June 27, 2007...3:08 pm
Garrison Keillor loves libraries
I purposely try to not get political on this blog because that’s not what it’s for so forgive me for referencing an article that is political but one which I think is an extremely well crafted argument for the necessity of libraries. Here’s what I’m talking about:
“When politics gets mean and dumb, you can cheer yourself up by walking into a public library, one of the nobler expressions of democracy. Candidates don’t mention libraries — they’re more likely to talk about putting people behind bars and no coddling or shilly-shallying with appeals and that judicial nonsense, just throw them in the dungeon and stick their heads in the toilet and do what you gotta do — and yet when I walk into the library near my house and see a couple hundred teenagers studying, most of them Hmong or Vietnamese, I see the old cheerful America that Washington has lost touch with, the land of opportunity.”
How true is this? How much do people realize this? I know that I have a bias because I am a librarian but I think the larger point is that people don’t realize what they’re missing out by not utilizing the library. Keillor is specifically talking about public libraries and they’re great because of what they have to offer. It’s not just books you know. They offer programs ranging from those for babies to the elderly. Public libraries also are civic centers in the community. People come to talk about issues important to the citizens in the area. Plus, libraries are a great place to relax and read the newspaper or even do research.
As I tried to say today to some of my co-workers but butchered in the process, libraries are repositories of knowledge where one can get lost in thought and learning. Just think of all of the knowledge that is stored in a library and how great it is that you can go there for free and access that without any sort of discrimination. We librarians like to reference the “right to read” or some variant and it is true. We should all be glad that we live in a country where we have access to such an institution. I’ll get off my horse now and get back to the point…
Keillor is much more poetic than I am in his description of the library and its importance but then again, he’s a very famous writer and I’m just a green librarian. I could talk about the importance of academic libraries too but I’ll save that for some other time. I think I’ve got an article coming in the CSU Magazine sometime soon that touches on that issue anyway, so be looking for that.
I want to end with the ending to his article because I like how important he thinks libraries (and I’ll add librarians) are. Plus, I can’t say it much better:
“The future of our country is not in the hands of bullies, it’s with the kids in the library who are doing the work.”
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