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Response to article on San Francisco Public Library
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Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 21:40:54 -0800 From: cborgman@ucla.edu (Christine Borgman) To: (Los Angeles Times)letters@latimes.com Subject: Response to article on San Francisco Public Library
University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Department of Library and Information Science 2320A Moore Hall Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521 Tel: 310-825-8799; 825-6164 Fax: 310-206-3076 Email: cborgman@ucla.edu
September 4, 1996
Letters to the Editor Los Angeles Times Times Mirror Square Los Angeles, CA 90053 Fax: 213-237-7679 Email: letters@latimes.com
Dear Editor,
Why does anyone pay attention to Nicholson Baker and his misguided attacks on libraries? ("Talk about throwing the book at the San Francisco Library," September 3).
Many in the library community, including me and Robert A. Gross (Director of American Studies at the College of William and Mary, and Chair of the Program in the History of the Book at the American Antiquarian Society) challenged him when he trashed libraries in The New Yorker [1]. In Baker's unremitting critique, research libraries have pursued the electronic revolution with reckless abandon, junking the old card catalog, the physical monument to the labor and love of generations of librarians, in favor of the impersonal and evanescent online system.
Now he's carried his campaign from intellectual circles to real attacks on real libraries, demanding that San Francisco Public Library resurrect its outdated and inaccurate card catalog and cease discarding old books.
He misunderstands the situation on several counts:
First is the question of the library's mission. In his New Yorker article, Baker asserts that "the function of a great library is to store obscure books. This is above all the task we want libraries to perform: to hold on to books that we don't want enough to own, books of very limited appeal ...." If that were the only role of great libraries, the work would be much easier. But they must operate in a world where publications proliferate at ever-rising prices, while library budgets are shrinking. Few institutions can afford to collect and stock vast numbers of books, just in case someone, sometime, somewhere might want them. All the excitement over the information revolution hides the grim reality: a decreasing share of the world's literature is on any one library's shelves.
Prompted by rising costs and expanding opportunities, libraries have seized upon new technologies to do together what no single institution could accomplish alone. Cataloging costs were cut by adoption of standardized, computer-readable bibliographical data -- the object of Baker's complaint. Initially, an online catalog could be consulted only in the library itself; then it became available to offices and dorms via campus networks; now it exists as one of many national and international collections accessible through the Internet. In the ideal scenario of the future, any title anywhere will be readily in view; scanned into a computer, it can be transmitted across the country or globe with dispatch. In the electronic library on the horizon, access, not storage, will be the central concern. Cyberspace is just another name for interlibrary loan.
Second is the role of card and online catalogs in providing access to the collection. Counting all of the books, individual magazine and journal articles, maps, pictures, and other documents that someone might wish to find in a research library, the catalog represents only about 2% of the collection! The rest must be found through other bibliographic tools such as indexes, abstracts, and specialized finding aids. But the catalog is the most visible and overarching tool that brings all these materials together and thus is the target of his attacks.
Third is the relationship between card and online catalogs. They contain essentially the same data, following all the same cataloging rules. Yes, a few annotations on cards may be lost, as Baker states. But other data are added as records from decades or centuries are upgraded to modern cataloging standards. Card catalogs are far more difficult to use than they appear -- the book of rules for filing cards is more than 200 pages in length. Readers fail to find items because they don't understand the rules or because the cards are misfiled. Online catalogs are not as easy to use as they should be, but they offer many more avenues for locating records and librarians are there to help.
Fourth is his claim that the library is discarding the wrong books and should be giving them to charity. Libraries are responsible for providing not just information, but accurate information. Libraries always weed or "de-accession" materials to purge outdated items like 1960s science books and extra copies of old fiction that nobody reads. Contrary to popular belief, libraries, especially public libraries, do not keep everything forever. Storing materials is expensive, and libraries make agreements with each other as to who will hold copies of which older materials in case they are requested. Giving outdated books to schools and non-profit organizations is not a favor; depending on which books, it may be irresponsible.
Lastly is his complaint that the library accepted funds from private institutions. Has he not heard of public-private partnerships? Libraries, schools, universities, and other public agencies might prefer to be fully funded by the government and thus free of any appearance of corporate ties. The sad truth is that the tax dollars just aren't there. This is the real tragedy of Baker's attacks -- he's demanding that libraries spend more of their scarce funds on maintaining duplicate systems and duplicate storage of unneeded materials, when the real issue is the need for more support for libraries. He is an intelligent man and a strong voice in his local community and in the intellectual community. If he would put his energies toward helping libraries provide more and better access to information, for more people, no matter where or in what form the needed information exists, he could be a positive voice for change. Instead he would tear down the very institution he claims to preserve.
Sincerely,
Christine L. Borgman, Ph.D. Professor & Chair
[1] Gross, R.A., & Borgman, C.L. (1995). The incredible vanishing library. American Libraries, 26(9), 900-904. Baker, N. (1994). Discards. The New Yorker, April 4, 64-86, passim.
cc: Nicholson Baker, Berkeley, California Ken Dowlin, Director, San Francisco Public Library Susan Goldberg Kent, Director, Los Angeles Public Library Elizabeth Martinez, Executive Director, American Library Association Robert A. Gross, College of William and Mary Gloria Werner, University Librarian, UCLA ```
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