“I want to be a paperback writer”
-The Beatles
-The Beatles
Does anyone know what a paperback even is anymore?
The digital age has brought about some of the most amazing innovation in the history of the world. Innovation, however, has had an unintended consequence: the death of libraries.
Most of us remember our local library fondly. I grew up with one on my block and used it constantly. Getting my library card was a recognition that I belonged to something and was old enough to be trusted with someone else’s property. It was the precursor to getting a driver’s license. An 18 year-old today would think it INSANE but getting your library card was cool.
Most importantly, the library opened me up to a world I didn’t know existed. My family had no money. We never traveled. The corner library was my outer limit. I traveled to revolutionary France with Victor Hugo, the dark underbelly of London with Dickens and 20,000 leagues under the sea with Jules Verne.
There are only about 9,000 public libraries left in this country. Doesn’t seem like much for a nation with 318 million people. Andrew Carnegie himself endowed over 1,500 in the US and thousands of others throughout the world.
I’m not a curmudgeon. I use an iPhone. I know all of the world’s knowledge is a click away. I understand the ability to access all of this information – including books – with such speed is something to applaud.
But libraries did more than stack books. They provided a method for young people to learn HOW to find information. You built knowledge in your mind by seeking out source after source after source. Libraries provided a space for us to digest and share information and opinions. There were no distractions. It was a room full of words.
They also did something the hyper-specialized internet of modern times no longer does. They allowed for you to stumble on great things by chance. Amazing how many great things could happen to us by accident.
Now, libraries have taken on a new relevance. Poorer folks use libraries for the internet and email they can’t afford to have in their own homes. Seniors, who have seen their centers lose funding and support, use them as a gathering place. Military veterans, assimilating back into society, use them as a resource to find job openings and create resumes.
If libraries continue to close, where will these individuals turn?
If each one of this email’s readers went home, grabbed a book you’ll never read again off the shelf and donated it to your local library, just think of the impact it might have on someone’s life.
Let someone stumble on words that may have changed your life by accident. Just maybe you’ll change theirs.
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