Following up on this One…
Although Carlson is the commission’s liaison to the local library board, his idea, expressed in a meeting Tuesday, fell flat with one fellow member of the county commission, and with the library staff.
After a question was posed in the newspaper about how taxpayers want their library dollars spent, library staffers copied and handed out the e-mail address and phone number, and more than two dozen calls and e-mails were received on Thursday and Friday. One agreed with Carlson, 28 were against.
On Friday afternoon, Carlson said he received more than a dozen calls: “Two did not entirely agree; more than a dozen were supportive.”
uh huh
I’m sure the paper can substantiate the calls and emails they received. The question is the county commissioner?
Not to be completely cynical…
But, by the most literal interpretation of Mr. Carlson’s stance (the library should be for research, not entertainment), he is voting against story time for children. Really, who votes against story time?
I wish I could say that this is new for me, but there are always a couple of people in town who have a very narrow vision as to what the library should be. I’ve read a couple of letters that sound like this in my hometown newspaper every now and again, but the majority displays more vision and common sense when it comes to the handling of the library. The difference here is that he is an elected public official. He’ll get creamed on this during the next election (“Do you want the man who voted against story time to stay in office? I don’t think so.”)
Reprogramming Funds versus Backdoor Control
My feelings are mixed on this one. If he were simply taking funds away to shore up public safety, I could probably live with that. Restricting the professional acts of the library director is completely different from such funds reprogramming and should be vehemently resisted. The matter of money is a red herring, I think, as it seems this gentleman wants to replace the library director’s judgment with his alone.
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Stephen Michael Kellat, Interim Coordinator, LISNews Netcast Network
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Collection
I agree.
I also think that he’s going to get a bigger backlash than he is calculating.
Entertainment vs. Research
One individuals entertainment can be another individuals research. Who is to say one is valid and the other is not?
A bit o’ history
What goes around , comes around …
In the last quarter or so of the 19th century public libraries went through the “fiction controversy.” This was a push to have popular fiction on library shelves in addition to to the more erudite and practical items already there.
The reason for this is that people wanted “free” as opposed to either purchasing books or renting them through the mail from catalogs.
Libraries resisted, but the middle classes spoke with their pocket books: they’d continue their financial support if the libraries bought the books they wanted to read.
This is a third rail for public libraries and I suspect Mr. Carlson’s stance, ultimately, is more anti-free-public-library than merely anti-fiction.
Expectations
Regardless of what Mr. Carlson thinks a library should have, the present economic situation is driving people to their local library. In our own extended family we see our grandson attending story hour, my daughter in law checking out children’s books, and DVD’s for him, plus picking up a few items for herself. My son has been utilizing his local library to check out DVD’s, most of which are for entertainment.
Our own local library branch is packed to the rafters with people. The internet terminals are always full. One must assume that the library is enjoying this patronage because it is giving people what they want.