Library Professor Kenneth Shearer identified the disconnect between what people want and what they get from public libraries and predicted dire consequences.
Foreshadowing the Crisis
In 1993, Kenneth Shearer, esteemed library professor and former editor of Public Libraries magazine, warned of a "startling' disconnect between what taxpayers want and what public libraries provide.
He cited a study which revealed that the public overwhelming wanted its public libraries to serve as lifelong learning centers, providing formal educational support and serving as preschoolers' "door to learning." In contrast, public library adminstrators themselves overwhelmingly placed the most emphasis on "popular materials."
Shearer concluded that "the striking incongruence between the priorities of the public library community and those of the public is attributed to the excessive attention by the library community to ... [circulation numbers]...without reference to their apparent significance to taxpayers."
In other words, then, as now, library administrators justifed their "popular materials" leaden collections with raw circulation numbers, failing to, or not caring to, notice that the public did not, and still does not today, share their priorities.
Libraries routinely roll out circulation numbers the moment a patron, or "customer" as they now like to refer to us, questions the shallowness of the collection. Playboy Magazine? It circulates. Harlequin Romances? They circulate. Graphic Novels? They really circulate. People Magazine? Well, you can guess, it circulates. Indeed, there is much "demand" to get for free at the library what you have to pay for at the grocery store checkout line.
But do libraries, or even the well funded American Library Association, ever look past the circulation desk into the community beyond and actually survey the community to ask the question "How would you like us to spend your tax dollars?" Not since the 1990's survey cited by Shearer, it would seem.
But, no matter that their librarians haven't asked them, taxpayers have expressed, in the most adamant terms, their displeasure with the "popular materials" model thrust upon them. "...a library, ... is a repository, a keeper of history, a place to go to where you know that you can find things out and get questions answered. A library is not a popularity contest, a poll-driven reality show or a profit-making business," and "Yes, libraries should restrict their inventory to what people want. And, by that logic, school cafeterias should be stocked with nothing but chips, doughnuts and sugary soda," and "Our enormously wealthy society--replete with many, more, and newer 'things'--are all leaving behind the real sources of 'richness'."
Those are just a few of the reader responses to reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal on the transformation of America's public libraries libraries from keepers of our literary heritage to "welfare programs for middle-class readers who would rather borrow the newest bestseller then spend a few bucks at Wal-mart."
In his article, Kenneth Shearer concluded that "If public librarians will stress lifelong learning more in word and in deed, both the public sense of institutional relevance and public willingness to provide support will increase."
Have they? You can't say we weren't warned.
