I was curious about something I had forgotten about and made the mistake of checking out a “Great Course” DVD. turned out to be a boring and mediocre lecture delivered in a boring way to an audience of Easter Island Statues (back view). The lecturer didn’t care about his subject any more than the blackboard behind him.

Kenneth Clark is about as far as you can go towards a lecture format without losing the audience. You can’t just say “people should care about this,” you have to show them why they must.

A larger point about Public Libraries:

As Federal and State funding for these shrinks, they are more and more reduced to depending directly on local funding. That is, they must show immediate relevance to whatever local neighbourhoods want in a library. If they want Dance, Dance Revolution – then that’s what the library must do in order to go on existing at all. Academic libraries are not yet under quite that kind of pressure. That fact does not excuse their inability to see the situation that small, public libraries are in. Or even that large, nationally known public libraries, are in.

A third point:

Libraries, as publically-funded institutions, are fobidden to defend themselves politiclly from what are essentially political attacks from an increasingly fascist mainstream media. They are sitting ducks. (Some are also very stupid, consigning their internal communications to Google, which has already moved against net neutrality.)

Fourthly:

There are several technological and social revolutions occurring simultaneously right now. Why are so many supposed librarians sneering at libraries for not solving problems that no other set of institutions has solved, either?

Exactly. It’s all very circular: in an attempt to get attention, some librarian or administrator declares, shockingly, that libraries should, oh, stop concentrating on education and start concentrating on carrying 20 copies apiece of everything James Patterson writes. This person winds up speaking at ALA because of their daring, cutting-edge ideas; around the country, administrators, or ambitious librarians looking for a way to sound hip and knowledgeable, start going on and on about these amazing new ideas as if they’re proven facts; collection development policies are changed, intellectually-challenging material is weeded, and collection diversity goes into the toilet; once the collection is destroyed, the serious readers who used to come to the library for interesting materials now no longer bother to come in, while the casual readers who always came in continue to do so. This is used as “proof” that the library made the right decision. Anyone who questions this is called “old-fashioned,” ignorant, and learns to keep their mouth shut if they don’t want to lose their job, so nobody dares question the validity of the new policies.

A vicious cycle indeed.

And for the person disappointed with their switch from public to academic libraries, I have found that crossing the line is a VERY difficult task, in both directions. Academics don’t want public as they are not experienced with deep reference or library instruction. Public libraries don’t want academics because they are not experienced with the fast pace and quick questions or with the huge variety of people that come through the doors.

And if you think the modern book is ad-free, you haven’t really looked at the ‘dime’ novels of today.

It has been my experience that even the largest facilities in relatively well-funded public library systems do not seriously collect less popular fiction writers or nonfiction in more than a few areas (such as home decor, self-help, cooking, gardening, etc.) Public libraries do not typically collect audiovisual media other than popular movies, popular tv shows, and very popular music. Yes, public libraries in medium/large systems will often have some interesting non-fiction in the sub-genre sometimes described as narrative nonfiction, i.e. nonfiction written in a lively style geared to a college-educated person–books like Mark Kurlansky’s “Salt: a World History”. But even the selection available in that sub-genre of book is pretty limited. Lynn White’s books on medieval technology are scholarly but also very, very readable–good luck in finding them in most public libraries. Good luck in finding more than a few books of contemporary poetry. Good luck in finding a good selection of fiction in translation. Good luck in finding a good selection of material dealing with current technology. Good luck in finding….well, I think you catch my drift…

I understand why librarians doing collection development in public libraries make the choices that they do–I’ve made and do make these same choices myself when I have collection responsibilities. The new model of public library collection development does prioritize very popular materials–for better or for worse.

There is no perfect model of a public library, and no perfect model of public library collection development. Each collection choice I or any other librarian makes leads to a well-served library user and also a poorly served library user.

Once again, thank you AL for your writings on this blog. Yours is my favorite column.

A problem with doing serious reading in any library where you can walk inside, look around, and see all of the outer walls from where you stand, is that they don’t have much space to put stuff. They might satisfy one reader’s thirst for the Carolingian Empire, and others’ for the British East India Company, the Tang Dynasty, making your own musical instruments, and the influence of pagan mystery cults on early Christianity. But then someone comes in looking for the Stamp exercises, something that is so often used and recommended by trumpet players that no collection of musical literature could possibly be complete without it, and… well, multiply that by the rest of the musical instruments, and then by all of the other topics out there. Where’s Jackson’s most-used text on electromagnetism, Hutton’s book on the ritual year, Bevington’s book on statistics, Wolman’s Handbook of Parapsychology?

The library at a relatively small college might take up a four-story building the size of a city block. A university might have a dozen different libraries scattered throughout the campus. The public librarian has a single-floor building about forty yards across.