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Strained Libraries Offer a Lifeline
A young Juanita Rarick found refuge at the Howe Library in Albany's South End during the Great Depression. There, the girl could escape the instability of the world outside.
"I'd sit there and read quite a bit, maybe a couple of hours," an 88-year-old Rarick told me last year when I wrote about the Howe. Sadly, she passed away last summer, but I remembered how she spoke fondly about the sanctuary the library provided - a sharp contrast to what was going on in Albany and the country.
"We lived all over the South End. We lived on Pearl Street, Broad Street, Morton Avenue and Alexander Street. Some of this was during the Depression. We moved a lot. I guess we couldn't pay the rent, so we moved. That's terrible. It was the truth you know. We lived all over the South End," Rarick said.
"It was hard. Nobody had jobs, but then Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president and he brought us out of the Depression really. He had the WPA for the fathers then he had programs for young boys to earn money planting pine trees and fir trees. He had all those programs going on."
The Works Progress Administration also established a library program, employing more than 14,500 in 45 states, according to a 1938 article by WPA official Ellen S. Woodward in the Wilson Bulletin for Librarians. At that time, about 2,300 new libraries were established. More than 5,800 traveling libraries brought materials to rural areas. In Kentucky, packhorse libraries employed 232 workers to deliver books in the mountains. In Mississippi, a WPA library worker used a houseboat along the Yazoo River to deliver books.
At the Howe, during those hard times that are sounding a lot like these hard times, circulation boomed.
The library as a sanctuary during rough times is hardly new.
Today, patrons are flocking to libraries in droves at the same time that hours are being cut, library branches are being closed and retiring school librarians are not being replaced.
Some of these kids without librarians may not have access to the Internet for school projects at home anymore as parents coping with financial hardship trim household expenses, like the Internet service.
In public libraries, those seeking work are finding computer stations vital in the search for jobs - and a way to get out of the house during a time when despair is rampant.
About 1,000 librarians visited the state Capitol earlier this month to lobby for libraries. The proposed state budget could bring library funding down to 1993 levels - an $18 million cut, according to Kathleen Miller, the president-elect of the New York Library Association.
"Libraries are part of the solution in these tough times," she said. The irony is that people are being sent to the library at the same time cuts are being proposed. Many companies now only accept employment applications online. And state officials are telling people to use the libraries to print out tax forms and other documents. Paper and printer cartridges do not come cheap.
Librarians are finding themselves helping with resumes and complicated public assistance forms. According to a recent survey by NYLA, 80 percent of state libraries have helped a patron search for a job in a three-month period; 75 percent of those libraries have helped a patron access a public assistance program.
Libraries weren't meant to be social service agencies, but in hard times, that's what they do.
"At this particular time, libraries are keeping the infrastructure together," Miller said.
Besides vital job searches and public assistance roles, libraries are helping families trim household entertainment costs.
Circulation is way up and will probably continue to go up as people choose to forgo expensive vacations, buying books, DVDs, video games and outings to expensive theme parks. Libraries offer free programs for kids, from story hours to "Guitar Hero" video game parties. Reading programs and free passes to local museums will help students stay sharp during summer vacation.
We don't need packhorses and river boats, but we need the doors open and professional librarians to help us during a time that is becoming more reminiscent of an era when a young Juanita Rarick sought solace from books and a library.
Donna Liquori is a freelance writer based in Delmar, New York. Contact her at bibliofiles@hotmail.com
5 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
Generally when a society glorifies war it shows depraved indifference to the educational levels (and needs) of its citizenry. When the fruit of shared labor goes to funding wars of imperial conquest rather than funding libraries, the nation's dark priorities are exposed for what they are: homage to the beast, watering what's worst in human nature at the cost of not nurturing or feeding the higher appetites and aptitudes of the citizenry. Something is indeed rotten in our own domestic "Denmark," and it stinks to high heaven.
Sioux Rose: Absolutely correct! Thanks!
Our Republican Governor in California sent out 5,000 layoff notices to schoolteachers last week. Education has a low priority, nowadays, unless it is "military education." The power-elite prefer an ignorant population, ready to follow orders, rather than an educated society who would question their motives for doing things.
Libraries: a valuable asset to a democracy, lending a helping hand for self-education which should be a top priority in community government, is threatened with budget cuts, closures, and reduced hours, but the expenditures for the military and prison industries soar higher and higher. So sad.
"What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures," Samuel Gompers.
Thank you, Sioux Rose, for reminding me.
Well, I fully agree with the three people who've posted so far in this page, SiouxRose, Peaceman, and John F. Butterfield.
If the Obama administration and Congress allow education and libraries, including the public ones, to be cut from budgets or funding, then they are all [traitors] and should either resign, or the population should gather in such huge masses, angry masses, against these so-called political representatives and "right in their faces" that the "representatives" don't take the time to resign, they just try to flee from the country to try to seek out safe havens.
But Americans are slow at gathering in large numbers, especially large numbers of really angry people strongly protesting in the streets. They elect their cancers and then let them destroy ... everything; only letting out some complaints. Perhaps they just dream too much about how all of the badness is supposedly (dreamfully) going to somehow magically go away all by itself or that it'll be miraculously healed. And perhaps it wouldn't hurt for them to [learn] from others in this case; like from John Pilger's documentary, 'War on Democracy', f.e. We also have very recent examples of large and strong protest demonstrations, like in Pakistan over this past month, f.e. In many other countries people seriously gather in large masses, and like John Pilger's documentary shows about Venezuelans in 2002 after their elected president had been criminally, ... removed by a military coup d'etat working for the corporate-fascist elites, President Hugo Chavez was back in office within 48 hours due to the HUGE, massive public demonstration that was full of strong revolt, anger, and support (for Chavez, and his and The Venezuelan People's government).
That's what the USA [needs]; real [heart], spirit, soul. It's still very lacking, but maybe we'll some day see Americans becoming really serious about demanding true democracy, etcetera. I guess too few have sufficiently suffered, so far. When enough do suffer ... also enough, then the day that's been long needed may finally happen; maybe.
The same exists in Canada, only it's on a smaller scale, given the much smaller population. Otoh, one might think that this reality of smaller scale should or might make it easier to correct a rogue government. Well, whether that's an accurate or reality-based outlook is something I don't know for sure, but massive or strong public demonstrations certainly aren't happening, and when some serious public demonstrations do happen, then it's usually about single issues, like, f.e., students protesting in Quebec for free higher education. What's needed is massive public demonstrations of maintained kind and for demanding real democracy and for the political representatives, people in the justice system, including lawyers and law enforcement forces, to abide by what's required to be a real democracy and a government that's truly just. That could be seen as a single issue, perhaps, but it's the umbrella issue; address it successfully and many other issues will also be corrected.
MikeCorbeil: Thanks brother! And your additional comments to Donna Liquori's article are right on target. I certainly agree with your assessment of the American people (and to a lesser extent, Canadians) in contrast to other countries, like Venezuela, where common working class people are finally getting a piece of the pie that they earned, thanks to Hugo Chavez.
Good post!