More on the value of libraries

These ideas must be floating around the ether right now. Last week I wrote a post about the persistent narrative of doom and demise of the library, in response to a similar post by Barbara Fister at Library Babel Fish. Now today, First Monday has released its latest issue, including this article by Jessa Lingel, "Occupy Wall Street and the myth of the technological death of the library." Lingel writes,

What we see here is that some of the very tools that have been hailed as signaling the demise of libraries (mobile devices, the Internet) are in fact being used to create an enduring record of what goes into the library. Here, tools of digital media are not exposing the irrelevance of libraries, but instead offer the means of developing it into a complex, sophisticated and digitally–accessible entity.

She goes on to discuss how the People's Library at Occupy Wall Street, and libraries in general, can reflect, instill, and reinforce the values of their community not just through the collection but also through the policies and decisions they make.

Returning to Shera’s ideas that libraries are a reflection of a community’s ethics and values, it makes sense that a movement founded on (at least the ideals of) democracy, free exchange of ideas, egalitarianism and openness would create a library with a collection development policy, with an egalitarian work force and open lending policy.

After I wrote the post last week, I had a discussion with my partner about the value of policies in an organization, when/why/how they are created and also when/why/how they are enforced. This article is well worth the read, thinking about how the values of a library are reflected in all the decisions it makes, even seemingly innocuous ones about what kind of software to use or the length of lending periods.