Why Do We Need Libraries?

No, its not a rhetorical question. Seriously, why do we need libraries?

About fifteen years ago, when I was a County Councillor, and sat on the Libraries Committee, we had a discussion about how to improve Library Services, to communities that did not have libraries, and were only served, for some of the time, by mobile libraries. At about the same time, the Council was adopting a policy of making schools more open to the communities in which they were based. They do, after all, represent an expensive, and valuable asset, whose use should be maximised, rather than just being used during school times. I suggested, in this vein, that we should beef up school libraries, and make them open to the public.

In fact, the suggestion opened up the question of why, even where there were libraries, such a facility should duplicate what exists in schools. Merging Local Libraries with School Libraries would mean that existing facilities could be more effectively used, professional library staff could be employed in schools, freeing up teachers for teaching, school libraries could be improved with a wider range of books and materials, and the kind of closer relation between the school and the local community, that the Council was purporting to support, would be encouraged.

Of course, the proposal got nowhere, like the idea that schools should be truly opened up as community facilities. Now as then, the main people who use school facilities, outside school hours, are the kids who decide to scale the walls, fences and gates, on their own initiative, in order to hopefully use the playground to play football, skateboard etc, and unfortunately also for less positive pursuits. One of the main reasons, given at the time, was concern about the risks of schools being open during the school day, with unknown adults wandering about!

Unknown? If the school was being used as a community facility, what does the idea, that the adults wandering about within it would be “unknown”, say about the communities we now live in? Surely, the whole point about using significant community assets, is that they should be a means of building communities in which people are not unknown! But, what also does it say about the kind of mentality that is generated about those communities? Are parents to take from this message that it is also unsafe for their kids to go out to play in these communities, because of all the “unknown” adults that may be wandering about in them? Perhaps, that is why you rarely see kids out playing these days, or why some of the young adults that do go out on the streets only feel safe to do so if they are part of a gang, and armed to the teeth!

That, of course, or something like it, is part of the argument sometimes given for Libraries, i.e. not that they provide a useful resource for books and reference material, but that they provide a useful community facility for people to meet etc. But, that is a pretty weak argument for Libraries. Its a good argument for having community meeting places, not for Libraries. The same is true of some of the other arguments, such as they are somewhere warm for people to go, who can't afford to heat their homes. We should instead be ensuring that people have sufficient incomes, to heat their homes adequately.

Some of those arguments about the need for such community facilities could as easily be met today by using school, college and university facilities as by using Libraries. But, one of the real reasons that such efficient use of community facilities does not happen is that it involves stepping on the toes of competing bureaucracies, and could only properly be resolved by transferring ownership and control of these community facilities to the communities in which they reside.  Those bureaucracies are more interested in the buildings and their Empires that go with them.

In fact, the best way to make schools safer would be, precisely, for them to be open, all day, to the local community. Moreover, a commitment to life long learning should also involve the freedom of everyone, of any age, to enrol to any class they choose, and efficient use of community facilities, under the control of local communities, would make that possible. And, of course, if local communities did have actual day to day control, over these facilities, they would have a direct interest in how their money was being used. In all of the discussions over the Cuts, it is important to remember that it is actually our money that is being spent by local councils, i.e. by the local representatives of the Capitalist State, and we do have an interest in ensuring that the money is spent efficiently! We have no interest in sacking Local Authority workers, or in reducing their wages and so on, but nor do we hand over our taxes just so that they have a job, or so that some of the top executives can earn huge sums! As workers we have a shared interest in ensuring that they are employed on decent wages, with decent pensions, and at the same time employed productively and efficiently. The more efficiently expensive things like public buildings are utilised, the easier it is to combine those objectives.  Unlike the top bureaucrats, we should have a shared interest in people and services not buildings and empires.

But, this then brings me back to the central point. Why do we need libraries? Its now possible to have every book, every paper, every bit of written material, in fact pretty much every bit of communication of any sort, provided digitally. It is simply ridiculous to have multiple copies of books available at multiple libraries across the country, when the same book in electronic form could be made available from a single Electronic National Library, and available for as many people who wanted to view it simultaneously. That is something which is not possible with a physical book. A deal could be done with publishers to pay for such electronic availability, and if publishers refused, then legislation could be introduced setting reasonable fees for the National Library to pay for having digitised such material.

That means that the vast sums currently tied up in library's book collections could be released for other purposes. Some copies of those books etc. could be kept in archives, and museums for posterity. But, it would also mean that existing library buildings would no longer be needed. Library staff could be relocated into schools, where they could use their skills, to help students and adults, using those facilities, be better able to undertake research and utilise online resources. The computers, currently based in libraries, could be relocated to schools, as an additional community resource, for that purpose. But, the creation of such a National Electronic Library would also massively expand the resources available free to every school, college and university too. Imagine what Marx could have done with such a facility, rather than having to pour over books, papers and periodicals.

It also means that those resources would be available for everyone at all times, and, to facilitate that, some investment in the UK's Broadband would be required, but that is needed anyway. Instead of wasting a lot of money on HS2, which will suck in vast resources, for year after year, before any value is returned to the economy, a fraction of the amount could provide an ultra fast broadband network, for Britain, in a couple of years, if the will existed, and it would start returning far more value to the economy, straight away, than HS2 is ever likely to bring.

In other parts of the world, education has already largely gone on line. In Singapore, the country's ultra fast broadband allows students to receive their lessons in their own homes, and to benefit from the skills of the best teachers. Some of the top university courses are now available on-line, at a fraction of the cost of enrolling at the actual university. This is part of the revolution in service provision that Neo-Fordism is bringing about. It is a transformation in education that Gillian Tett, of the FT, describes here.

Some of the tremendous opportunities for learning, opened up by that, are described in her article. The downsides listed are not downsides for individuals, but for universities, whose economic models will be disrupted. These are, of course, the same universities who, in the US, currently charge astronomical student fees, and who, in the UK, have rushed to take the opportunity to raise student fees up to the £9,000 p.a. maximum allowed. In fact, its precisely those high fees that ensure that some more efficient, cheaper, and more effective delivery system will be offered now that technology makes it possible.

Scrapping existing analogue libraries, and using the freed up resources more efficiently, through the establishment of a National Electronic Library makes perfect sense. It both saves us, as workers, money in taxes, it makes valuable, and currently expensive, resources freely available for all on demand, and it means that the savings obtained can be used to utilise staff more productively. For all those reasons it should make library workers' jobs more rather than less secure. Of course, in the real world, the bosses of the Capitalist State would instead see it as an opportunity for reducing staff. That is not an argument against it. Instead its argument for removing the control over those issues from the Capitalist State, and instead placing these services under the ownership and control of local communities themselves.