Class, Access and Activism in Chicago Public School Libraries

Protest against Chicago school closings, via In These Times
Protest against Chicago school closings, via In These Times

 

In spring 2013, the Chicago Public School system attracted national attention for the unprecedented closing of 54 schools and layoffs of more than 2,100 employees. The closings confirmed the fears that motivated the Chicago Teachers Union’s historic fall 2012 strike, in which tens of thousands of teachers walked out of the job for nearly two weeks. Over a year later, Chicago’s public school students are facing another challenge: the continuing decline of library resources and professional library staff in the schools. While the dismantling of professionally staffed school libraries pose serious labor concerns for Chicago’s certified teacher-librarians, it also exacerbates information inequality in a school district that primarily serves minority and low-income students.

Over the past two school years, the number of librarians in Chicago’s public schools has been cut nearly in half, from 454 in the 2012-13 school year budget to just 254 this year. Only 38 percent of the schools welcoming students from the recently-closed schools have a professional librarian, compared with only 55 percent of schools in the district overall. The decrease is not a result of a diminished hiring pool, and it is only an indirect result of the mass layoffs of 2013. Rather, “student-based” rebudgeting has forced principals to make difficult decisions either to dismiss librarians or reassign them to fill vacant classroom teaching positions. Of the schools that have standalone libraries, many are now staffed either by part-time clerks or parent volunteers.

This reorganization of library labor within the schools points to the pernicious effects of austerity management and neoliberal policy on public education. As Nauratil writes in The Alienated Librarian, “The bottom-line measure of success in the private sector is profit. When this model is superimposed on a traditionally nonprofit organization, that organization’s own goals, structure, and character are jeopardized,” (Nauratil 75). How can school librarians fulfill their professional commitment to information democracy and equal access when their jobs are jeopardized by a city administration more committed to the interests of private corporations than the human rights of its most underserved (student) populations?[1]

Statistics published by Chicago Teachers’ Union on librarian employment in public vs. private schools demonstrate the ways in which access to library education is undeniably a class issue. CPS schools, which serve 87% low-income students, lack librarians in nearly 50 percent of schools. 100% of Chicago’s elite private schools have professional librarians. As CTU’s report states:

A school library is integral to every child’s education and shouldn’t be available only to students in wealthy schools… school librarians support information needs and integrate literacy development across the curriculum and across grade development.

Beyond reading skills, librarians promote digital information literacy and facilitate more self-directed learning experiences. Without instructing students in how to evaluate, retrieve, and manipulate information sources, we risk reproducing class inequalities by leaving low-income students under-equipped to navigate and empower themselves within a digital information economy.

In response to criticisms about decreases in school librarians and library access CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett attributed hiring decisions to individual principals, who must decide how to allocate funds for their schools. In addition, Byrd-Bennett promised digitally enhanced libraries in every welcoming school and iPads for all students in grades 3-8. While incorporating new technologies into the classroom seems positive, their value is diminished without specialized library and media instruction. Boasting of new technologies without tackling the fraught pedagogical situation in the schools belies a situation in which school boards award expensive contracts to high-tech corporations rather than hire skilled laborers to address students’ media education needs. Following Peter McDonald’s thesis in “Corporate Inroads and Librarianship,” we must question whether technological advancement masks the intrusion of the “paradigm of corporate hegemony” into the library (McDonald 9). I doubt that iPads for every student substantially address the educational needs of inner city students facing issues such as racial inequality, economic disparity, high crime rates, and police brutality.

Advocacy and Resistance: Learning from La Casita

Community members fight to save La Casita, 2011 (photo by Brett Jelinek, via saveourcenter.com)
Community members fight to save La Casita, 2011 (photo by Brett Jelinek, via saveourcenter.com)

Chicago Teachers’ Union, library advocacy groups, parents, and community members continue to fight to provide students with the library resources that they deserve. Beyond the labor issues in school libraries, these groups have pointed out how the dismantling of the public school system perpetuates structures of class and racial oppression. While the battle may be an uphill one, it is crucial to continue to challenge CPS budget-centered, neoliberal approach to education.

Perhaps the most inspiring challenge to the lack of school libraries came from the parents of Whittier Elementary School in Chicago’s mostly Latino Pilsen neighborhood. As the school had no dedicated library, parents turned a field house on the premises, affectionately termed “La Casita,” into a library and community center. When police threatened to demolish La Casita in September 2011, dozens of Whittier parents – mostly mothers – staged a sit-in for forty-three days and nights, demanding that the building be renovated into a library. The district had other plans: they wanted to remove the school’s special education classroom to make room for a library inside the building. During the sit-in, La Casita continued to serve as a community center, offering a collection of 2,500 books, ESL classes, sewing classes and other resources. When the occupation ended, school officials agreed to re-allocate the demolition funds to renovate the building according to the community members’ plans. However, work was not begun, and on a Friday night in summer 2013, the city sent in a demolition crew to bulldoze the field house. Of the more than 200 protesters (including myself) who gathered that evening, 10 were arrested. CPS has converted the former library into an astro-turf field and basketball courts.

Though community members no longer exchange skills and knowledge at La Casita, the center provides a key alternative model for how libraries can empower underserved communities. Forged out of direct action rather than state standards, La Casita provided materials and participatory experiences that addressed a minority student community whose educational needs were being denied by the state. Moreover, the parents and students who gathered there learned to articulate their needs and desires and forge political identities in a process of class struggle. The movement echoes the radical pedagogy outlined in Paolo Friere’s seminal “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Learning from La Casita, I would encourage teacher-librarians to partner with parents and activist groups, offering their skills as informational specialists to help communities challenge educational inequalities in their own voices, in their own terms. While school and public libraries are critical for empowering people with information, we can’t reach this ideal through one institution. Along with open access media, self-directed community centers can allow people to activate knowledge to transform their everyday lives.

[1] At the time of the budget cuts, mayor Rahm Emanuel also approved the expenditure of $195 million of public money on a new stadium for DePaul University, attracting wide criticism. The incident builds on a track record of supporting private-sector growth, particularly in the areas of tourism and entertainment.

Additional References:

McDonald, Peter. “Corporate Inroads and Librarianship: The Fight for the Soul of the Profession in the New Millennium.” Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian. Ed. Alison M. Lewis. Duluth, MN: Library Juice, 2008. 9-24. Print.

Nauratil, Marcia J. The Alienated Librarian. New York: Greenwood, 1989.

 

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Alleviating Burnout and Alienation Through Support Groups and Mentorship

In Marcia Nauratil’s The Alienated Librarian [1. Nauratil, Marcia J. (1989). The Alienated Librarian. New York: Greenwood Press] the author delves into the work toll on librarians, focusing on the psychological element called burnout.  In the book researchers Ines and Aronson describe occupational burnout as a state of, “physical depletion, by feelings of helplessness, by emotional drain, and by the development of negative attitudes toward work, life, and other people.” Burnout is often a gradual shift that occurs in a worker after being exposed to the stress and strain of interacting regularly with the public over time. While stress is not readily associated with librarianship, Susan Casey cited a 2006 study that provided interesting results: “In 2006, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology was presented with a study concerning levels of job stress among firefighters, police officers, train operators, teachers, and librarians. The study was approached with the presupposition that librarians would experience the least amount of stress. Surprisingly, the findings showed the opposite. Although there were many categories used to calculate stress, librarians ranked the highest in the level of perceived stress overall (Saddiq and Burke, 2006).”
The symptoms of burnout vary from the physical – ulcers, coronary disease, high blood pressure, to the emotional – depression, irritability and loss of self esteem. As Nauratil observes, “Burnout librarians are likely to experience negative changes in their attitudes, becoming cynical about their work, and hostile toward the library and its constituency.” These negative mental and emotional symptoms also often bleed into the personal life of a librarian, and can take a toll on the relationships the librarian has with their family and friends.
One of the more extreme effects of burnout is librarians quitting the field all together. As Nauratil observes, “Some librarians have left the profession entirely, deciding to try their luck at running a craft shop or raising horses.” For those who choose to stay in the field there are ways to deal with their burnout symptoms. Though many scholars view organizational change as one of the more effective shifts that can take place to counter burnout in librarians, this is not always an option. Nauratil acknowledges this in saying, “Despite empirical evidence that democratizing the library can be of substantial benefit to employees and users alike, implementation has proceeded at a much slower pace than in the private sector. Few public libraries in North America have embraced participative management.”
While Nauratil is not optimistic about many of the other strategies at hand to deal with burnout, there are various avenues that can be explored. These are grouped into collegial and individual coping mechanisms.  Unfortunately, none of the latter coping tactics have  been shown to provide a long-term solution to the problem of burnout.  Furthermore, in Nauratil’s findings, “there is some evidence that secondary and tertiary coping strategies are not only ineffective but actually harmful. In a study of managers and medical professionals…both secondary and tertiary strategies were associated with an increase in psychosomatic symptoms.”
Conversely, it is widely held that collegial coping has proven effective in managing stress in the workplace. This coping strategy is broken into two areas by Nauratil. One is socioemotional, which the author defines as, “the sharing of social reality – the external validation of one’s perceptions.” The second is instrumental support, and is described as, “…more concrete forms of collegial assistance. These include sharing information, insights and advice…”
On the topic of burnout in the library sector, LISCareer.com suggests support groups as a tool for combatting work related stress: “Professional library associations are a wonderful resource where you can find all sorts of support and mentoring as well as opportunities to cultivate and use your unique talents and skills.” In professions where the worker is interacting with the public on a daily basis and, as such, burnout is a likely possibility, support groups and mentorship have been shown to have positive results. In a 2002 article on burnout in the Journal of the American Medical Association [3. Spickard, Anderson, Jr., Gabbe, Steven, Christensen, John, “Mid Career Burnout In Generalist and Specialist Physicians”, Journal of the American Medical Association, Sept. 2002, 1449] suggestions for promoting well-being in physicians included, “…a mentor program, in which senior physicians guide and support junior members in their career development and in balancing their personal and professional lives, [and] confidential support groups that meet monthly on a voluntary basis with group generated topics and facilitation by an outside professional.” To echo the findings in the study in the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology – that the levels of stress in librarians are ranked as high as those in the medical filed – it seems a fair conclusion to draw that the JAMA study on promoting well-being is also applicable to the field of librarianship.
There is a support group for librarians, where the main focus is obtaining a tenure track, at the Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University. In the article “Academic Librarians and the Pursuit of Tenure: the Support Group As a Strategy for Success”, Jeannie P. Miller and Candace R. Benefiel write, “The establishment of an informal tenure support group can provide an outlet for discussing common concerns and channeling participants’ energies toward finding effective solutions. The atmosphere of caring and sharing that results form a support group can remove one more hurdle …and increase the productivity and success of each member.” The positive effects for the staff that make up this specialized support group are a good example of the benefits of the collegial coping mechanism, and the findings are equally relevant to that of a non-specialized library group, in either the academic or public setting. Miller and Benefiel go on to say, “Many of the group members also commented on positive elements in participating in the group, citing feelings such as: being able to share common experiences and anxieties, which made them feel less alone in the struggle; enjoying the opportunity to meet colleagues from other parts of the library, networking and learning their concerns.”
In The Alienated Librarian Christina Maslach, an authority on burnout syndrome, cautions, “…against the danger of group meetings degenerating into ‘bitch sessions’.” There are other concerns, as well, which include burnout being perpetuated between colleagues, or members of the group-mocking patrons of the library.  Though these are valid issues, the effectiveness of a coping strategy is largely based on the person(s) specific outlook, and the way they approach stress and possible solutions.  As Nauratil concludes,”Whether staff support groups ultimately help or harm depends on how they are are structured. ‘If the feelings of members are accepted and they are helped to go beyond the expression of feeling, to formulate constructive attitudes and behaviors for dealing with problems, the support group can be a powerful method for alleviating burnout.'”

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Why Are You Here?

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Whether you are a librarian or a librarian in training, I think we all can relate to Evelyn ‘Evy’ Carnahan (or so I hope). If you were to tell my 18-year-old self that I was going to pursue my graduate studies in Library Science in hope of being a librarian, I would have brushed you off. I wasn’t a reader nor, did I spend time in the library unless it was for a group project. However, after working for the children’s department for the past four years, I never want to leave the place (sometimes). I can proudly say I am happy with what I am studying and I ­­cannot wait to get in the field. But this article is not about my love for library, or of the sorts.

 

I was presented with an issue that I would have never considered: philosophy of librarianship. Of course, I believe most professions have an embedded philosophy or addressed “why do what we do? Why are we needed?” For those who are in the profession or in their studies, I suggest that you read Andre Cossette’s Humanism and Libraries: An Essay on the Philosophy of Librarianship. His essay attempts to identify or what should the philosophy behind librarianship. His argument is very defensive however; he essay can stir up your inner “Evelyn ‘Evy’ Carnahan”. If the reader was to cast his opinion to the side, the essay can challenge your views and opinions of the role and importance of the library and the librarian.

 

I think there is a contemporary belief that the role of the library and the librarian will diminish due to the dominant presence of technology. The library’s identity crisis fluctuates between the fear of losing its value to technology and the increasing need and demand for information resource and access. Maybe this crisis can be blamed on the idea that librarianship lacks a unified and clear philosophical doctrine or consensus. I would have never pondered the idea of a philosophy for this field but that very thought signifies that this topic should be brought to awareness, which it is. Cossette believes the lack of philosophy can inhibit the librarian’s ability to express the importance of “why do this work? Why are we valuable?”

 

One of my professors stated this claim, which I will always keep in mind, especially in terms of this field. She said if you do not understand your history, you will not understand your value. The awareness of the history of library information teaches students its purpose, and who did or do libraries serve. These facets can contribute to our philosophy. I came across two definitions of philosophy of librarianship. First Cossette’s believes that the library purpose is to disseminate information. The patron is overwhelmed with all the messages, facts and ideas, therefore the library is an institution that organizes, assembles, and provides the user access. He does agree that the library can be a place to provide education and preservation. Why do we exist according to Cossette? To give information to the community, so that they can be well informed, make constructive decisions, and become a more democratic society.

 

Another reading that I came across was Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information by Ken R. Herold of Hamilton College. He addressed the same ideas as those who commented on this issue. Yet, he believes the quest of information philosophy should not overlook the “importance of books, or printed knowledge, or [music, sound, and other realia]” (Herold, 2005), but he addresses that librarians should recognize the demand of information and be active participants in the discussion of identifying a philosophy for information science professionals.

 

I agree, with both writers. The library is present to provide access to information and knowledge. However we have or will come across of type of reference task that require book request, creation or management of programs that cater to their community’s interest or enhance their knowledge. I accept all viewpoints. Yet I believe to stand solely one side of this issue can limit our purpose, potential, and significance.

 

As an avid library advocate, I have experienced the library as an institution that is available for the community. The library is an establishment that aims to create an educated and cultured population. To provide them needs that is accessible. To preserve culture and information that could have or be lost over time. We are like the community historian. The grandparent if you will; we provide information of the past, teach new skills, keep you updated on current events. Invite you over for projects, a place for comfort and learning.

 

So what’s my point? Like Cossette, and Herold, I bring this concern for you to be mindful of. If you are in the field, maybe you experience the significance of your work. It may not be something you experience everyday but you feel like you have a responsibility. For those like me who are just learning and beginning to get their foot through the door, we need to keep in mind of this issue of having a philosophy. Answer this, why do have library’s? Why do we do what we do? Why are you here?

 

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

–Ray Bradbury

 

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.

-Neil Gaiman

 

 

Reference

 

Cossette, A. (2009). Humanism and libraries: An essay in the philosophy of         librarianship. Library Juice Press: Duluth, Minnesota.

 

Herold, K. R. (2005). Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information. Library          Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Vol 3, paper 27.

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Pop-Up Libraries and Community Engagement

When the city halted construction on a Hunters Point library this past spring, pop-up and mobile libraries provided alternative services. [1. Evelly, Jeanmarie. (May 23, 2014). “Pop-Up and Mobile Libraries to Bring Books to Hunters Point This Summer.” DNAInfo.com. Retrieved from http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140523/long-island-city/pop-up-mobile-libraries-bring-books-hunters-point-this-summer]  Queens Library CEO Thomas Galante, who is currently on paid leave due to an investigation into his salary and spending, had said plans were halted because of budget discrepancies concerning the complexity of the building’s designs. [2. Evelly Jeanmarie. (Feb 27, 2014). “Plans Tweaked for Hunters Point Library After Bids Run Millions Over Budget.” DNAInfo.com. Retrieved from http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140523/long-island-city/pop-up-mobile-libraries-bring-books-hunters-point-this-summer]  Hunters Point residents petitioned for access to a public library, leading Queens Library to open a mobile library at the would-be site of construction. In addition, a group called Friends of Hunters Point Library has kicked off their own pop-up library, which uses the “take-a-book-leave-a-book” model and offers free WiFi and downloads to the public.

These solutions follow the recent trend of “pop-up” libraries that seem to mark a renewed focus on community engagement. Some of these libraries, such as Occupy Wall Street’s The People’s Library, are completely community run and often run on donations. Others, like the Cleveland-based ‘Literary Lots’ work with public institutions to provide access in underserved areas.  These directives interest me because they recall the idea of strengthening community service. In “The Professional is Political: Redefining the Social Role of Public Libraries,” Shiraz Durrani and Elizabeth Smallwood state that,

Engaging with the traditional library commodity of information in a ‘non-traditional’ way that responds to local contexts, via the involvement of local people in service design and development, will enable libraries to help bridge the gap between the information rich and the information poor (137). [3. Durrani, Shiraz and Smallwood, Elizabeth. “The Professional is Political: Redefining the Social Role of Public Libraries.” Questioning Library Neutrality: Essasys from Progressive Librarian. Ed. Alison Lewis. Duluth: Library Juice Press, 2008. 119-140.]

The pop-up library’s mobile and ephemeral nature seems to be a direct response to an information age that allows us a constant flow of communication outside of our immediate surroundings, and to a hostile economic climate that has left the poor segregated in underserved and barren areas of the world. These libraries reinforce the necessity of open access to information and its agents, while abandoning its traditional structure and taking on the transient quality of information today.

This new pop-up model seems to be a way to better engage with communities that don’t have access to traditional libraries. However, I wonder if community engagement necessarily equates to community good. Historically, community engagement has not always meant servicing the public in open and honest ways. American libraries have been centers of education meant to proselytize bourgeois ideals to disenfranchised people. In The Alienated Librarian, Maria Nauratil notes

George Ticknor, leader of the Boston Brahmins and a founder of the Boston Public Library, worried that the steadily increasing immigrant population was unfit ‘to understand our free institutions or to be entrusted with the political power given by universal suffrage,’ and he strongly advocated education as a ‘remedy for this influx of ignorance,’ (38). [4. Nauratil, Maria. The Alienated Librarian. Westport: Greenwoord Press. 1989.]

The library’s opening of access to the general public seemed benevolent, but the underlying forces were patronizing in nature. Upper-class philanthropists believed in libraries as ways to assimilate the working class to their ideals and thus qualm social unrest (Nauratil, 39).  Pop-up, community-based libraries could easily act in a similar manner, disguising assimilation tactics as wholesome public service. A more sinister view could propose that these libraries are infiltrating community spaces to disrupt existing and relevant conversations.

However, this idea that the library can act as a vanguard of mainstream ideals can be disturbed upon closer inspection. We must question what these libraries are meant to offer us and how they choose to interact with us. Not every pop up library follows the same model.

For example, last year the PEN World Voices Festival and Architectural League of New York set out to create ten Little Free Libraries, which used small non-invasive spaces such as mailboxes and trellises to provide a limited number of books to the public. The readers are invited to give self-directed tours of the designers’ favorite reading spots. The books provided are from popular publishers and include titles such as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Game series. [5. Yee, Vivian. (May 3, 2013.) “With Tiny Libraries, Bringing Free Literature to the Streets.” The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/with-tiny-libraries-bringing-free-literature-to-the-streets/]

This year, the Floating Library emerged on the Hudson: a pop-up library aboard the Lilac Museum Steamship organized by artist Beatrice Glow. The space is open to the public. The ship will offer, “a range of reading materials from underrepresented authors, artist books, poetry, manifestoes, as well as book collections, that, at the end of the lifecycle of the project will be donated to local high school students with demonstrated need.” The ship also offers art installations, performances, and workshops dedicated to DIY politics with an emphasis on leftist politics and environmental concerns.

Both pop-ups are at least part artistic experiment, but I wonder which library services the community better. Both have an agenda: the Little Free Libraries aim to be accessible to what the public, while The Floating Library aims to expose the public to new ideas, authors, and culture. What is of more value to the public: accessibility or exposure? The Little Free Libraries were set up in deliberately public places, while the Floating Library exists in a contained and maybe exclusionary place. Surely it’s easier to grab a book from your bench-turned-book-shelf than to trek to Pier 25 on the Hudson River. But then again, we must wonder who has the best access to these Little Free Libraries, all located on the Lower East Side? I would also seek to question: where are the librarians, curators, and information specialists? While I am not about to assert that the Little Free Libraries actively aims to uphold bourgeouis ideals and brainwash the working class, the project isn’t interested in engaging the public in conversation surrounding its material.

The Little Free Libraries project seems to focus more on the book than on the flow of information between people. In some ways, this echoes the idea of the enchained book in university libraries. Andre Cossette touches on this in Humanism and Libraries, noting, “The tidy arrangement sufficiently shows the importance that [universities] accorded to the preservation of books as opposed to their diffusion and sharing” (41). [6. Cossette, Andre. Humanism and Libraries. Library Juice Press. 2009.]  Leaving books in odd corners of New York City for casual perusal could hardly be called a focus on preservation. However, both models of libraries seem to value the book over its information. That seems to be the case for the director of the PEN World Voices Festival, Jakab Orsos, who told the Times, “It really restores my faith, this connectedness — how people are actually harboring the beauty of reading and the book and the importance of the book.” [7. Yee, Vivian] Part of the appeal of the Little Free Libraries project is the novelty of seeing a book in a bird-feeder instead of on a shelf. Glow’s “Floating Library” seems more focused on conversation surrounding content, than the book itself. To me, this seems to be the more meaningful way to engage communities. Whether it’s the most appealing way is another question.

On a symbolic level, I wonder about the uprooting of the traditional, physical library. Removing reading, learning, and conversation from the confines of traditional educational structures in favor of the open spaces we tend to have more organic connections with is appealing to me. These pop-up libraries illustrate the ways that information is no longer confined to institutions. When they include underserved communities in relevant conversations, these libraries begin to, as Durrani and Smallwood say, “help bridge the gap between the information rich and the information poor.”

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Libraries and Their Communities: Observations at the Washington Heights Library

In December of 2013, the Pew Research Center released a study entitled “How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities” that sought to explore the relationships between libraries and the communities they serve. Over six thousand Americans ages sixteen and over were surveyed over the course of two months via landlines and cell phones, both in English and in Spanish. [1. Zickhur, K., Raine L., Purcell K., and Duggan M. (2013). How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities. Retrieved from http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/12/11/about-this-report/
]

The study determined that while 48% of Americans visited the library within the past 12 months,  that in general women, African-Americans, Hispanics, low income adults, and adults with less education were more likely than other groups to say that the library and the services that it provides are “very important”. Services listed as important were “using the internet, computers, or printers”, “having a quiet and safe place to spend time, read, or study”, “assistance in applying for government programs, permits, or licenses”, “help finding or applying for a job”, and “getting help from a librarian finding information”. It is logical that these services are more valued by people who have less privilege. If you don’t have the money to purchase them, books and media may only be accessible through the library. If you can’t afford an after school program, it makes sense to attend free youth programs. If you don’t have the tools to find a better job in your own home, then finding them in the library is advantageous to you.

A chart showing the percentage of Americans 16+ who say that library sources are "very important" by race.
A chart showing the percentage of Americans 16+ who say that library sources are “very important” by race.
A chart showing the percentage of Americans 16+ who say that library sources are "very important" by income.
A chart showing the percentage of Americans 16+ who say that library sources are “very important” by income

Studies like this raise the question of “who is the library for?” in modern America. Before we can think of what we can do to improve the quality of public libraries, it is important to look at who is using public libraries, and what it is being used for. If the majority of Americans who use and value the library are people of color and low income individuals, shouldn’t we put effort into providing better service and funding to libraries that serve those individuals? André Cossette wrote in “Humanism and Libraries” that “the work of a librarianship is truly a human endeavor, that is to say an activity of humankind, that had as its end the well being of humankind.” [2. Cossette, A. (1976). Humanism and Libraries.Duluth: Library Juice Press. Reprinted in 2009.] But humanity is not a homogenous group, and if librarians are going to seek to strive for the well being of humankind, it should examine the individual communities that rely the most on the library, and seek to address the specific needs of individual communities.

While writing this,  I sat in the Washington Heights Library, a branch of the New York Public Library, located at 1000 St. Nicholas Avenue, at the corner of 160th Street. Recently reopened, the Washington Heights Library is a library that was designed to serve the community that surrounds it. This is apparent just by sitting in the main reading room. Each shelf is labeled not only in English, but in Spanish, as a large percentage of the community is comprised of Spanish speakers. There is even an entire shelf dedicated to books in Spanish, which one might not find at a library in another neighborhood. There are large quantities of computers available, almost all of which are in use, and plenty of space available for anyone who might want to study, read, or simply spend some time in the quiet.

After a 12.4 million dollar renovation, the Washington Heights Library reopened in February 2014, prepped to serve its community, which is primarily made up of people of color and low income residents. Not only was the space renovated, but an emphasis was placed on providing increased technology to the community. The library reopened with twenty-five desktop PCs, sixteen laptops, and twenty-four Apple computers. [3. Dunlap, D. W. (Feb.26, 2014). “After 4-Year Overhaul, Library is to Reopen in Washington Heights”. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/nyregion/washington-heights-library-renovated-is-to-reopen.html?_r=0] All told, the library possesses forty-nine more computers then when it closed for renovations in 2010. The library also boasts one of the largest children’s rooms, 3,300 square feet, in the entire New York Public Library system. However, not only children use the children’s section of the Library. According to library manager Vianela Rivas, adult patrons who are learning English often use it. [4. Ibid.]

The  Washington Heights Library is a prime example of a library that focuses on the specific needs of its community. It is well used by the community as a whole. During my time there, I saw patron after patron walk through the library doors. There was a wide range of ages, from parents and their young children, to pre-teens and teenagers, to adults. The computers were in constant use, and for a wide variety of purposes. Patrons sat and browsed the internet and social media sites, did personal work and homework, and played computer games. A group of ever changing adolescents clustered around the computers in front of the reference desk, their volume always rising to the point where they needed to be shushed by the librarian behind the desk, albeit in a loving sort of way.

The Washington Heights Library was lucky that it was able to acquire the $12.4 million it needed to accomplish the renovation and turn the branch into a strong resource for the community.  Even so, there is still space in the library that could be utilized if the money was only there. The entire third floor still needs to be renovated [5. Ibid.], and until then the space is wasted. Imagine what could be there if there was more money. Study rooms? A technology lab? A maker space? Periodical storage?  These are things that patrons in libraries housed in more affluent neighborhoods may take for granted, or may even get less use than they would in a library that serves a low income population. There are patrons of the Washington Heights library who come to the branch because it provides them access to resources and information that they might not have at home, whether that’s computers, a high speed internet connection, books and DVDs, or even a quiet place to just sit for a moment.

For many, the library is not just a luxury, it is a necessary part of their lives, and this should be taken into account when it comes to funding, project development, and budgeting. The Washington Heights branch was given the resources it needed to better serve its community, and it is obvious just by being in the library that the community is benefiting from those resources. If we are truly trying to strive for the well being of humankind, then we need to evaluate where exactly our resources go, who is using them, and the level of impact it could have on the community.

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