Here’s One from the Denver Post. On an upcoming vote tax increase to support expanded library services, the author, David Harsanyi, asks: “before we’re all blackmailed into subsidizing the perverted habits of others with cries of “community” and “The poor helpless children, what will they read?” it’s only fair to ask: What exactly is the role of the library? What kind of product should be stocked on its shelves? And where are we headed?”
The library, he says, has departed from traditional library silence and mission.
“Behind the bright smiles of the librarians, there is tension. They’ve worked their tails off to earn master’s degrees, only to be forced to subdue the ancient art of shushing and become mere clerks. The humiliation they must feel checking out an Ashlee Simpson CD to some punk who could care less about Melville Dewey is probably unbearable.”
[Via Mefi]
The op ed
Well that should stir the pot a bit.
My rather forward thinking grandmother used the library only for fiction–thought the home should have the important stuff like classics and reference material.
Common attitude?
He asks a couple of fair questions but the rest seems to me to be mostly the rantings of someone who fancies himself as a member of the intellectual elite but who can’t be bothered to go to the library very often except as fuel for a column that he has no other ideas for.
He seems to despise libraries and the fact that his tax money subsidizes them. I doubt that a library reverting to the bun-in-a-hair shush model of warehousing classic novels and being so quiet you could hear a pin drop would assuage his vitriol. Unfortunately, I sense that the attitude of this column may be shared by many others of like mind.
Another thread
Incidentally, there’s a great thread on this same column over at Metafilter.
Harsanyi is wrong says Buffy fans
There is an outpouring of appreciation for libraries and librarians in response to this article, over at Whedonesque
http://whedonesque.com/?comments=5721
The journalist had made, among other mistakes, the error of making a snide comment about a library patron borrowing a Buffy The Vampire Slayer dvd.