Shelves must hold more than favorites
There’s been quite a bit of comment lately about the future of the Valley library. Most of it has been directed at the possibility of privatization. This isn’t about that, although the concept of a library run for profit does seem somewhat obscene to me. The profit to a city from its library is the expanded horizons of the library users.
No, what prompted me to write is a comment made in a recent interview by a spokeswoman for the private contractor. She said, in part, “They’d also find a weeded collection, where there were a lot more best sellers.”
In a recent conversation with the current library director, she expressed a similar philosophy as the library’s new “mission statement.” Books would be weeded out when they got a little ragged or when demand dropped off, and more copies of new books would be made available.
Best sellers? I don’t need a library to access best sellers. I can buy one at the local bookstore or online. If I’m thrifty, I can wait a month or two and get a used copy from a reseller. If I’m downright miserly, I can wait another month or two and find a copy at a garage sale for a buck. I can even swap books with friends and neighbors.
Consider the person who goes to the library and finds a book by Terry Pratchett or John D. MacDonald. The reader likes the book and sees in the front that the writer is prolific and has many other novels. He or she goes to the library and finds that the older ones aren’t in the library collection and that some of them are long out of print. Scratch one disgruntled library user.
How about nonfiction? I could spend a long time talking about “how-to” books, but let’s consider something a little more substantial. Most libraries will, and should, have essays by the classic philosophers and essayists, but how about the less common ones? If you haven’t read Kipling’s “From Sea to Sea,” Volume 9, about his travels in America, or Nock’s “Memoirs of a Superfluous Man,” you’ve missed a good read and more than a few chuckles. I found them more or less by accident and I’m sure they’re both long out of print.
Libraries used to have a concept called “the stacks.” Books, and even magazines, that were in less than great condition or seldom taken out were warehoused in a storage area but still carried in the catalog. I once needed to know how to convert one map projection into another – not exactly a skill in high demand. The library (in Boise) found a book in the stacks that obviously hadn’t been taken out in decades and was long out of print. But it was there! Bring back the stacks!
Several years ago I acquired an old spokeshave (a woodworking tool) at an estate sale and wondered how old it was. The Valley library staff said they didn’t know of any books that would help me date it, but they’d look around. I got a call a few weeks later. They’d found a book, but I’d have to read it at the library – I couldn’t take it out. When I got there, I asked why. I was told they’d gotten it from the Library of Congress, and if they didn’t return it promptly and in the same condition, they’d darn near have to sell the library to pay for the book! That’s the kind of service a library should provide.
Whether or not the library is privatized, we need it to be a true library, not just a free bookstore. Libraries should be keepers and disseminators of knowledge and of dreams. Concentrating on best sellers and popular books won’t do that.