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by Robert Leo Heilman
bdheilman@mbol.us
Author of Overstory: Zero:
Real Life in Timber Country
 I was delighted to hear that Carol Hildebrand had been named “Educator of the Year”
at the annual Citizen of the Year banquet. I’ve known her for nearly thirty years now in
our small-town way, and the good news first struck me as both a well-deserved honor
and an unexpected one.
Carol is a librarian who presides over the Canyonville Public Library, and though she is
not a teacher or professor I saw immediately the justice of the award. She spends her work-
ing days helping people, in a dozen ways, to get the knowledge that drew them to her small
section of city hall. It is heartening to watch her patient and skillful work in greeting the
patrons—taking the time to listen to their worries and hopes, their joys and sorrows – and
always providing gentle suggestions for sources of further information or amusement.
It was only later that I remembered the cuts. At the moment when Carol was being
honored, her library was facing a severe budget cut. A few months later the Canyonville
Public Library lost six of its twenty-two open-door hours—a major loss not just in library
service but also to the well-being of the town.
Getting people to understand the great social value of our free public libraries has be-
come increasingly difficult over the past twenty years. I have heard it argued that maintaining
a library at public expense is a waste of tax revenue in this age of easy internet access. This
line of reasoning always seems to come from people who are perfectly able to pay the small
necessary annual tax, and who haven’t actually set foot in a public library for several years.
If a public library were a mere tool, like a screwdriver, a dictionary or the internet, such talk would be reasonable. Fortunately, our free public libraries are much more than that.
Both the internet and the library are sources of information. The difference is that the
virtual help offered by the worldwide web is impersonal, while libraries have librarians.
When you walk in the door of your local public library, there is someone there who is ready
to help you. Librarians aren’t there to run a scam on you, nor to try to turn a profit, nor
to deceive you—all common enough occurrences in this, the so-called “information age.”
A librarian is more than just a specialist but rather a sort of friend to one and all, someone
with nothing more than your own good at heart.
We live in an age of epidemic loneliness. Along with our gadgets and our wealth have
come increasing isolation and alienation. Our virtual magic carpets have whisked us off to il-
lusory worlds with much to delight the eye and the intellect but nothing to please our hearts.
I have often, over the years, thought of our free public libraries as temples of knowledge. It is
only lately that I have come to understand that they are temples of compassion as well.
The creation of free public libraries is, in itself, a compassionate act. Properly under-
stood, compassion is a matter of acknowledging that others are equal to us; and therefore
they are deserving of the same respect and kindly assistance that we would accord ourselves.
Compassion is an essentially egalitarian approach to living and our free public libraries first came about as a way to extend that personal compassion to entire communities. A public
library is one of the few places that I know of where I am always treated with real respect, as
an equal rather than as a mere consumer or client, patient or employee.
I am, I admit, quite fond of librarians. Alone among the professional classes, they have
consistently earned my admiration throughout my life. I have lived long enough at the bot-
tom of the societal heap to have seen oppression in both its gross and petty forms and to have
learned from it a deep-seated distrust of the credentialed products of what passes for “higher
education” in our society. It has often struck me that “the evil that men do” in these modern
days is mostly done by those who hold advanced college degrees. Yet, when I contemplate
the horrible mediocrity of our mass culture and the terrible pain brought to so many through
their inescapable poverty and through the cold-blooded ill treatment that is their daily share, it comes to me that librarians, at least, are consistently creative and helpful people.
We seldom fully know the full worth of the good we do. A kind word or an off-hand
suggestion at the right time can often save a life or launch a useful career. The people we
meet in our daily lives remain largely mysterious to us. A stranger met once may never be
met again and yet the memory of that meeting may affect his or her life or our own for
decades afterward, perhaps enriching a life or two or thousands of other lives. The front
desk of a public library is not just a place where such things can happen. It is a place whose
purpose is to make sure that it will happen—repeatedly and “for the common good.”
The premise underlying free public libraries is neither liberal nor conservative. It is,
however, an American premise: that all of us need to have an equal opportunity to educate
ourselves. I like to think of libraries as both the university of the poor and the place where
the truly educated go to continue to learn. It is obvious that an education through a process
which aims at obtaining accreditation is a very inferior sort of education, one that at best
prepares us to learn on our own. And where but in a public library can a thorough lifelong
education take place free of charge and assisted by a kindly neighbor?
It is distressing that we live in a radically libertarian age of rampant tightwadism, and
sad that our free public libraries should be closed because of “bottom line” small-minded-
ness. Must all the public good that can’t be expressed by strings of digits and displayed on
a spreadsheet lose public funding? Have we, as a society, concluded at last that we must
abandon generosity and compassion in order to prosper? Not so very long ago these were
said to be the essential ingredients in the humane glue that holds us together as a nation and
as a people.
At Your Service was originally published in the OLA Quarterly Archive - Volume 17
Download the entire publication here:
http://data.memberclicks.com/site/ola/olaq_17no3.pdf
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On September 1st, I attended a Keep Our Libraries Open meeting and learned that our library system in Douglas County is not expected to be funded after June 2012. It is part of the government cuts which are happening in so many places around our country. And it is connected to the end of the Safety Net funding for our county from the Federal Government.
In a lifetime, most of us are offered a chance or two to do something that may make a difference in the lives of our families and our neighbors. We don’t always recognize the opportunity when it comes. Sometimes the task is too great or the time is wrong. Other times we step up and say, “I’ll help.”
You're a citizen of that great democratic space that opens up between you and the book. And the body that gave it to you is the public library. - Phiip Pullman
without hearing about the "Safety Net" However, like most of us, I didn't really understand what the "Safety Net" was and has been. I did know it was federal money that the county received from the government to make-up for not being able to tax federally owned land. I knew it was to be used for schools and roads but I didn't understand how its renewal, proposed in the president's budget, could help save the library system. So I did some research.
The short answer is yes and no. Yes the reauthorization would temporarily shore up the county budget but no one is crying wolf.
Due to reduced federal funding Douglas County's support for our library system has been steadily diminishing. Each year, for the last three years, the library support funds have been reduced by 10%. This year the library has been serving the community with roughly 30% fewer resources. There have been staff lay-offs, fewer book and media purchases and reduced library hours in all the branch libraries. However, this coming year the budget will be once again cut but this time by 21%. This leaves the library with about 50% of its former operating dollars. The result is that all the branches will be open fewer hours per week, staff will be reduced, and some services eliminated. In short, next year our library system will be manning all the branches with a skeleton crew and often be simply closed. But, bad as this may seem, it's not the bleakest future. At the end of June 2012 there is a very real possibility that the entire Douglas County Library System will be disbanded for lack of funds - completely closed down. Though no one can predict what this will mean to your local branch library, I'm confident that each of our local library branches will be severely crippled without the resources of the county system.
