New year, new post

My last postings began a new theme for this blog, focusing on libraries, especially public libraries, and the influence of neoliberalism. To define the latter, in my terms: the creeping influence of capitalism on every aspect of society, giving virtually anything the potential of becoming a commodity, including the library.

In the library world the influence of neoliberalism can be seen in various ways. A good example is the bookstore model, most famously considered by Steve Coffman in a 1997 issue of American Libraries ("What if you ran your library like a bookstore?") and developed further in Jeanette Woodward's Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model. Designing such a model involved significant changes in the traditional library, such as tailoring collection development toward very popular materials that are certain to check out a lot, thus driving higher circulation numbers. Circulation is a traditional signal of overall library usage, which helps earn potential higher tax levies from voters and respect from politicians who divvy up tax dollars. Another example of neoliberalism, more blatant, is the funding of library capital projects by corporations and their owners, creating such facilities as the Target computer lab or the Carl Pohlad performance hall. Add such support to the artificially created "success" of the bookstore model with its high circulation numbers, and neoliberalism would seem to be well on the way to taking over the library.

Of course, for most, rich folks and corporations giving dollars to libraries seems a no-brainer--every corporate dollar means less taxes paid by the average joe. And high library usage, of course, is a good thing--as long as one realizes there is more to a library than the number of books checked out. Consider a reference collection, for instance, with its maddening inability to generate statistics. But here's the rub: what if that reference collection begins to be underfunded because the library is buying material that adds only to its circulation luster, such as dvds and best-sellers?

One of the problems with this can be seen in my shop. I work in one of the last great urban public reference libraries. While we have plenty of computers for the public and dvds and best sellers and databases and programming, we also have an in-depth reference collection of monographs, continuations and serials. Right now this collection is at risk: Last year my taxbase-deprived city library system was merged into the larger, richer county entity, and some of the new people in positions of power now seem to wonder why my library has to be different from all the rest: why do we need all those dusty old books and serials at the downtown location? How come there's all those subscriptions for "obscure" trade journals? And why shouldn't my library be buying the same kind of books as all the other libraries in the system?

Reading this, one can see my library has a dual mission: to serve as a popular, browsing library and simultaneously as a facility for scholarly research. And with this duality, of course, comes tension. It's inherently difficult for both sides to receive equality. Especially during this time of economic downturn and malaise and reduced funding from the Feds and state, when every dollar must be spent wisely. And add to this the common belief that book are passe', because "everything can be found on the internet," and the reference collection is clearly in trouble.

So what's the solution? The discussion of that will start with my next post.