In a recent article on csmonitor.com, community college librarian William Wisner (Laredo CC) chastises librarians and the library schools that produce them for whoring out to technology and abandoning the rightful mission of the Library. You may recall that Wisner wrote the excellent albeit depressing Whither the Postmodern Library (McFarland, 2000). In this new article, Wisner describes his experience at the video game store that is his local public library. I have to somewhat agree with his distaste for public libraries having to pander “coolness” like gaming and video watching in order to seem relevant to its younger users but I’m wondering what Wisner would like those librarians to do. How do they get these users in the door? Books are not a huge draw anymore, let’s face it. The jury is still out in my mind if playing Guitar Hero in the library is going to help any young person become a learner but it does get that person into the building to hopefully use the rest of the library. I’m not going to look down my bespectacled nose at these librarians who are doing what it takes to engage their patrons. I’m not a public librarian therefore I choose to respect their expertise and let them get on with it. I’m thinking that Wisner should too.

What really grabbed me about this article is Wisner’s description of his own “imaginative” library program where his community college library gives coffee away and he sits around talking academic subjects with students. This sounds more like a small liberal arts college than a community college. I’m sure no one is sitting around talking about MSDS sheets and the NEC codes over a cuppa, and if you are, I want to come work for your library! I just don’t see the average community college student having the time or inclination to just sit around and think deep thoughts with a librarian over caffiene. At least at my college. We have 35,000 students passing through during the school year and they are hard-pressed to get to class, get to work and get on with their lives. We do them the most benefit by being efficient and intuitive to their needs. Anyhow, rapping with students about Plato over free coffee is really the same thing as offering space to play games, in my opinion. It is simple marketing. It is getting the bodies in the door so we have an opportunity to work with them and hopefully influence their learning.

As far as our Wisner’s accusation that librarians are deconstructing the library via technology…we cannot force people to actually read, man. Our charge as librarians is to provide the best possible scenario for a patron to locate information. And not just the patron that needs the traditional books and silence library. We have to provide for disparate age groups, learning styles and abilities. Wisner accuses us of prioritizing information over knowledge. I hope he isn’t saying that learners’ acquisition of knowledge is our responsibility. Synthesizing information by engaged reading is a responsibility or choice of the individual. Librarians create conditions most conducive to the improvement of the mind. And that is the best that we can do. If the person needs a computer, we provide it. If they need silence, we provide it. If they need a collection of hundreds of books on the same topic, we hopefully can provide that or will find them a library that can. If they need to sit and talk for an hour about their topic of interest, we do it and provide free coffee to boot. And if they need us to stand on our heads–we’re all over it. I call that noble.

Wisner, W. Restore the Noble Purpose of Libraries. July 17, 2009. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0717/p09s01-coop.html