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Sunday, April 23rd, 2023

When the Culture Wars Come for the Public Library

Author:     E. Tammy Kim
Source:     The New Yorker
Publication Date:     April 20, 2023
 Link: When the Culture Wars Come for the Public Library
Stephan:  

I have extremely strong views about public libraries and protecting them from political and ideological manipulation. Libraries have played a major role in my life, from the time I learned to read until today, and my wife would say the same, as would tens of millions of other Americans. In the 19th century Andrew Carnegie, himself an immigrant from Scotland, and then one of the richest men in America considered what he could do with his money to foster wellbeing in America. He settled on creating and funding public libraries. Today there are 2,509 Carnegie funded libraries in small towns and large cities all over the country. Now the MAGAts are attacking public libraries seeking to shape them to MAGAt ideology. It is a vile and disgusting effort and if you want to help your community, particularly if you live in a Red state, get involved and protect your local library.

Illustration by Emmanuel Polanco

Every public library is an exception. The world outside is costly and cordoned off, but here no one is charged, and no one is turned away. People browse for books and go online. They learn English, meet with friends, dawdle, nap, and play. For children, the public library is a place to build an inner life, unencumbered by grownups. Story time is an invitation to that experience. A librarian reads a book aloud to a huddle of kids seated cross-legged on the floor. It’s part early-literacy tool, part theatre, and looks basically the same wherever it happens. The public libraries in Flathead County, Montana, a region of mountainous beauty bordering Canada and Glacier National Park, offer seven story times per week, for babies on up. Three scattered branch locations—in Kalispell, Columbia Falls, and Bigfork—serve a population of a hundred and eleven thousand people, spread out over five thousand rugged square miles.

On a spring day in 2019, Ellie Newell, the youth-services librarian at the main branch, in a historic post office in downtown […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Sunday, April 23, 2023 at 2:14 pm

    I absolutely agree with you, Stephan. Libraries are an essential part of any, and every community for the older and younger generations. I have been fortunate to have been able to buy hundreds of books for my own personal library because our public library does not carry all of the latest books, especially on the scientific subjects which I study a lot like Quantum Physics.