Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 58, January 17, 2005

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Another library, another line to stand in to use the Internet connection. Above every terminal is a stiff message warning us in no uncertain terms that the Internet contains sites that have information that the library staff just cannot swear is accurate. Some information on the Internet might be wrong, misleading, unfair, unverified, the sign informs me. I raise my eyes from the terminal and look at the wall of magazines the library subscribes to. Cosmopolitan catches my eye.

In the library branch nearest my home, I must not only sign in with my library card number to use the Internet, I must have a PIN number as well. Odd, given the crocodile tears shed by librarians threatening to burn their databases rather than reveal to the government what I read - so why do they log who uses their terminals and do they log what you look at? In fact, I have to sign in using my library card before I'm allowed to access their catalog. The catalog is, however, available over the Internet, so sitting at home you have better access to it then you do in the library. Oh, and they have a shelf of books on astrology and palmistry, so much for their fierce desire to protect me from bad information.

I've been in a library that made me sign a statement that I recognize that the Internet contains opinions and claims not verified by the library staff. The same library had many romance novels, wild right-wing theories of the world and a gift subscription someone had given them to the Jehovah's Witness magazine, The Watchtower.

Beyond the Internet, there is music. I've seldom been in a library with a decent collection of music. Some have had reasonable classical music collections, to be sure. But when it comes to popular music, their collections have always been utterly bizarre. Sometimes you get a gem, like the library in the town I grew up, that, amid their extensive collection of Robert Golet records, had After Bathing at Baxters, by the Jefferson Airplane, and so allowed me to feel cool for an entire week.

I've spent many formative hours in libraries, I've been in libraries in a dozen states and more, I love libraries, I am at home in them as I seldom am any place else. And I really think that they are dying. I see it in their physical infrastructure which is more and more dingy, badly lit and open for shorter and shorter hours. I see it in the increasing amount of noise permitted in them and the increased space given to things other than intellectual activities.

And I see it in their petty refusal to embrace the Internet and use it. I've often wondered why librarians have this prissy attitude to the explosion of information. It would seem obvious that a library could develop its own list of recommended web sites, download online documents to a local server for an Intranet application or network itself with other libraries doing the same thing. But it doesn't seem to be a very key aspect of modern library collection development to do so.

It is an incredible missed opportunity. Each library around the country could develop a web site focusing on areas of local expertise and they could be networked together to provide access to the world. Librarians should be surfing the net and collecting the best sites and providing that organized information to their patrons.

I'm afraid that librarians' fear of the Internet may echo the fear of mass media providers: the fear of loss of control. In the library, the librarians decide what books to stock and control what you see. The best take that as a calling to provide quality in the areas they know their patrons want. But the Internet is a massive loss of control. Anyone can find anything. Your presentation of information can be undermined by the web site a click away. And I think they can't stand it.

So people stay home and surf the web and fewer go to the library.