I’m a bibliophile. While that word doesn’t roll off the tongue too easily, its definition is simple: A person who collects or has a great love of books.
Some of my earliest memories are of trips to the library with my mother, of long afternoons spent browsing through the collection, often ending up with a stack of books on horses, dogs, birds or anything having to do with nature.
I grew up in Los Angeles, where that love of the natural world could sometimes present a challenge. The library was where I could find out how to ride a horse, take care of a dog, identify birds in my backyard … the list went on an on. I loved nothing more than finding out about all these things and thank heaven for this magical place, where I could gather all this information to myself and doing so was just a short car ride away.
It isn’t necessary to mention that media and they way we receive information is changing at a mind-boggling rate. As someone who is approaching her mid-’60s, I feel I am doing fairly well in keeping up with the times. I admit I have an increasingly harder time recognizing who is on the cover of People magazine these days. Watching the Grammy Awards has become a painful study in “Who’s that?” and “That’s not music!”
But I also fully embrace my iPod, seek out new music trends from the young whenever I can, and count Googling as a hobby, since I find it amazing that with a few clicks of the mouse you can find out about virtually anything. That being said, there are a few things in life I am adamant about that do not warrant change. And one of those is the basic concept of a library.
Certainly, iPads, Kindles and Nooks are here to stay, along with whatever changes happen to them in the time it takes me to write this article. And for libraries to encourage the use of these things is a smart move, since it brings in new patrons, those who are open to change, and, importantly, the young.
The library thus becomes more accessible, even taking on the feel of a community center — like a larger version of Starbucks, with people hunkered down for hours at a time with their cappuccinos and a good book or whatever device they have at hand. It’s an interesting and not unpleasant vision.
However, I feel that if you’re going to still call a library a library you can’t dismiss and turn your nose up at what is basic to and essential to a library’s very identity. And that is the presence of books.
I have seen a disturbing trend at some local libraries. In the name of updating their buildings, they have lost the vision of what is key to the nature of that structure, and have begun discarding large numbers of books in the name of space. If there was no space available, if the books were moving into every nook and cranny and there was no place for people to sit and relax, it would be one thing. But when a large building eliminates a great deal of its collection in order to put in a few more couches and chairs, and when the effect is that there are very little books left for real browsing, when the standard reaction from the library staff to the question of where they can find a certain book is, “We can order that for you,” something has gone wrong.
Let’s not forget what a library is for. I would put browsing up there at the very top of that list. We can still have that joyous experience; it can easily co-exist with our electronic media. They are not mutually exclusive.
As taxpayers, let’s also not forget that we have the right to say exactly what it is we want from our libraries. If you find it increasingly difficult to locate materials without having to search the Internet for them and waiting a week or two for a hold to come in, speak out and question how your money is being spent.
Libraries have always been and still are an invaluable resource for the community. But they should continue to be a place where when a patron enters the door he or she recognizes it as a browser’s heaven because it is full to the rafters with books.
Cathie Katz worked for the Arapahoe Library District for 14 years before retiring early this year.
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