winchester recounts the story of the creation of what is considered the crowning achievement of English lexicography, The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The completion of the dictionary spanned seven decades and as many editors and contributors; the focus of the story that Winchester crafts is that of the relationship between the primary editor of the OED James Augustus Henry Murray and one of the most prolific volunteer contributors Dr. William Chester Minor. The twist of intrigue in the story is that the Doctor William Minor happens to be a madman housed in the Broadmoor home for the criminally insane. While this makes for a fascinating story, the overarching obsession with this man’s psychosis only serves to demonstrate our cultures penchant to romanticize the crazy and the brilliant, and its false suspicion that one is caused by the other.
Winchester waxes poetic over how, if Minor would have had access to anti-psychotic drugs, had not been in confinement, he may not have been as prolific a helper to the creation of the OED-may never have even known of the opportunity to contribute. These kinds of ruminations are basically pointless. We will never know how the dictionary may have evolved without the assistance of William C. Minor and his delusional mind, and cultivating an obsessive focus on this one man’s illness takes away from giving credit to all those who contributed to the OED that were not criminally insane. So a madman contributed around 10,000 out of 1,827,306 illustrative quotations. So he killed someone and had neat penmanship. So what?
The more we objectify people with legitimate psychological illnesses and the more we romanticize their eccentric genius the less serious their condition will be taken and the less treatment they will receive; resulting in less of a chance for a normal life. Not every genius has to cut their ear (or other misc. appendages...) off.
Two cheers for sanity!

Straight from the Stacks

2007-05-09T18:15:54Z

Reading Reflection

]]> Straight from the Stacks was compiled by Laura Townsend Kane. It is meant to serve as a guide to prospective librarians; informing them of different paths and specialties that a degree in Library Science has to offer. Reading this book from cover to cover is a worthwhile activity for anyone considering a career in library science or, even, for those already in the field. The book is arranged by type of librarianship and contains interviews with people currently working in the field. The interviews address key issues of librarianship such as: how each of these professionals has made it to the position they are now holding, what their specific job duties entail, and a forecast for the future of their particular niche of librarianship and the field at large.
One finds through reading the stories of all these librarians that there is no one path into librarianship. All of the librarians interviewed have very unique and widely varying histories and experience. Although it should be noted that most, at some point, have received their masters in library science, these interviews talk with librarians from all walks of life; some who have worked in libraries since their high school job as a page and others who could have never guessed that they would end up in this field. The book attempts to draw from a number of librarian careers interviewing everyone from your typical reference librarian, to corporate librarians and information specialists, to law librarians-even the Associate Director of the San Diego Zoo Library!
Given the wide range of types of librarians their duties and daily routines are correspondingly diverse. There are, however, commonalities. Almost all of the librarians mention technology and its role and usefulness in an information profession. While some librarians emphasize that not ALL information can be found on the internet others, in contrast, challenge the traditional stereotype of the librarian as merely a purveyor of literature. Throughout all the interviews and different aspects of librarianship there is an overall importance placed on continuing education through both formal classes and through keeping up with relevant associations and online chat groups.
When questioned about the future of the field of librarianship most of those interviewed are optimistic. Many emphasize a need to for librarians to evolve and grow with the changing course of information and technology. Some talk about librarianship as a state of mind, an attitude that can extend outside the library. Amidst all the change, many of these librarians suggest that the core of librarianship still remains the same; to serve the patron with current and accurate information.
Through the stories of all those who contributed to this compilation, one learns that the field of librarianship is perhaps not so easily typified. Over the last twenty years the nature of information has drastically changed. This change has allowed those who operate in the field to reinvent themselves and their career, as corporate librarian Susan M. Klopper suggests:
“…and about all that library image baggage which we have traditionally dragged around with us-leave it at home (p.91).”

Library Form

2007-05-08T04:50:00Z

Things are going along swimmingly at Lincoln. I just wanted to share this form, that I think is great. Each student takes home a copy of this form at the beginning of the year and brings it back after both they and their parent have signed it. I think it does a good job of explaining the role of the library in the school for both the student and the parent. It also serves to help get all the books back on time!

The form is as follows:

Welcome to the Lincoln School Library! We are so excited to be able to share all the wonderful books (both new and old) with all the Lincoln students. This year the theme for Lincoln Elementary and the school library is SPACE which stands for Stories Produce Adventure, Curiosity, & Excitement.
Students from Kindergarten through 6th grade have an opportunity to attend library classes each week with their classrooms. Each week the students check out books and learn a variety of library skills and responsibilities including:

• Learn the different skills needed to use the library effectively.
• Find and appreciate interesting books to read for pleasure and
learning.
• Locate information in the library for research.
• Practice checking out, reading, and then returning books on or
before library day.
• Develop the responsibility of taking care of all books, especially
books that belong to the library.
• Appreciate the library and the variety of literature and
information found in a library.
• Reimburse Lincoln Library if books are damaged or lost.

The person who checks out the book is responsible for those books.
We feel it is important for every student to practice the above library skills and responsibilities regularly. Therefore, we would like each student and parent to sign below to show that they have read and understand the above responsibilities. Again, we are thrilled to be back again in the library to share all the wonderful books and information we have in our Lincoln Library with each and every student.
Sincerely,
Lincoln Librarians & Library Assistant

FRIDAY is your child's Library check-in and check-out day!
September 5, 2006
I understand the above library skills and responsibilities.
Parent Signature Student Signature

Revolting Librarians Redux

2007-05-04T03:26:15Z

Reading Reflection

]]> Revolting Librarians Redux is an insightful collection of essays written by those in the field who feel that certain things regarding the library could be done differently, or given a second look. It is a follow up to the 1970 book Revolting Librarians, written in the same manner. Throughout the book the reader is introduced to a myriad of concerns put forth by present day librarians. While there are numerous and various complaints, one can see three major issues rise up through all of the other matters. These three issues include: the relevancy (or lack there of) in current library school curriculum, the current trend towards new library business models which turn the patron into a mindless consumer of library services, and protecting the patrons privacy (and the integrity of the library, itself) especially since the post 9-11 threat to our civil liberties.
Jess Nevins notices in his essay What Library Schools Still Aren’t Teaching Us (pgs 45-53) that there are a few common sense job applicable skills that are not being taught in library school. Included in his list are: office skills, dress and hygiene, sensitivity training, teaching, book purchasing, professional writing, public relations, managerial skills and interviewing skills. Nevins recommends creating one course that is taught in library schools that would incorporate the teaching of all of these skills. Besides not getting thorough training in library school it is also suggested that the information and teaching one does get is often outdated and irrelevant by the time one finishes their degree. If this weren’t enough there are more issues with library school such as: the inability for a paraprofessional who is already doing the job of a librarian to receive the title and pay of a librarian without their MLS, and the issue of ALA accredited schools versus the non-ALA accredited degree program. While all these things put together create a hard case against library school, prospective student should not be discouraged by reading this, but, rather, should be encouraged to be critical and active participants in their education instead of just passive consumers of it.
A second major issue that has librarians revolting is a new trend being set by library managers and administrators to adopt a corporate-like business model for running their community library. This is thought by Sanford Bernam to undermine “The essential public library mission and ethos: To freely provide materials and information in a variety of formats, representing widely divergent opinions, experiences, and perspectives-and to do so in a noncommercial, “neutral” environment for the entertainment, enlightenment, and both intellectual and spiritual growth of the whole population, unlimited by age, income, sex, disability, ethnicity, or occupation.” It is the fear of these librarians that the library is turning into little more than a state run Barnes and Noble, where one can find twenty copies of Oprah’s latest book club book and less, if any, copies of more challenging or controversial books or publications.
A third concern worthy of noting is the library’s position on privacy and information access before and after the USA PATRIOT Act. In his essay Taking a Stand (pgs 61-65) Daniel Tsang observes that “Libraries, for example, are cited as a specific venue where FBI agents are now free to troll or conduct fishing expeditions for basically anything.” If a library receives a government request to hand over a patrons circulation record, they are encouraged to seek legal advice from ALA lawyers, but it is questioned as to whether this is enough to protect the patron’s privacy. The government has also used the current political climate as an excuse to restrict access to otherwise public information; “the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have all deleted “sensitive material” from their web pages (p.96).” Librarians are caught in a balancing act to keep patron’s records private and public information accessible.
Although these issues are large and pervasive it does not seem to be the intention of these revolting librarians to overwhelm the reader. They are writing for change in these issues that concern them and their field. They are writing so that “their silence is not taken for affirmation.” Throughout these essays there is a humor, an insightfulness, and a concern that someone who did not have faith in the profession (as a whole) would ever express. As Chris Dodge put it on page 135:
“Revolting librarians have not given up hope for the future of libraries.”

Sherman Alexie

2007-04-25T17:34:28Z

& The Chuckanut Radio Hour

]]> Last night I went to hear Sherman Alexie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie
I don't know what I was expecting, the only books I have read of his are Reservation Blues and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. And, of course, I have seen Smoke Signal (based on the latter book) and The Business of Fancy Dancing. I guess I was expecting a tidy little book reading regarding his new book Flight. I forgot that it was also a taping of The Chuckanut Radio Hour-a Prairie Homesque Radio show a la Bellingham. This made the evening a bit messy, and Sherman only popped in for dissapointingly short, radio sound bytes. But, then, at the end, he did his monologue which floored me. He was completely irreverent, politically incorrect, DIRTY, and absolutely hilarious. I haven't laughed so much in a while, it was nice. You can stream the show after it airs on the second saturday of May, although I am not sure where you go to do this...

WASLing

2007-04-25T16:45:28Z

Weeks 16th-20th & 23rd-27th

]]> Since our schedule is a little off due to the WASL I have been working on small projects. One thing that I am going to do that I'm excited about is fix up the part of the books that are arranged by the dewey decimal system (the non-fiction books). Right now, on the shelf below the books there is just a label with the call numbers that the shelf contains (i.e. 341.002-345.1). We were thinking we could make labels that contains the subject and the call number, so that the students can browse the shelves more easily. We also want to create a corresponding wall chart. So I went to the public library to find kid literature on the dewey decimal system. There is only a small section of books on libraries in the children's library in Bellingham, but they're fun, and I couldn.t help checking out a few others. Here's some pictures of ones that I grabbed.

This is a really simple book about the Dewey Decimal system. I am going to use it as a reference for this project.

This book was mentioned in Sacred Stacks, about the saving of the books of Iraq. It is laid out like a graphic novel.

This is a book we read to the younger students during library. It's pretty cute. Although it does not directly reference it, I think it might have been inspired by the lion sculpture outside the New York Public Library.

And...here are a couple others...

McLuhan on the Blog?

2007-04-24T02:50:49Z

Reading Reflection

]]> Marshall McLuhan is widely known for coining the idea of the “Global Village” and especially for his catch phrase “the medium is the message.” Taken apart from his full body of thought, these sound bytes can be misconstrued; assigned the wrong meaning or taken at face value without any further consideration. Upon reading further into his ideas, one finds that there are three major changes our culture has gone through that led McLuhan to these appropriate diagnoses. These changes include the creation of the phonetic alphabet, the invention of the printing press (the Gutenberg Revolution) and the invention of the telegraph, which spawned the current electronic revolution.
He is quoted in 1973 as saying “The phonetic alphabet is unique in being formed by phonemes, meaningless bits. All other alphabets consist mainly of morphemes, or meaningful bits. The extreme abstraction of meaning from the formal sign…releases the visual faculty from its embodiment in the other senses.” It is the phonetic alphabet, McLuhan contends, that has transformed our culture from an oral society to a visual society. The letters, having no meaning in themselves, save for their phonetic representation, disengage the other senses (i.e. the oral and the tactile) of the reader and the literate society. This narrowing of the senses has changed us. With this change comes a tension and detribalization that, according to McLuhan, is responsible for everything from military aggression to cultural homogenization and “civilized” detachment.
The next major change noted by McLuhan is that of the Gutenberg Revolution. The isolation of the senses caused by the adoption of the phonetic alphabet is thought to have been intensified through the linearity of movable type. McLuhan makes a distinction between “hot” and “cold” media. Hot media require less interaction from the consumer and cold media require (even encourage) more. Print, according to McLuhan, is hot media. It “…provided a vast new memory for past writings that made personal memory inadequate.” Print, McLuhan states, has “isolated the scholar”, and “made all of history simultaneous.” It is also movable type that laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution and the subsequent mechanization of our culture.
“Every aspect of Western mechanical culture was shaped by print technology, but the modern age is the age of electric media, which forge environments and cultures antithetical to the mechanical consumer society derived from print.”
It is electronic media (television, computers, telephone), McLuhan believes, that are beginning the process of retribalization in society. These “cold” media are thought to engage not only our visual senses, but auditory and tactile senses as well, causing a return to a pre-literate oral sensibility. Electronic media are thought to replace the old tribalism with the new “global village.”

The day of the individualist, of privacy, of fragmented or “applied” knowledge, of “points of view” and specialist goals is being replaced by the over-all awareness of a mosaic world in which space and time are overcome by television, jets and computers-a simultaneous, “all-at-once” world in which everything resonates with everything else as in a total electrical field, a world in which energy is generated and perceived not by the traditional connections that create linear, causative thought processes, but by intervals, or gap…which create synaesthetic discontinuous integral consciousness.

It seems that, with his ideas of global telepathy and instant messaging, McLuhan could have bee predicting the onslaught of our current internet culture, which he did not even live to see.
It is McLuhan’s belief that these things: the phonetic alphabet, the printing press and all electronic media have had such an impact upon society, in terms of sheer form, that the content that they carry could be considered irrelevant, or, at least, secondary.
“The medium is the message.”

Here's a crazy idea

2007-04-21T20:52:22Z

After Amazon completely botched my order for Revolting Librarians Redux (I will never buy books there again, I promise) I called (can you guess)...the Bellingham Public Library. Not only did they have it and put it on hold for me but the reference librarian seemed very interested in the subtitle "radical librarians speak out"...sounded like she might check it out herself sometime. Even though I now can't deface the pages of this book, the whole experience left me feeling pretty warm and fuzzy. Maybe I'll see if they have some of the other books since I can't afford them anyways.

Others on McLuhan

2007-04-17T05:39:58Z

Since I can't attend seminar from Bellingham I decided to go back through our other books from the past two quarters and see just what exactly those who we have already read have had to say about McLuhan. For Landow it seemed to be mostly name dropping; McLuhan was listed almost 20 times in the index. There were several mentions of him in Internet Art, but I was not suprised to find the most comprehensive and succinct mention of him in David Nye's Technology matters. Below are the quotes worth quoting....

]]> Hypertext 3.0 by: George Landow

Pg. 32:

“Writing, printing, cinema, and video are all forms of asynchronous communication, which, as McLuhan points out in The Gutenberg Galaxy, permits reflection, abstraction, and forms of thought impossible in an oral culture.”

Pg.102:

“Eisenstein, McLuhan, Kernan, and other students of the cultural implications of print technology have demonstrated ways in which the printed book formed and informed our intellectual history. They point out, for example, that a great part of these cultural effects derive from book technology’s creation of multiple copies of essentially the same text.”

Pg. 213:

“…hypertext environments have, if not precisely McLuhan’s message in the medium, at least certain tendencies that derive from specific features of the software.”

Internet Art by: Rachel Greene

Pg.24:

“ ‘TV as a Creative Medium’, an exhibit curated by Wise in 1969, signaled the widespread influence of Marshall McLuhan and engineer, mathematician and architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) and galvanized an interest in mass-media-based art.”

Pg. 21:

“Like many working in working in media art, VanDerBeek was heavily influenced by composer John Cage’s (1912-92) interest in found materials and debris as musical content, as well as by Canadian writer and theoretician Marshall McLuhan’s (1910-80) ideas that each type of media should be considered an active metaphor able to translate experience into new forms and revert agency to the participant. Many decades later, McLuhan’s rhetoric of subjective experience, feedback and choice has often been invoked in arguments that cyberspace is an open and encompassing democratic medium.”

Technology Matters by: David E Nye

Pg. 27:

“During the 1960’s Marshall McLuhan won a large following as he argued that every major form of communication had reshaped the way people saw their world, causing changes in both public behavior and political institutions. For McLuhan, innovations in communications, notably the printing press, radio, and television, had automatic effects on society…For McLuhan, not only did the media extend the human sense organs; each new form of a medium disrupted the relationship between the senses. McLuhan argued that the phonetic alphabet intensified the the visual function and that literate cultures devalued the other senses-a process that movable type intensified. Furthermore, McLuhan thought electronic media extended the central nervous system and linked humanity together in a global network.”

Lincoln Library

2007-04-15T00:55:00Z

week 1

]]> From here on out I am spending Thursdays and Fridays at the Lincoln Elementary school library. They are wonderful there. This week we read Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen with the kindergarteners and first graders. After reading, the librarian talks about the rules of the library and they get to check out one book which they bring back the following week (each class gets to have an 'official' library class once a week). The older students also are required to read one book from the library and write a book report on it each month. I'll attach the forms sometime. I had the priviledge of checking the books out this week. We check the kindergarteners' books out to the teacher, but they hand us their book and we ask them their name to help them feel responsible. When asked their name, some of them will just look at you and say "I don't know." It's so cute! The kids, in general, are extremely well behaved when in the library. If these students' attitudes towards the library are any indication of the future of libraries, I think we will be in good shape.
The librarian I work with has a completely full day both of the days that I am there. She also teaches a math class. Both of the librarians there are former teachers.
Next week is WASL so I will be doing independent projects because I don't think the kids will be coming in for library.
If you don't know what the WASL is look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASL
It can be a pretty hectic time for schools. I only recall taking the Iowa basic test, and it always seemed like fun to me. But times have changed, so has education and so has the library.

Sacred Stacks

2007-04-10T03:07:33Z

Reading Reflection

]]> Sacred Stacks by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell is nothing short of a locker room pep talk. If you have any doubts about the validity, or the divinity, of the profession of librarianship-this is the book for you. If Borges’ paradise is ‘…a kind of library’ Nancy Kalikow Maxwell’s angels are the librarians inhabiting this paradise; safely guiding patrons to the other side. Through all manner of analogies between organized religion and libraries Maxwell seeks to “…address the hidden religious aspects of the nonreligious use of secular libraries. (p.3)” Through anecdotes, historical examples, and dogged persistence she succeeds in proving the similarities between church and library.
Theorizing that our religious experience in this day and age has become something of a self-improvement, self-help, smorgasbord of meaning seeking-Maxwell sees the library stepping in to provide some of that meaning for its seekers. Some ways she sees the library filling this role is through providing community, uplifting individuals and society, and bestowing immortality.
The library is inherently communal, providing the public with copies of books to be loaned and not sold. Like church, Maxwell sees the library as somewhere one goes to be alone with other people (lower your voices and raise your mind) as well as interact with your community. She sees the two competing (along with Starbucks) to become Oldenburg’s third place; the place the public goes most frequently after home and work. Unlike the church, however, the library encompasses all people regardless of religious persuasion “Nothing on the shelves of the library can be ‘proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. (p.111)”
“The person comes into the library because of some acknowledged lack or need, believing the answer will be found there. (p69)” This search for information, according to Maxwell, is much like one’s spiritual search for meaning. The library, like the church, provides answers and forgiveness of the sin of ignorance. This unconditional support and the information itself is an uplift to society. Where the church seeks to free individuals through deliverance of sin the library seeks to free the mind of the patron through knowledge and books.
Another way that Maxwell finds the library fulfilling the duty of the church is through bestowing immortality. She tells of authors giving free copies of their books to libraries so as to ensure they will “live on” through their existence in the library’s collection. The written word contains our collective memory, and if your story is recorded you become, in a sense, immortal. Maxwell quotes Harrison Salisbury who states that “If every school, every university, every other source of knowledge were destroyed, but the library survived, civilization could be rebuilt.”
Maxwell agrees with Ranganathan that the library is a growing organism. It this belief that has allowed the library to survive and it is growing and adapting to change, Maxwell believes, that will assure its survival and ensure its continued sacredness.