David Rothman writes “Poor people’s Blockbusters. That’s what a librarian friend of mine warns public libraries against becoming. Libraries should enter the multimedia age but never forget the importance of their role in promoting good literature that stretches readers’ minds.
Alas, in the August issue (PDF) of Cities and Insights, library techie Walt Crawford approvingly quotes critics of the invaluable Reading at Risk report from the National Endowment for the Arts. Should librarians and others really be so smug about the decline of literature in American Life, especially when the NEA isn’t the only source of disquieting stats? More at TeleRead“
elitist
“Some would say that literature is elitist. Just the contrary. It can help to hold society together, especially in a multi-ethnic America where educated people from all backgrounds should be able to appreciate the meaning of the word “Gradgrind,” for example, or “Babbitt”–not the least relevant words in the library debate.”
As much as I enjoyed Babbitt, expecting the entire country to read it is the definition of elitism.
I just came from a family reunion where all my aunts were mad at me for forgetting to bring a couple bags of paperbacks like I usually do (library donations the library didn’t need or want). But a lot of the family could’ve cared less.
Its one thing to promote literacy as the ability to read, quite another to promote literacy as being ‘well-read’. We are simply not all ‘readers’.
Libraries are poor at adapting
Libraries are undoubtly one of the pillars of society. Without literacy, reading, literature, information, we could not function properly in society. Libraries have to move into the multimedia age. However, libraries are poor at adapting and modernising to new technologies, methodologies, systems, standards, etc., especially if it does not conform to “library standards”, as if library standards are the only standards on the planet. This unwillingness or incapacity to modernise creates the image/perception that libraries are old-fashioned, unexciting, and fossils in people’s minds. Libraries have to modernise to become a true “blockbuster”.