I have an ongoing argument with a family member who claims that since the invention of the Internet, libraries have become obsolete. They’re a waste of taxpayer resources, he claims, because anything you can find in a library you can find online.
I disagree for many reasons, not the least of which being that information is only as good as its source. A factoid or statistic you find online is just as likely to have come from the deranged mind of a AK-47-hoarding basement dweller preparing for the apocalypse as from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. And while I’m sure every book in the library isn’t perfect, you still have a much better chance of finding reliable information there than you do from a blog or 140 Twitter characters.
But libraries serve a multitude of functions beyond providing information. They preserve local history and serve as a place for communities to gather.
I was reminded of these points Tuesday when I attended a presentation on the history of libraries in Columbus at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library. Mona Vance, the library’s local history archivist, talked about more than a century of Columbus library history, starting with the city’s first library, which opened in the fire department’s armory in 1888 on the condition that the books didn’t get in the way of the weapons and machinery there.
The armory library, after moving to city hall and becoming popular enough that the city considered paying the librarian a whopping $15 a month, disappeared after 1907. Vance hadn’t been able to piece together what exactly happened to the library, but she intends to keep doing research.
What she does know is that in the following decades, the newspaper received multiple letters from citizens calling for a city library. They got their wish in 1934, thanks to President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, and a library opened in the courthouse. It would move three more times in the next 40 years — first to an antebellum house on Fourth Street South, then to the old band room in the former S.D. Lee High School (then on the site of the S.D. Lee Home), and finally to its current home at 314 Seventh Street North, which was so close to the band room that people moved the books to their new home in shopping carts.
The library wasn’t open to the African American citizens until the late 1970s though. Starting in 1965, black citizens had their own library in a segregated branch of the YMCA. Vance is also unclear on the circumstances surrounding the desegregation of the library, but it’s something she intends to research.
As it is, the Local History Archives contain more 30 boxes of primary source documents — pictures, newspaper clippings, etc. — documenting the history of not just the library but the whole community. Outside the archives, the library has in-house space for 150,000 books and 166 readers. It has computers with Internet access, sections for both children and teenagers and holds meetings and classes on everything from the history of Columbus to resume-building. And it’s open to everyone. As Vance said, it’s a truly democratic institution.
Yet our libraries today are under attack from people who don’t see their true value as an institution that provides information to everyone or as a gathering spot for entire communities. In an age where arguments have been cheapened by 140 characters on Twitter and communication by angry Internet comments, preserving our libraries, the place where everyone — black, white, rich, poor, male, female — comes together for the pursuit of knowledge is more important than ever.
Isabelle Altman is a reporter for The Dispatch. Her email address is [email protected].
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