The Decline Of The Public Library

HERE IN SEATTLE we have just finished spending hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding the downtown library and rebuilding a number of branch libraries.

But Helen Rumbelow thinks that public libraries are going the way of the Victorian bath house. Back in the day, there were numerous communal bath houses. But not any more. People have their own baths, thank you.

The public lending library, another great Victorian institution, has had its day. To pretend otherwise is like bursting in on a woman luxuriating in a private bubble-bath and telling her to take her behind out to a public washroom for a good old hose-down. She has no need of that now, thank you.

So it makes sense that Seattle would just have spent a ton of money on a headline architect designed public library.

All the things we used to need a library for—looking up medical information, queueing up for bestsellers—all that stuff can be done on the Internet.

What about those who, like me, used to enjoy exchanging juvenile comments with others in the margins of library books? Well, the internet can do that kind of thing too. It�s called blogging.

Actually, she�s wrong about that. Kids exchange juvenile comments on social networking sites and IM. That is when they are not exchanging juvenile comments texting on their cell phones.

So let us get real.

Let us admit that people can buy their own books if they want to. The one exception to this is children � libraries are vital for encouraging reading and literary tastes. Children�s libraries should be lavished with funding but could be located in the kind of places where they go anyway, such as play centres or after-school clubs � all the better for helping with homework.

Children�s libraries. And maybe a bunch of other community-type activities. But forget about adult books. Libraries should be putting their collections online before the books fall apart.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, we have still got to pay off the bonds on our shining new white elephant. Thirty years should do it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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