During the past week, two people said to me, “As technology evolves, what on earth do we need libraries for? Everything we need is ONLINE.”
People feel that way. They don’t understand the need for a library to overhaul its space, let alone increase its square footage. The computer can do it all. That’s what people say. That’s what they think.
When you are teaching a child to read, or simply reading to a two-year old, is the iPad sufficient? Should kids be wired from the moment they can point and click and “touch”? What about the physical book that you can no longer really touch and smell? What about all of the senses? Not just the visual cartoonish image on a bright screen.
A library space is unthreatening, understated, welcoming and full of enriching materials. When my kids were younger, we would visit the library and take out 10 to 12 picture books at a time. They would sit at the kitchen table and sift through them, studying the pictures, looking at the words. The stories enchanted them. I couldn’t buy as many books as they read. The library effectively fostered their current love of reading. I would argue that without a public library, fewer children would care about reading. Inevitably, won’t these kids grow up to be adults who don’t care to read? Then what?
So if you take away the library building, its contents and available space for all members of a community, you take away an opportunity to learn and to continue learning for a lifetime.
Here’s a quote I came across at The Center for Fiction in midtown Manhattan:
"Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed." Germaine Greer
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