Why Public Libraries Matter: In Defence of Public Reference
Do public libraries need reference collections to fulfill their public service mandate? A veiled polemic against the erosion of public reference collections.
In our familiar quotidian moorings, the extraordinary lies underneath the prosaic. Upon losing their novelty, extraordinary innovations and heights of human achievement fall into the background, so to speak. All becomes furniture in the house of civilization. It takes a shift of perspective, a removal from our immersion in everyday, ordinary tasks to recover a sense of astonishment at that which surrounds us.
The computer, a machine that performs logical computations through variable electrical signals, inhabits that background. Removed from our human concerns, the average computer processor houses over a billion transistors, a fact that impinges upon our senses only as the faint purr of the nearby CPU. Tens of billions of such devices thread a vast communication tapestry of routers, modems, switches, cables and bisecting radio waves that power the world economy and increasingly civilization at large. This dependence on information technologies is a recent phenomenon and apparent anytime servers or the power grid fail.
But this chain of dependence constitutes merely the tip in the vast iceberg of cultural infrastructure that extends into far hazier and less apparent depths. Albeit less obvious, a great deal of cross-generational cultural transmission still depends on printed books. The book, known in ancient times as the codex, was a competitor to the scroll. Eventually the codex won over the scroll because it was more scalable, versatile, and accessible. It is difficult to estimate the effect of codices on the flowering of human reason. For now and into the foreseeable future, books will remain the gold standard of information storage and transmission. Why? Because issues of digital migration, software readability and obsolescence afflict the preservation of digital records. In worst-case scenarios of digital information loss, however unlikely, print collections will step up to the plate to serve as cultural backup.
Just as scrolls competed with codices, digital storage and organization now competes with the book. Yet we replicate the structure of the book in digital space. However, in digital space the serial organization of the book is subverted by the screen and the diversity of information types and applications. The digital is indefinitely mutable to exploit our worst cognitive biases. The serial processing that books demand, on the other hand, calls for discipline and a narrower type of concentration. It is, in many ways and as yet, the house of reason.
The growing dominance of digital culture has seen a gradual expansion of libraries as spaces of digital access rather than collections of books. But should we hasten to call one paradigm a winner over the other? Or can both paradigms coexist while fulfilling separate needs? Below I will argue the latter.
What are Libraries?
Across cultures, humans have collected objects of interest for a long time. In some sense, the essence of the library lies with this propensity to collect, to gather together. For much of history, collections like cabinets of curiosities were private. Primarily wealthy classes regaled their friends and acquaintances with them. Systematic collections of written records have, however, existed at least since antiquity. Esteemed sites like the library of Alexandria housed organized collections of scrolls and codices. Like many of our institutions, what begot the library was the ideal of gathering all extant knowledge in a universal collection. But the libraries of antiquity were not spaces of universal access. They served, primarily, the state structure or the King, and their stewards were scholars and scribes, an exclusive class of literati. Literacy remained confined to higher social castes until at least the advent of print culture, but did not truly become democratized until the wide institution of public schools.
Just as mass literacy, then, is a recent phenomenon, so is universal access. Universal access is intimately tied with the history of public institutions. Etymologically, the word ‘public’ derives from the Latin ‘publicus’ meaning ‘of the people’ or ‘held in common’. In ancient Republican Rome, the state was conceived as ‘res publica’, meaning ‘public affair’ or ‘commonwealth’. From this conception of the state emanated public spaces like the Roman Forum, where public matters like elections and trials took place. The public then is a conception of the collective solving problems that serve that collective. While common goods were restricted in antiquity to birthright and often male citizenry, the latent aspiration to universality came piecemeal to its fruition sometime between the Enlightenment and the second half of the twentieth century.
Universal access and systematicity, the organization of the collection for retrieval, are hallmarks of public libraries. In our complex and interconnected information society, public libraries occupy a significant node in the maintenance of our growing collective memory defining the horizon of our future. The library, more firmly rooted in the present; the archive, more so in the past; together connecting the vital threads that propel our culture toward innovation and problem-solving.
Until very recently, the codex stood at the helm of print culture, the only available system of cultural transmission besides orality. Information was primarily stored in books, systematic collections of which were distributed in a vast network of educational and public institutions — beside private hands. The advent of the computer in the mid-twentieth century drastically changed this reality. Now print culture sits together with digital culture, to some a contest that’s all but lost. Digital culture pervades every aspect of our lives, from social interactions with friends and family, to shopping and dating. Has digital culture supplanted the necessity of in-person interaction? It has not. But it has expanded our possibilities and shrunk geographic borders to allow us to connect with one another remotely. It has, as well, transplanted the library, in part at least, into the comfort of our own homes. Despite all this, it has not replaced the need and requirement for in-person interaction. As long as we remain human this, I suspect, will remain so. The posthuman possibility is another matter. So too, then does print culture face obsolescence in light of our growing digital culture?
It does not. At least not yet. The computer screen overwhelms our ability to process and sift through intolerable amounts of information. The good blends with the bad, the reliable with the unreliable. Our information discovery paths become nonlinear. Certainly, in some manner, this was always the case. Books refer to each other indefinitely through indices, bibliographies, direct references, allusions, summaries. In digital space, the nonlinear becomes exacerbated. This is both good and bad: we get what we need faster, but at the same time we can easily lose our way. Our focused attention, a resource scarcer than oil, becomes exhausted. The calculus test requires deep concentration. So does understanding the law, physics, biology, business administration, leisurely reading. Learning demands comfort and seclusion from other information.
It still finds that comfort, even now, in the codex. In the analog feel of the book in our hands, the flexibility of posture it permits, the break it gives from the screen, the relief from information overload to our senses and minds. Difficult information requires serial or linear processing to be understood. Too many distractions and it’s a lost cause.
It is no surprise then, that in recent years the publishing market has seen a stabilization of the digital to print ratio in overwhelming favour of print. Physical books, both in Canada and the US, outsell ebooks roughly four to one (Statista, 2022). And, unlike what some had thought, these are not entirely caught in a zero-sum game. Buying an ebook might mean that you’ll forego buying the physical book and vice versa. But it turns out that what we buy as ebooks and consume digitally differ qualitatively from what we choose to consume in analog fashion. The library teems with eager students everyday. The collections worn just as much from frequent use as neglect from staffing shortages. And yet, the collections thrive just as much from the dedication of the extant staff as the eyes of curious readers that peruse them at every corner of the library. It is one thing to sit at home in front of a computer screen or tablet, and another to step into a public forum of the exuberance of the Toronto Reference Library.
To collect means to gather together. The collection sits in a building, and the building shelters the collection. Each book a world. So the collection is a world of worlds. A universe. A universe that focalizes the individual paths of myriad strangers every day. It is, alas, increasingly also a place of spectacle. The pulse of our metropolitan city throbs most distinctly here. The aspirations of newcomers and locals, the wonder of visitors, the restlessness of the homeless, all converge here before sundering again into separates paths across the expanse of the city. In public fora, therefore, we gather together as collectives, even as we pursue our individual goals. The physical collections bind this gathering, while also backing up the fragility of servers and networks that heave the digital sphere. Digital and print, unbeknownst to many, link in mutual dependence. This gathering together replenishes our humanity because our private strivings reveal to be also the strivings of others. This, then, is the library, of which there is no substitute. Even though our methods of assembly are more fractured than ever, mere physical assembly in the vale of the commons insinuates our unity.
Public Mandates
“Good books depend on enlightenment in all classes of the people; they adorn the truth. They enlighten the government about its duties, its shortcomings, its true interest, and the public opinion to which it must listen and conform: these good books are patient masters that wait for the state administrators to awaken and for their passions to subside” — Louis Sébastien Mercier
The legitimacy of our institutions depends on a rational justification of the powers they wield. This is a far from obvious position to hold. It took centuries for it to find robust intellectual articulation and far longer practical institution. In our modern context, all public institutions are founded on some conception of natural law, wherein the authority of the source of law is not vested in a person, arbitrary body or divine right, but reason alone. Hugo Grotius, one of the early articulators of this conception of natural law, thought that laws founded on reason were binding “etsi Deus non daretur” [even if God did not exist], thereby stripping legal authority from any vestige of arbitrariness.
In part, this conception of natural law underpins social contract theories of government, wherein governmental power embodies collective interests. This constraint on formal power on behalf of the body politic is encoded in the Canadian Constitution, the supreme law of the land. All public institutions, often through complex chains of legal delegation and elaboration, derive their authority and legitimacy from it.
This source of accountability, namely the fetter of public interest, also confers on public institutions a degree of autonomy and independence. This is most obvious in the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of government. Each operates according to powers delegated from the constitution, but in so doing, their accountability explicitly rests on the internal rules and norms invested in them by their function. The interests of external bodies, whether governmental or private, in principle, hold no sway.
Such is also the case with municipal institutions like the Toronto Public Library. The institution is autonomous within the legal limits circumscribed by the board. The Toronto Public Library is founded by the board, and the power of the board is instituted in the Public Libraries Act. The Public Libraries Act obliges the board “to provide … a comprehensive and efficient public library service that reflects the community’s unique needs” (R.S.O. 1990, c. P.44). While this requirement is sufficiently general, what binds public libraries to the interests of the public is a responsibility to represent those interests fairly. This requires earnest and impartial research into the diverse information needs of our diverse city. Therefore, the library and its board are not free to forfeit their fetter of accountability to the denizens they represent. It is their interests that the library is mandated to mirror.
Public mandates, therefore, are not available to be outsourced to external institutions or corporations. If we cede our mandates to these external bodies, we will also have unwittingly ceded our institutional independence and responsibility to the public. Doing so would also constitute a loss of legitimacy. Public mandates, as argued above, are chained to their legal bases and the responsibility entailed therein to administer the public good. This means that both management and staff, while internally separated for functional reasons, should cooperate to articulate and administer our mandates to the outward-facing public. This also means deferring to the internal professional body of talent as best disposed for formulating and articulating our evolving responsibility to the public. While as an independent institution we are free to seek the best counsel and consultation available as to how to administer our mandate, that counsel should necessarily and transparently be countenanced against the stalwart principles that already inform our institution as stewarded by its staff.
An Exhortation
In a time when the corporate sphere has all but hollowed out the public one, it is not now the time to capitulate what is left of the commons to the former. Print culture and public fora, as argued above, collude to create a unique nexus where the scarce attentional resources of human consciousness fulfill some of their highest potential. Since print culture is far from dead, let’s not then throw the baby out with the bathwater by reducing and downgrading our reference collections.
Public reference collections are an indispensable public good that meet the complex needs of our metropolitan city. Demand for the technical expertise that powers our society will continue to expand, and print public reference collections form a pivotal point of access in democratizing and supplying that technical wherewithal to all strata of society, but in particular those less privileged. With a high stream of newcomers and locals seeking to improve their education levels and standing in society, for many our reference collections form the only point of contact with academic research and higher learning. Students of all ages, as well as professionals and retirees with no access to higher educational institutions utilize our collections to update their knowledge, find current information, enrich their professions, transition to new ones, fulfill their curiosity for knowledge, become better citizens, and seek respite from the incessant bustle of city life.
Instead of splurging public coffer on glossy facades of innovation — innovation is indeed something worth striving for, while paying lip-service to it not — it should comport itself seriously. The professional class that oversee its daily operations should be empowered instead of instrumentalized as collateral to service the image that managers feel is befitting our public to behold. The managerial body needs to carve wiggle room for the individuality of its workforce to shine through in the services we provide across all professional tiers. Doing so does not have to compromise professionalism, legal compliance or the standards of conduct befitting the institution.
The global Covid-19 pandemic saw concentration of power and decision-making in the hands of a handful of people in the organization, while keeping the workforce hostage to their poor decisions. Instead of rising to the occasion and mobilizing the workforce to continue our services during the pandemic by maximizing participation, we saw them discourage it and inefficiently use the workforce to project a veneer of public service, as their talents languished and professional esteem eroded. While public institutions are uniquely disposed to moral hazard due to poor internal incentives, the internal culture of the Toronto Public Library actively disincentivizes its staff to contribute to the organization. On the contrary, the internal culture rewards apathy, docility, and complaisance. It is no wonder then that low morale pervades its workforce.
In his Political Order and Political Decay, quoting from the 2003 “United States National Commission on the Public Service”, political scientist Francis Fukuyama states:
Those who enter the civil service often find themselves trapped in a maze of rules and regulations that thwart their personal development and stifle their creativity. The best are underpaid, the worst, overpaid. (Fukuyama, 461)
Further:
Surveys of the federal workforce paint a depressing picture. According to Light, “Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than mission, ensnared by the lack of resources to do their jobs, dissatisfied with the rewards for a job well done and the lack of consequences for a job poorly done, and unwilling to trust their own organizations.” (Fukuyama, 461)
There are strong parallels between these characterizations of the civil service in the United States and what I observe in my own organization. Lest these quotes are misunderstood as being against civil service and bureaucracy, I acknowledge that some moral hazard is inevitable in all public institutions that is a byproduct of their stability and systems of seniority they rely on, but a better allocation of incentives would do wonders for the internal vitality of the organization i.e. rewarding competence, providing clear pathways for development for those with drive and creativity, and finally eliminating the nepotism that is rampant across the Toronto Public Library. Good, hard-working, intelligent and principled people begin to lose confidence in themselves when they see that there’s no correlation between those traits and professional advancement.
Like the early 19th century, we are in the midst of a large-scale socio-historical shift whose ripples are universally felt but whose overall pattern eludes any one’s understanding. We would be remiss to act hastily with foggy sights on the shape of the future by downsizing our collections. I exhort you, therefore, to act cautiously and implement changes gradually until the fog that shrouds these evolving cultural threads dissipates and more clear sights allow for decisions on the future of public libraries to stand on firmer ground.
