Residents living in the unincorporated areas around Eugene, OR grew weary of the US$80 per household fee they paid to the Eugene Public Library. So they decided to start their own library.
For a mere $10 per year, the residents can use a library now holding over 14,000 items in its collection. To drive the point home to the Eugene residents about affordable library service, they only charge them $15.
“We love to come here,” said patron Jana Hazelton, who was there recently with 8-year-old son, Brady, and his friend Landon Nicholsen, also 8.
No …
They did not start a library they started a room full of books. If the ALA is convinced Cubans with rooms full of books are not librarians, certainly this is not a library.
They have no librarians, no ILL, no catalog, no technical services, no reference desk, no…well nothing but 14000 books.
While this is a great thing, it is more a lending library or book exchange. It is indeed a valuable community resource, but it is not a library in the traditional sense.
$80 per year per household for library use seems quite reasonable to me. Twenty one cents a day for everyone in my family to have all the services of a true library, a remarkable value. The Eugene Library looks great, it offers a panoply of services and programs.
Sure, the David vs. Goliath angle makes a great newspaper story, but it leaves out many important details.
A library by any other name…
I really don’t see the reason for your polemical attitude toward this institution.
Does it have Books? –> Yes
Can people borrow them for free under certain conditions? –> Yes
Do people get fined for brining back stuff late? –> Yes
It’s a library.
You do not need librarians, ILL, a reference desk, and technical services to make a repository of books a library. You do need a catalog and someone who can search it to tell you where stuff is.
If you say so
Using your logic my bathroom is a library.
However this grass roots citizen initiative is a library, it is just not what most people in the US would think of when you mention public library. If the residents want the all benefits of the public library then they have to go to… the public library in the town, not this place.
However we know that a place that lets you borrow their books to read is indeed a library, too bad the ALA has such a hard time with that.
To Paraphrase Mung
For those not into the ‘toons, there’s a show on the Cartoon Network called Chowder. One of the main characters, a chef named Mung once said something that fits very well here. He was talking about being a chef, but the quotation applies to many professions:
I don’t need a MLIS to be a librarian! I just need it to make a living as one!
Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade
mdoneil’s right
Have to agree with him on this one.
I’ve been reading a collection of essays by Herb White (Librarianship — Quo Vadis?) & he makes a pretty compelling case that as long as a “library” can be defined independently of librarianship as a profession, then the prospects for the profession are bleak indeed.
If anyone can run a “library”, then why bother with the MLS? This is a sure recipe for continued irrelevance, low status, & pitiful salaries.
Anyone can run a library
All kinds of crackpots can run libraries. The name Benjamin Franklin comes to mind.
Look, people, degrees are only indicators of training and that the holder thereof has met certain minimum requirements in a given field of knowledge. They do not indicate interest or competence.
Moreover, you cannot require that someone hold a degree in librarianship before calling themselves a librarian. That creates a system of licensing that flies in the face of a free society.
Oh, and what about all those elected parasites in public office; some of whom have swilling at the public trough for decades without any formal qualifications? Are they “not real politicians”?
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.
Normative vs. Descriptive
I do believe you’re talking about the facts on the ground, in which case it’s undoubtedly true that “anyone can run a library”. No doubt there are a large number of organizations known as “libraries” which are being run by individuals without MLSs, incompetent clowns, etc.
The question is whether this is optimal, which in the end will eventually round us back to the question of whether librarianship is truly a profession. Based on the facts that a “librarian” is not required to show that s/he has mastered a core set of principles and body of knowledge; to submit to the authority of a licensing body; or to risk forfeiture of the right to practice through incompetence or violation of an established code of ethics — I would say not.
And yes, I did say licensing — Would you prefer a “free society” in which anyone could practice law, medicine, or engineering?
That said, the above model of a profession does not seem particularly well suited to librarianship …