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April 23, 2010

Lowry: In praise of libraries

northjersery.com

Thursday, April 22, 2010
By BRUCE LOWRY
RECORD COLUMNIST

My mother was not a learned woman, nor a person of means, but she did have the wisdom and wherewithal to make sure I had a library card.

It was beige, as I recall, with my name and address printed on the front. I remember the feel of those raised, brown letters on the plastic as I rubbed them with my fingers. It gives me chills to think about it. It was proof, somehow, that I was a real person.

More than the card itself, however, I remember the joy it brought. It was like one of those gold tickets and I was Charlie in the Chocolate Factory: so much to see, so much to experience.
As a boy I remember the great fun of picking out books, all of them wide and thin and tall, and lugging them, six or 10 at a time, to the checkout counter. I remember watching with anticipation as the librarian placed my card into that marvelous mechanical machine that must have come from a shoe factory, and pressing down the handle to make the imprint, to make it official that I'd checked out a book.

Somehow, an impression was made, in more ways than one. I'm still not sure how it worked, but it was part of the magic of the place.

I don't know how many kids have library cards today, but I have a feeling that if proposed budget cuts come to fruition, and the state's libraries lose more money out of already scant reserves, fewer kids today will be getting them.

Funding reductions

As New Jersey Library Association President Susan Briant wrote on this page last week in a letter to the editor, the proposed 74 percent reduction in state funding "will eliminate the core services and infrastructure that support a majority of local libraries." Even more menacing is a measure under consideration in the Assembly. That bill, A2555, would do away with what is now a required minimum funding by formula, a still small amount, by towns for municipal public libraries.

It is hard to imagine how anyone who has ever stepped foot inside a library could come up with a plan so shortsighted, a piece of legislation that, taken to the extreme, could lead to zero funding at some local libraries. Such a bill should not pass now, when so many are hurting and depending on library services, nor should it ever pass.

The fact that we're even having the conversation is troubling. Has the social contract in New Jersey been so battered that we can seriously consider knocking down one of the last standing monuments to the public good?

Ticket to other worlds
I understand that libraries might have lost some luster in modern times. Many of them are housed in old, though glorious buildings. Many of them are trying hard to keep up, to adjust to the changes from our emerging technologies.

I also understand that in our world a library card doesn't carry the same cachet as an iPhone, but for some of us it is just as valuable. Like the Social Security card, it is a constant in our lives, that piece of personal luggage we would not think of leaving behind.

The first library card I received in West Monroe, La., and the dozen or so others I've used in every place since, has been a ticket to a million worlds, a transport to a thousand moments in time. In all these years, it has never failed to produce some bit of wonder or intellectual nourishment: a colorful picture book with big-print words I read to my child, a book of poems by W.S. Merwin, or a staggeringly well-written piece of nonfiction, perhaps a civil rights history from Taylor Branch.

My driver's license may help me navigate the realities of daily life, but the library card provides escape.

I imagine I am not alone in this regard. I imagine that in hundreds of communities across New Jersey, the public library still stands as a rock in a storm of uncertainty. In these days of economic hardship for so many, the library is a place the unemployed find answers and the overstressed find calm.

Elected leaders in New Jersey should respect libraries. They may be the last quiet place in our screaming world.
E-mail: lowryb@northjersey.com

Posted by tumulty at April 23, 2010 6:52 PM

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