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.“