This is a thing I wrote for a lib­rary focused blog about the lib­rary debate that happened in Wel­ling­ton earli­er this week. It’s aimed at lib­rar­i­ans but it’s rel­ev­ant to Wel­ling­ton and Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rar­ies. I’ve tweaked it slightly.

I received an email from the Lib­rary Asso­ci­ation (LIANZA) last week sug­gest­ing that I might be inter­ested in a event. It was being organ­ised by a coali­tion of lib­rary sup­port­ers con­cerned about budget cuts to Wel­ling­ton Lib­rar­ies. So far – fant­ast­ic! A group from the com­munity who “coordin­ate efforts against the steady deteri­or­a­tion of lib­rary ser­vices in Wel­ling­ton, advoc­ates for users and staff of pub­lic lib­rar­ies and brings togeth­er groups” (who also sup­port lib­rar­ies). The teams looked like an inter­est­ing mix of people with a vari­ety of exper­i­ences. They looked like they would be very enter­tain­ing.  Bril­liant.

Then it all went hor­ribly wrong.

The moot was “Are lib­rar­ies worth sav­ing?“

I was unequi­voc­al about my reac­tion on Twit­ter.

No. I am not inter­ested in a debate on “Are Lib­rar­ies Worth Sav­ing?” Thanks though. #Far­Cough

— lib­rar­ykris (@librarykris) August 27, 2013

I am ashamed to say that I didn’t send this to LIANZA. I’m telling myself that it was best that I step away for a few days because it made me so MAD. Both the moot, AND that a pro­fes­sion­al lib­rary organ­isa­tion would send it round to their mem­bers thus legit­im­ising the debate. As someone said “May as well just ask: “is cul­ture worth sav­ing?“” What I’m inter­ested in doing now is unpack­ing one of the opin­ions expressed by the affirm­at­ive team and how they might have come to those con­clu­sions.

Here’s a tweet from @wizzyrea report­ing on those argu­ments from the affirm­at­ive team. There are a few more on her account regard­ing the debate.

Focus on a lib­rary as a phys­ic­al space, ware­house, not as a com­munity learn­ing centre or gath­er­ing place.

— Liz Rea (@wizzyrea) Septem­ber 3, 2013

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion with Liz indic­ates that the lack of focus on the lib­rary as a com­munity learn­ing space or gath­er­ing place was more by omis­sion than state­ment. She had to leave early, so the concept of lib­rary as ‘third place’ may have come up later in the debate. Extra­pol­at­ing wildly from this  com­ment, I think that the affirm­at­ive team regards the pub­lic lib­rary as a giant book­shelf for phys­ic­al books.

Is that all Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rar­ies is?

Maybe…of course not. Every time I go in I see people sit­ting at desks and chairs. Their laptops are open or they are read­ing books – to them­selves or to oth­ers. I don’t know how long they stay there to assess wheth­er they are using the lib­rary place as any­thing oth­er than some­where to pause. How­ever, they are there, using the space as a place. So how does the idea of ‘lib­rary as ware­house’ per­sist?

Lib­rary cir­cu­la­tion stats were repor­ted in the paper recently (they’re rising, as is the per­cent­age of act­ive lib­rary mem­bers) but there wasn’t any­thing about foot traffic. The lib­rary blogs are heavy on pro­mot­ing books, with dif­fer­ent formats thrown in occa­sion­ally. A couple of recent excep­tions to this are the winter game night and Aman­da Palmer ninja gig posts which describe how the space is being used. (That’s as far through old posts as I got before being over­whelmed by the book-iness of them.) The sheer num­ber of book syn­op­sis posts rein­forces the notion that lib­rar­ies = books. I know why they’re blog­ging like this, I get that… Some­times I think lib­rar­ies are our own worst enemy. We don’t demon­strate all the facets of our oper­a­tion.

I’ll be at #LIANZA13 if you want to chat fur­ther about this. I’ll wel­come you with open arms because I need to learn how to artic­u­late the ways in which lib­rar­ies are essen­tial to a healthy com­munity without get­ting inar­tic­u­late with rage over mis­guided events from lib­rary sup­port­ers.

In the mean­time I’ll be read­ing Why are New Zea­l­and lib­rar­ies let­ting their enemies write “the final chapter”?* by Dr Matt Finch to remind me why lib­rar­ies need to be ubi­quit­ous in our com­munit­ies, edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, and busi­nesses.

*tl;dr “Lib­rar­ies are about help­ing the pub­lic to explore the world of know­ledge and cul­ture on their own terms.“