The Donor and the Borrower

 Robert Kolker, "The Donor and the Borrower, New York Times Magazine, Oct 10, 2021, p.24-

Last year as the pandemic set in, Dorland attended three different online events that featured Larson as a panelist. The third one, in August, was a Cambridge Public Library event featuring many of the Chunky Monkeys, gathering online to discuss what makes for a good writing group.  "I know virtually all of them," Dorland said.  "It was just like seeing friends."

Larson, while on camera, learned that Dorland's name was on the attendees list, and her heart leapt into her throat.  Larson's life had moved on in so many ways.  She'd published another story.  She and her husband had just had their baby. Now Larson was with her friends, talking about the imporatance of community. And there was Dorland, the woman who'd branded her a plagiarist, watching her.  "It really just freaks me out," Larson said.  "At times, I've felt kind of stalked."

COMMENT

This is from an article that appeared online under the title "Bad Art  Friend." In the article, Dorland has been "mean girled" out of the Chunky Monkeys. The article avoids taking sides in the plagiarism issue, but I've been in Dorland's shoes, listening to a bad boss present at a library conference about how to have "difficult conversations" after she had had a difficult conversation with me and let me down badly.  I went to the presentation and I made sure she saw me in the audience.  I did not, of course, make a scene, but I did privately hope she was freaked out.  It must have been infuriating for Dorland to see her former "friends" boasting about what a great, supportive community they had.   

Public events like this are, well, public.  Librarians can't really know who will show up or what their relationship is with the presenters.  

Freedom Made Visable

 Kolbie Peterson, "Freedom Made Visable." Salt Lake Tribune August 29, 2021, p. E1-2. 

On a Saturday morning in August, volunteers at the Glendale library are arranging pairs of shoes, folding jeans neatly on long tables, and hanging  tops and dresses on racks.  At one end of the large meeting room is a table of new binders (which flatten the breasts to create a more masculine-looking chest) and packages of underwear, sorted by size for easy browsing.

Organized by Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid, the community group's first gener-affirming clothing closet was tailored specifically to teenage and homeless transgender people, although anyone in need was welcome.

... 

 The decision to hold the Aug. 7 pop-up clothing closet at a library was a deliberate way to ensure a welcoming environment, said organizer  Cameraon (who uses they/the pronouns and requested to be identified only by their first name).   "Libraries tend to be a very accessible place, they tend to be places where a lot of people com, they tend to be a place where people feel safe," they said.

Glendale library staff worked with the team to set up two private changing areas, so people could try on a variety of items and "see what connects best with them," Cameron said. 

COMMENT

Library safe space provides a way of finding identity throught fashion. 

Gratitude and Praise

Editors. "Gratitude and Praise" Orion, Autumn 2021, p. 4.

We also partnered with the Brooklyn Public Library to cosoponsor discussions of Lauren Groff's Florida and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass as part of their monthly Climate Reads series.  If you missed us live, you can find recordings of these events and more archived at www.orionmagazine.org/connect/events.

COMMENT

The public library partners with an environmental magazine to hosts public presentations that address climate change.

Ann Pratchett on Why We Need Life-Changing Books Right Now

Ann Pratchett, Ann Patchett on Why We Need Life-Changing Books Right Now new York Times, March 30, 2020. Online

     Kate [DiCamillo]and her publicist and I sat in tiny chairs at a tiny table in the school library and ate our salads. They made a big fuss over how nice I was to bring them lunch. The whole encounter lasted less than 30 minutes. Then Kate gave a talk in an auditorium packed with kids and their parents. I hadn’t meant to stay but then I did. She talked about her mother’s vacuum cleaner. She was great.

COMMENT

     The school librarian has invited author Kate DiCamillo to talk to the students, which inspires author and bookseller Ann Pratchett to read a kind of children's literature she did not expect to enjoy.  

Teaching Children in the Bible Belt How to Reverse an Overdose

Dan Levin, "Teaching Children in the Bible Belt How to Reverse an Overdose," New York Times, February 24, 2020, p. A1-

     Shortly after his first-grade class let out for the day, Nash Kitchens sat with a dozen other young children at a library and played a murder mystery game that had a surprising plot twist.
     The victim was a restaurant worker who had been found dead in a freezer.  The killer, the children would discover, was heroin laced with fentanyl, an often fatal opioid.
   Nash, who at 7 years old has a relative who has struggled with addiction, was wide-eyed as Jilian Reece, a drug prevention educator, talked about an ongoing opioid epidemic in their small rural community.  She then demonstrated how to administer Narcan, an overdose reversal nasal spray. 

 COMMENT

    Since the public library is also a community center it is normal to host all kinds of unlikely events.  Even so, teaching little kids how to deal with an overdose seems unusually gritty. 

Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It

Peter Wehner, “Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It” New York Times, December 8, 2019, p. SR3.

Sohrab Ahmari— a convert to Catholicism who is both the op-ed editor of The New York Post and a contributor to the religious magazine First Things— was so outraged that drag queens were reading stories to children at a library in Sacramento that he has relegated civility to a secondary virtue while turning against modernity and classical liberalism “To hell with liberal order,” as Mr. Ahmari put it. “Sometimes reactionary politics are the only salutary path.”

COMMENT

     Judging by the political behavior of Trumpist Christians, you’d think that enforcing stereotypical gender roles was a foundational principle of Christian religion. Mr. Wehner suggests that such prejudice is, in fact, contrary to a practice of spirituality, joy, gratitude, kindness and healing grace.

    As a target of self-appointed morality police the library takes on two roles that appear in other library stories: 1) a target of censorship 2)  a defender of free speech and diversity.

Arts, Briefly

Arts, Briefly: Library Arts Program Has Big First Year, New York Times, August 17, 2019, p. C3

     It’s been one year since public library cardholders in New York’s five boroughs were given expanded — and free— access to the Arts through the city wide Culture Pass initiative.     Since the program’s beginning in July 2018, over 70,0000 people seem to have taken the libraries up on their offer and signed up for the pass, the city’s public libraries said Tuesday.

COMMENT

     This program allows library patrons to reserve free passes for participating museums and other cultural venues. It proved to be so popular that tickets ran out for MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, while some of the lesser-known museums had noticeable attendance growth.  

     One question about this kind of program is how to advertise and catalog it to make it sustainable in the long run.  The article notes that most people who signed up did so early on when the program was first announced.  That suggests that there may be a need for continuous promotion since an arts pass is not something people expect to find at a library. It’s an issue with any innovative  library service. It might start with a bang, but in the long term, how will patrons know it’s there?  For instance, I remember that my own public library had a program to check out a pass for State Parks.  It’s a great idea, but even though I'm a public library user I have no idea whether or not that program is still operating. 

Local Programs Fire Up Readers

Scott D. Pierce and Sheila McCann. Local Programs Fire Up Readers, Salt Lake Tribune, May 31, 2019, p. D1-

     Schools are wrapping up, the weather is warming up, and June is a day away.  Another clear sign of summer: Libraries, businesses and others are gearing up to engage and reward summer readers.…     The theme of this year’s challenge is “A Universe of Stories,” honoring the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.     Last year, almost 28,000 kids from infants to age 12 sing up along with 7,500 teens and more than 23,000 adults, said Liz Sollis, communications manager for the [Salt Lake] county library system. “We’ve actually seen a huge increase in adult participation over the last few years, “ she said.

…    

Four reading trackers for its summer reading program are available: Babies & Toddlers, Kids, Teens, and Adults, each with suggested activities.  The [Salt Lake City] system also suggests going paperless by using its Beanstack site online or by downloading the Beanstack app. 

COMMENT

This article is a local tie-in to one reprinted from the Washington Post.[1]  It lists summer reading programs at local libraries, businesses and other organizations that offer prizes and rewards for reading.  

   As an avid reader, I feel somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness of rewards.  I mean, to me getting time to sit and concentrate on reading already seems like a pretty big reward. However, it’s clear that the programs are popular and they serve a purpose if they make reading fun again. Museum and sports events tickets, free books, and food rewards might work for some people. Choosing what to read may also be the first step in developing self-directed lifelong learning skills that aren’t dependent on classroom teaching.

    The Salt Lake Public Library system is pushing a digital book subscription, which also seems questionable.  Unless kids are using a dedicated e-reader, anything on screens offers far too many distractions that interrupt reading.  Use of ebooks probably also means fewer trips to the library and consequently less immersion in the possibilities such as audio books or graphic novels.  In many library stories, a profound coming-of-age experience happens when kids first move from the juvenile section to the regular stacks.  That transition simply can’t happen online. 

   Digital reading seems even more dubious when it comes from an overtly commercial source.  Scholastic Read-a-Palooza, described in the article,  is an online summer reading program that logs the number of minutes kids read and unlocks digital rewards.  This is beginning to sound a lot less like pleasure and a lot more like the usual schoolwork drudgery, specially if parents can spy on reading minutes. Personally, I would not suggest going paperless. I’d suggest that the long, lazy days of summer are the perfect time to immerse oneself in the kind of absorbing deep reading experience that only print can offer.  The real purpose of summer reading, after all, is not to do better on standardized tests but to rediscover the joy of reading books that are not homework. 

[1] How to Draw ‘em In.

Rear

How to Draw 'em In

Karen McPherson, How to Draw ‘em In: Here’s a Magic Formula to Keep Your Kids Reading Through the Summer. [Special to the Washington Post] Salt Lake Tribune, May 31, 2019, p. D1-

It’s a challenge for parents to make reading a pleasurable priority in their family’s life.  But summertime actually is a perfect— an crucial— time to experiment with some of the following strategies, recommended by children’s librarians and reading experts.…Many children’s librarians also recommend adding a “game” aspect to reading. Signing kids up for summer reading programs at the local public library is one easy way to do this.

COMMENT

     The paradox of reading is, it’s one of the most enjoyable of all possible ways to spend time but when kids have to read for school they resist.  Too much screen time also seems to be discouraging kids from reading. The Kids and Family Reading Report (2019) says that 14% of kids ages 9-11 read no books during the summer— double the number since 2016. [1] Reading is essential to educational success, and librarians are cited as experts on how to make reading fun again with the following strategies:

• Let kids choose
• Expand the definition of reading
• Make it a family priority
• Make reading social
• Make it a game

The writer also suggests signing kids up for summer reading programs.  It’s probably not just the prize incentives, but frequent summer trips to the library that encourage reading. Shelves of graphic novels are irresistible, even for many kids who think they don’t like reading. 

[1] Kids and Family Reading Report 7th ed. (2019).

Sustainability: A Love Story

 

Nicole Walker, Sustainability: A Love Story, Ohio State University Press, 2018.

     Jill and her husband, Chuck, were Flagstaff icons.  Jill delivered half of the people's babies.  Chuck played music for those babies when they grew up and attended sing-alongs at the library.  He played guitar at the Hullaballoo and guitar at the Concert in the Park. He hosted sing-alongs and bonfires and they both were featured at the Viola Awards in 2013.  I saw them there. They told me they were moving to Portland.
... 

They moved to Portland because Jill would have whole days off. Whole lives without on-call shifts. Chuck could move beyond the local festivals and libraries, play big shows in the bit city.  [131-132].

COMMENT

     This is both a library success and a library failure told in practically the same breath. Sing-alongs at the library are  part of building a resilient community, but Chuck, the musician, can't make a living doing it. His ambition to have a musical career is incompatible with volunteering time at local festivals and libraries. When he decides to move away, the community resiliency of Flagstaff is eroded in order to fortify an already vibrant musical scene in Portlandia.

    Several other library stories view the library similarly as a second-rate stop-gap for things like Internet access, [1] government assistance, [2] or a social support network. [3]   It's a downside to the the library's model of sharing-- things seem to be free that are not really free. Deserving artists don't always get paid. Compromises and inconveniences necessitated by sharing space and resources come to seem like deal-breakers.

     One lesson from this story is that librarians should be mindful to support local artists and performers by hosting readings and performances that give them a chance to sell books and recordings. The Salt Lake Public Library, which has long had a local music collection,. has set up a website called Hear Utah Music (HUM) that streams a curated collection of  songs by Utah artists in order to help support the local music scene.  Maybe this collection will help draw bigger audiences which the bands play a gig so the musicians don't have to move to Portland to live their dream.

 

[1] The Gap in Broadband Access

[2] At Social Security, Service at Arm's Length

[3] Baby Center

Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism

Tom Huckin, "Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism," Salt Lake Tribune, February 26, 2019, p,. A11.

     Sometimes we go to the downtown library to enjoy an art exhibit, hear a public lecture, borrow books and videos, etc. Oddly enough, the only thing we pay for is parking.
     I belong to a civic group called Move to Amend that aims to get Big Money out of our corrupt political system and thereby have real democracy in this country.  Guess where we hold our monthly meetings. Yep, in that same (socialist) library!

COMMENT

   Huckin is not quite accurate when he writes that he doesn't pay for the library.  I use the same public library system he does and there is a line item in my property taxes,  It costs me less than $100/year.  Still, Huckin makes his point that all the services he gets from the library are a terrific bargain.

     One of those services is a meeting room.  There is nice symmetry in the fact that the tax-supported library in turn supports civic engagement and a democratic system.   Huckin's description of library use is exactly the kind of social infrastructure that sociologist Eric Klinenberg writes about in Palaces for the People (2018), which are essential to the civic life and resilience of communities.  Nonetheless, politicians often look upon libraries as luxuries.  Klinenberg asks,

Why have so many public officials and civic leaders failed to recognize the value of libraries and their role in our social infrastructure?  Perhaps it's because the founding principle behind the library -- that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage, which they can use to any end they see fit -- is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our time. (If, today, the library didn't already exist, it's hard to imagine our society's leaders inventing it).  [p.37]

     Indeed, on the same op-ed page as Huckin's editorial, Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT-2) announces that he has organized an Anti-Socialist Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Stewart's editorial is pure nonsense, making an utterly absurd claim that offering a few government services to citizens will inevitably end in mass graves, mass emigration and starvation (Pay no attention to those socialist Nordic countries).
 
    But Stewart's nonsense shows that Klinenberg is probably right.  If libraries did not exist, dogmatic anti-tax zealots like Stewart would never allow them to exit.  No doubt they would gripe about the unfairness of  being forced to buy books, and support art and meeting spaces that harm "individual liberty" for people who choose not to read, look at art, educate themselves or vote. It's hard to say, though, what kind of freedom is actually represented by social, cultural and political isolation. As Huckin points out, the republic that Stewart claims to admire can't hold together without supporting the public infrastructure that Stewart claims to despise.

   

Invisible Hand

Andrew Marantz, "Invisible Hand," (Talk of the Town), New Yorker, October 15, 2018, p.

Last Monday night, about fifty New Yorkers of diverse ages and nondiverse politics showed up at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for the first in a series of “Midterm Explainers”—informal talks ahead of the November elections, followed by cheese and screw-top wine. The evening’s topic, according to a flyer, was “The invisible hand of the super PAC.” The explainer was Zephyr Teachout, who was identified as an anti-corruption activist and a “veteran candidate”—a polite way of saying that she ran for governor of New York, in 2014; for Congress, in 2016; and for state attorney general, this year, all without enduring the potentially corrupting effects of winning.

COMMENT

   Here is an example of a public library fostering civic engagement by hosting a political lecture series.  
   In the article, Teachout is attempting to give an information literacy talk about how to follow the money in politics. Her audience, according to the reporter anyway, is surprisingly unreceptive considering that they all showed up to hear her talk. When she tries to tell them how to use Facebook to uncover the source of funding behind political ads they say, "we don't use Facebook," and then claim never to watch political ads.  As Teachout keeps pointing out, it's not about them.  It's about the people who do get their political information from Facebook ads. 
     When she asks if anyone knows who their state senator is about 1/3 of the audience raises their hands. This is actually a much higher than the rate than I have ever observed, especially among young voters.  When I ask college undergraduates if they can name the politicians who represent them they can all identify the president; a few know who their congressman is; but only once did I have a student who could name the governor.  The State Legislature (the ones who can allocate finding and make rules that affect the State system of higher education) are a complete mystery to students.  
     I believe that this ignorance of State-level politics is because young people do not read local newspapers. In part the currant breakdown in American politics is due to too much emphasis  on national politics and not enough knowledge of state and local politics where individual values can have a far more direct influence. Despite overblown hopes, the Internet and citizen journalism have turned out to be inadequate substitutes for local news reporting.  
     In some places without local newspapers libraries are trying to fill the gaps, in some cases by actually publishing community newsletters. It's an imperfect solution. Libraries have an obligation to both-sideism that, as lazy journalists found while reporting on the 2016 elections,  leaves the gate ajar for inadvertently spreading deliberate disinformation and propaganda.  Also, unlike real reporters librarians can't leave work to report breaking news.