Category: Random Thoughts

Unsurprisingly, a lot of my friends have been talking about the dismantling of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, and it’s got me thinking about why the protesters set up the library and why people care so much that it’s gone. And why tiny towns have libraries, and why universities are judged on their libraries, and why tweed-coated English gentlemen built private libraries far larger than they could read through in a lifetime.

For lending libraries, of course there’s an economic benefit to the community that comes from sharing books. And I imagine that this was a core benefit to the People’s Library, too. It’s easy to see how the protesters would have wanted to carry out simple acts of sharing with all who were in want.

I think there’s also a nice metaphor of cultural exchange that happens with lending libraries. Ideally, more than one person will have read each book, and that means that those people will have experiences in common to discuss and build upon.

I think a library, any kind of library, is also a statement about belonging and longevity. “We are here,” they help us say, “and we plan to be here for a while.” And it’s not just belonging and longevity, but also a statement about progress. “We know things,” they help us say, “and we will continue to learn new things and add those things to this collection.”

I have been having a hard time feeling outrage about the dismantling of the People’s Library, but maybe it is in part because I have been thinking of it as a collection of books in a tent. Maybe it was more than that.

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A couple of weeks ago Bryan Garsten came to give a convocation speech here. The speech consisted primarily of a tale of several conversations in which his cast of semi-fictional characters hashed out what they thought college was for. But before he began that tale, he started with a beautiful little metaphor.

Arguments wear clothes, he said. When you bring an argument out into the world, it should be clothed for the appropriate occasion. There do exist argument nudist colonies, but in the end these remain on the margines. Appropriately clothed arguments, on the other hand, have power and sway in all areas of society.

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I’ve had the more standard stress dreams, the ones where I’m supposed to teach but have no idea what or where and I’ve missed most of the term already, the ones where I’m supposed to take a final for a class I don’t remember enrolling in and have never attended. Last night I had a new kind of stress dream.

The library’s heavy duty stapler had died under the constant stress of massive eReserves printouts and student frustration. The library had decided that handing out large paperclips was the better way to go considering the expense of a new heavy duty stapler and the amount of time we spent fixing it every week. Then we got an email from a (fictional) history prof on campus who had forgotten that librarians might be on the all-campus email list and had sent out a passive-aggressive plea supposedly behind our backs asking for the campus to chip in and help buy a heavy duty stapler. (Man am I glad this guy doesn’t actually exist.) This prof hinted that the library must not care much about the history department since our decision hurt them the most. He also said that only one model of stapler would do and that he intended to collect the money and then hand it over to the library so that we could make the purchase.

When we looked into it, it turned out that this model of stapler was discontinued (and yet we knew we’d have to find one anyway). Not only that, but the staples that it required were only available in small quantities at auction, and each set of 100 staples came in its own display box, much like the little boxes watches come in, with the staples hanging from a display stand. As you would imagine, the staples weren’t a bargain.

At this point, I woke up in a cold sweat.

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