Running head: Why Libraries

Why We Do What We Do: Purpose and the American Public Library

Melissa Hisel Emporia State University LI 863 July 19, 2012 Professor Charles Seavey Microsoft Word 2010

Why Libraries

Why We Do What We Do: Purpose and the American Public Library

Introduction At first glance, a review of the philosophical foundations of American public libraries may not appear a dubious topic. But closer examination of LIS literature reveals a somewhat contentious debate as to the true basis of the public librarys purpose. This paper will outline the conventional understanding of the founding of the Boston Public Library. It will consider a challenge to the prevailing story of the genesis of public library philosophy, posited by Michael Harris in his controversial essay The Purpose of the American Library in the context of Wayne Wiegands detailed examination of the records of four Midwestern public libraries from each institutions inception through the mid-twentieth century. In the Beginning The story goes that, during the mid-19th century, when libraries were private members-only institutions of the upper classes, a few welleducated, aristocratic Bostonians lead by George Ticknor, a Harvard professor and a trustee of the Boston Athenaeum, initiated and funded the establishment of a library accessible to the common man, the Boston Public Library.(McCook, 22) Such accounts of the establishment of BPL in the interest of making literature and knowledge accessible to all helped to

Why Libraries

launch the notion that public libraries are the most democratic of all American institutions, catering equally to all classes of people and offering a free education to any who walks through the doors. The upshot of this is that librarianship then becomes a calling for those who are, in the truest sense of the term, public servants. Is this true? Whether true in theory or an exaggeration of an idealistic view, in practice, the evolution of public libraries and librarians has been under the microscope in recent decades.

Revisionist Viewpoints In 1973, Michael Harris, a professor at the University of Kentucky Library School, published an essay in Library Journal that ruffled a few feathers within the profession and for some changed the way the history of public libraries in America is regarded. Harris wrote that public libraries were not founded as bastions of liberal humanitarians, but rather as cold, rigidly inflexible, and elitist institutions from the beginning. He went on to write that throughout their history libraries had served only a small fraction of the public and tended to accommodate only the needs of the upper middle class while at the same time seeking not to provide free access to information for the poor and working classes, instead trying to keep the poor from their basest impulses. Harris asserted that the original purpose of including popular fiction in public library collections was actually as bait placed to lure lower class citizens, with the ultimate goal of providing a

Why Libraries

gateway to the enlightened state of the upper and better class via access to material culled from narrow notions of good books. Harris cites an excerpt from the Standing Committee of the Boston Public Library on the purpose of funding the library:

We educate to restrain from vice, as much as to inculcate sentiments of virtue; we educate to enable men to resist the temptation to evil, as well as to encourage and strengthen the incentives to do good. Harris supported his argument further by describing the appointment and composition of American library boards as rarely an exercise in democracy. The trustee was generally male, past his prime, white, Protestant, well educated, wealthy, a member of the social elite, and usually a member of a profession or a business executive. In Wiegands book Main Street Public Library, this idea is advanced repeatedly with descriptions of the appointments of library boards. An early board of the Sage Public Library in Osage, Iowa was composed of nine citizens: all were Protestant and all were connected to their community through a network of organizations and associations. (55) Amongst the members were the sister of the Mayor, the daughter of a former city councilman and other businessmen and professionals. This seems to belie the claims Harris makes about library boards being predominantly male, as

Why Libraries

women feature prominently in the Wiegands accounting of Midwestern libraries; however, his work does consistently support the notion that trustees all had prominent places in the social life of their communities. Another case in point: the first board appointed to oversee the Moore Public Library in Lexington, Mich. was composed of a judge and owner of a weekly newspaper, a store owner, a dentist who was also a village trustee with a seat on the board of education, a physician, a bond salesman and a village trustee. All the board members were married to members of the local Athenaeum club. (79) Like those on early library boards, the first public librarians were typically white, Protestant, and upper middle class. Harris deemed them unable to relate to or effectively serve patrons of any lower class. Wiegand addresses the issue of library materials on the working class and social reform in his case studies and reported that: Of the thirty-one titles Booklist recommended for all public libraries under Labor and Laboring Classes, the thirteen titles recommended under Social Problems, and the twenty-four titles recommended under Socialism, the four Heartland libraries owned none. (147) Wiegand notes a 1915 U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations hearing where a witness testified that librarians in Carnegie libraries did not acquire material critical of the philanthropist. (146) But he also tells the story of a Rhinelander librarian who sought to reach out to members of the

Why Libraries

communities various labor organizations: this librarian published an article in a local paper entitled The Library at Rhinelander and the Workingmen. and distributed information about the librarys services and hours in boardinghouses, mills and factories; she also had asked mill superintendents to put these cards in workers pay envelopes. In addition, she slipped them into the books of workingmens children, and asked them to give the cards to their fathers. In these notices she especially stressed the availability of Norwegian-and-Germanlanguage book collections (106) In spite of this librarians best efforts to attract the patronage of union workers, she did not succeed, and Wiegand notes she did not realize why workers would be suspicious of an organization funded by anti-labor robber baron Andrew Carnegie. Harris argued that because of librarians detachment from a large segment of their potential patronage, working class people were suspicious of libraries, and their disinterest led the mission of bettering the masses to give way to simply offering patrons an innocuous form of recreation that might keep them out of trouble. And in spite of the seeming futility of widespread social reform, the underlying ambition of reforming the underclass remained subtly upheld by a filter created by the approved book lists contrived by the larger library profession and major publishing houses of the day. Librarians and administrators selected books from these lists of accepted titles, omitting books that did not make the lists, the

Why Libraries

librarians were making choices that the American Library Association deemed Selection not censorship. Perhaps libraries were simply unaware of published works beyond the scope of the official book lists? In some cases this may be true, but not in every case. Wiegand cites the popularity of the Little Blue Books published by the Halderman-Julius Publishing Companyinexpensive paperback books that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and covered a range of topics from etiquette and letter-writing to atheism, sex and contraception. Remarkably, these books that regular Americans bought by the thousands never found a place in any of the Main Street libraries. Wiegand points out that librarians choice not to select these books which clearly seem to have fit the American Library Associations motto circa 1879, The best reading for greatest number for the least cost. was suspect. (153) Harris also points to the great benefactor of the American public library, Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist who funded the construction of more than 1,600 libraries in small American towns between 1883 and 1929, describing Carnegie as a conservative, rigidly moralistic and toughminded individualist who once noted that Spencers works on Social Darwinism had had a profound effect on his life. Three of the communities in Wiegands work (Sauk Centre, Minn., Osage, Iowa, and Rhinelander, Wis.) sought funding from Carnegie and received it. The idea that Carnegies feelings about social problems and the labor movement

Why Libraries

influenced the collections of the Heartland communities to which he brought libraries is unproven, as indicated by the narrative about the librarian attempting to reach the union workers in Rhinelander. Harris chronicled the changes within the library profession commenting that without a higher purpose for libraries, librarians then turned their attention to developing efficiencies within their processes. An emphasis on bureaucracy prevailed. Librarians focused on their role as conservator of collections and used rules and regulations as barriers to access of materials in the name of preservation of books and, Harris says, of their own profession. The American public library had become a bureaucracy, a social institution without a purposeexcept perhaps to preserve itself. (2513) Eventually Harris said, academics urged librarians to develop a philosophy beyond merely striving for adeptness at library tasks. From this developed the tendency of the profession to emphasize the importance of the librarys role as a guardian of the peoples right to know. This was perfect for librarians because they could continue to indulge their penchant for technical and organizational matters and librarians could now justify their passivity by pointing out that they were bound by the librarys new philosophy not to try to influence users opinions. Harriss most damning contention is that this allowed (if not implored) librarians to leave

Why Libraries

the burden of attracting users and synthesizing that information to the patrons themselves. (2514) Neither Harris nor Wiegand believe that public libraries quite provided this neutral source of information. Harris concludes that while librarians have evolved and changed their own self-image from provider of virtues to neutral information portal, the public, for the most part, has been and remains indifferent to libraries or worse is disenchanted and no longer see the library as importantat least not in relation to other community services. Wiegand comes to a slightly less dire conclusion--. While in practice early public libraries did not provide a portal to betterment, didnt extend democracy or even uniformly follow the guidelines of materials selection that would lead to appropriate collections, instead he imagines that public libraries have actually fostered social harmony that comes from community spaces. This is a view that seems to have taken hold within the profession. In an article on the future of public libraries, library futurists insist that libraries are places for social transformation and that TechShops, Hackerspaces and Fablabs (whatever those are) are the future of public libraries and that libraries will become more than mere facts, information or content but are ideas hubs where librarians act as catalysts in helping develop these ideas. (Norman, 94) Others are less enthusiastic about this

Why Libraries

10

new library frontier with programming and creativity at the forefrontthe Annoyed Librarian, an anonymous blogger for Library Journal insists, as did Harris, that then number one purpose of librarians these days is selfpreservation. The blogger equates modern public librarians with carnival barkers standing outside to: Bring bodies to the stacksby any means necessaryIts a recipe for survival for librarians if they want to survive as degraded former professionals who serve no purpose other than to get people into a building. Reflections Since Harris published his essay in 1973, the world now has the internet and electronic books. More than ever, some question whether libraries are really relevant. It seems that Harris wrote about what libraries intended to do and not what actually happened, and of course when we talk about libraries, we really mean librarians. The dictates about professionalism, standards, and lists of titles fit for public consumption created by academics of the library profession may have intended one thing, but what those men and women operating early libraries did and what those libraries actually provided for their community is another. Wiegands work speaks to the latter. Although Wiegand described his book Main Street Public Library as an attempt to look at libraries from the life of the user it seemed that the user was lost in tedious details of his writing about the library and its

Why Libraries

11

administration when the libraries first acquired a typewriter or how much money they spent to redecorate the interior is extraneous to how the library impacted the life of the users. In all fairness, I recognize this as a chronicle of what exists in the written records of these libraries and as such it is quite interesting but whether the reality clearly supports Wiegands thesis is arguable. These works gave me pause to reflect on the small-town library of my childhood and on what that library provided. Anecdotally, I can report that the library provided that which the community wanted and what the library budget could afford. In rural western Colorado in 1980s, that meant popular fiction and plenty of westerns, Zane Grey and Louis LAmour and Billy and Blaze books by C.W. Anderson. The people operating those libraries (none of whom had professional library degrees) were not plugged in to the larger library worldthey likely didnt have access to much in the way of book lists or professional development. Yet the library provided story hour and summer reading activities and was a hub of the community. The library manager knew the names of all the children in town and most of the adults. The school teachers could supplement their curriculum with material from the collection. You could find out how much your tractor was worth on the resale market. More than anything, in a small town it was one of the few places to go.

Why Libraries

12

My overall impression is that Harris is correct about the founders of Boston Public Library, about Carnegie and the library establishmentthe elitist sentiments they shared are not aligned with the librarian of today. But he was not correct in the conclusion that these views trickled down to the people operating most public libraries. Although he does not fully support this with the Main Street Libraries, it seems to me that Wiegand is correct the libraries provided the recreational reading and basic information citizens desired and provided a venue for social interaction that helped build community. The library is as much as anything a community place-- a place to obtain tax forms, a place to leave the kids after school while mom is at work, and a day center for the downtrodden. Bloggers may gripe about yoga in the conference room and the barbershop quartet in the lobby but as S.R. Ranganathan declared in his five laws of library science, the library is a living organismand as generations pass it may not really matter why the Boston Public Library was created or what kind of misogynists or antiSemites developed the systems used to sort the stuff on the shelves because there has been an evolution and it will continue. The shift of perspective has taken root and if librarians now view themselves as intellectual freedom fighters and neutral sources of balanced information or as community partners in early literacy or access to technology for those on the far side of the digital divide, then perhaps they are.

Why Libraries

13

References Annoyed Librarian. Attack of the Carny Librarian. The Annoyed Librarian. Library Journal. April 30, 2012 http://blog.libraryjournal.com/annoyedlibrarian/2012/04/30/attack-of-thecarny-librarians/ Harris, Michael. 1973. The Purpose of the American Public Library: a Revisionist Interpretation of History. Library Journal (98) September 15, 1973, 2510. McCook, K. P. (2011). Introduction to public librarianship. New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers. Norman, Mark. 2012. Frail, Fatal, Fundamental: The Future of Public Libraries. Aplis 25, no. 2: 94-100. Wiegand, Wayne A. 2011. Main Street public library: community places and reading spaces in the rural heartland, 1876-1956. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.