"A library is not a shrine for the worship of books... A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas -- a place where history comes to life."

-- Norman Cousins, Saturday Review, July 1, 1950

I have carried on a love affair with books for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is of standing on the sofa in our living room, reading aloud a passage from Isaiah to my astonished mother who, thinking I must have memorized the verse, quickly gave me a newspaper and asked what the headline said. Despite stumbling over a few of the words, I did manage to decipher the words and so my great love was borne.

The public library was a magical place to me, a world where anything could, and often did, happen. As a young child, I fed my imagination on tales spun by Seuss, Baum, Carroll, and Alcott. Later, when I had questions about love, sex, death, war, and a myriad of other topics, the library offered answers. There, I could learn about things that interested me, without having to justify my curiosities to anyone. I was lucky enough to live in a community where the librarians unquestioningly helped me find anything I requested.

Then, when I was in the sixth grade, we moved to a new city. The librarians there were not nearly so helpful. When I browsed through the adult titles, they steered me back to Nancy Drew. Once, while looking for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I was told that I was "too young" for the Immortal Bard and refused the proper Dewey number. I was infuriated. What was a library for if not to provide access to the wisdom and poetry of the ages to all people?

Today, this wisdom and poetry is contained in more than just books. Periodicals, sound recordings, videos, the internet, pamphlets and many more formats house the ideas our patrons seek. Still, I believe it is our duty as librarians to provide access to these ideas and ideals, practical and poetic, to all people. Any idea that has been captured for perusal in any format should be available.

In order to achieve this goal, public librarians must realize that service is one of the most important aspects of librarianship. What good is the wisdom of Socrates, the poetry of Langston Hughes, the wit of Garrison Keillor, the practical advice of Benjamin Spock, the entertaining fluff of Danielle Steel if our patrons cannot access it? And while many of our patrons may be fully capable of finding materials on their own, while some may even prefer the absolute privacy secured by declining assistance, we must be approachable to those who do require a helping hand.

It is true that no library can contain all things. That does not mean that the access a patron has must be limited to the holdings of any particular library. Interlibrary loan programs enable us to borrow many materials for our patrons across city, state, and even international boundaries. As service-oriented librarians, we must make it a mission to inform the patrons of the potential of material, informative and entertaining, available through us. Instead of praying that we don’t get too many requests for interlibrary loans (more paperwork, don’t you know), we should inform our patrons of this service, even (gasp!) encourage them to take advantage of it. Our answer to a request should never be "Sorry, we don’t have it. Good-bye." Rather, we should say, "We don’t have that here, but we can certainly try to find someone who does have it for you to use."

Libraries are, in theory anyway, one of the greatest democratic institutions in the world. In a library, all patron groups are to be equally respected, all requests taken seriously. Regardless of color, creed, ethnicity, age, health, economic status, or any other qualifier, every person who walks through the doors of a public library should be treated equally. Equal access means equal access. While some patrons may be unable to check out materials for a variety of reasons (unpaid fines, no home address, etc.), no one should be prohibited from using library materials in the library. This may present problems when some of our patrons want to dictate what others may access, but if we are to have true freedom, we have to acknowledge the individual’s right to obtain any information he seeks and accept that sometimes the consequences may be unpalatable to some.

Libraries change lives. This is more than a slogan; it is a reality. The history books are full of men and women who found information, inspiration, sanctuary, and entertainment in public libraries. (As one example, Ernest Hemingway once wrote to his former public library in Oak Park years after he had moved away to tell how important that institution had been to him.) Whether the changes wrought by a library are tangible (as when an author conducts extensive research for a new tome), or not (the harried mother of six who checks out Harlequins as a form of escapism while her children are napping), we must believe this. Believing it, we have no reason not to offer the absolute best service to our patrons that we can. Gone are the librarians of old, the Grand High Keepers of Knowledge who looked stern and unapproachable. Instead, we must be courteous, friendly, and enthusiastic about helping our patrons, all of our patrons, find what they are looking for.

Umberto Eco wrote that "the librarian must consider the reader an enemy." I couldn’t disagree more. Without readers (and listeners, and viewers, and...), public libraries are nothing more than useless shrines full of worthless paper (and film and...). When we realize the importance of our patrons, we are truly able to "be the delivery room for the birth of ideas -- a place where history comes to life."

copyright 1998 by Katharine S. Kalweit -- all rights reserved