We Need Libraries

    American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie donated over $40 million to construct 2,509 libraries—1,679 in the US and others in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and even distant countries like Serbia, Malaysia, and Fiji. By 1919, nearly half of the 3,500 libraries in the United States were Carnegie libraries. “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people,” said Carnegie. “It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

    By contrast, from the fall of Rome to Nazi Germany to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the dismantling of libraries has been a mark of cultural decline. It demonstrates an indifference, if not hostility, toward the intellectual needs of society.

    Yet today, an increasing number of schools are defunding, closing, or repurposing their libraries under the banner of “progress” and “innovation,” and under the false assumption that libraries are just rooms full of books which can be found online or stored in a cheaper or more convenient location. For example, in June, the school board in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, eliminated funding for middle and high school library books from next year’s budget. Waiākea High School in Hilo, Hawaii, is now converting its library into a health education center for careers like nursing and physical therapy. Some of its 26,000 books and other materials are being moved to a spare classroom, while the rest are being donated to the community.

    In a case that drew the ire of many, even the mayor of Houston, a June 2024 photo from Houston Independent School District (HISD) showed all the furniture in one elementary school library newly rearranged for the coming year. The bookshelves were pushed up against walls and windows, often blocked from reach by other furniture, to make room for row after row of individual desks. It was part of the new superintendent’s “New Education System,” under which HISD school libraries were turned into “team centers” housing disruptive students removed from class for disciplinary reasons.

    At an HISD hearing on the issue, one Wheatley High School student protested the change: “I live in Fifth Ward. There’s not a lot there [in the school library], but what is there should not be turned into a [team] center, especially when I am constantly there. I read a lot, and I just feel like that is not what needs to happen.”

    The student’s words, “I am constantly there,” speak volumes about the value of libraries. “Constantly” and “there” indicate time and place. A library is a fortress guarding time and space for the exploration of books from intrusions. Libraries are among the real “safe spaces” schools need. Houston ISD says it now allows students to access books on a phone app, as if this were an adequate substitute. But a phone is not a reading space, and it steals time by embedding the act of reading in a world of distractions.

    To be sure, many school libraries today are underutilized. In a vicious cycle, as schools allot more funding to digital resources, libraries’ book collections often diminish, which only amplifies the impression that libraries are unnecessary. The answer, however, is not for administrators to shrug their shoulders and give up on school libraries. It is to find creative ways to improve them and attract students to them again, just like successful cities find ways to bring people back to underutilized downtown areas.

    The good news is that some schools are doing this. The Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries has awarded 4,000 grants totaling $23 million to expand, update, and diversify the book and print collections of low-income schools across the US. (Bush was an elementary school librarian in Austin, Texas, and has an MS degree in library science.)

    And many schools are transforming their library spaces. For example, in 2019 New York City Public Schools started the VITAL (Vital Instructional Transformative Accessible Learning) Libraries grant program, funded by the Edith & Frances Mulhall Achilles Memorial Fund, which awards two $50,000 one-time grants each year for schools to develop a sustainable model to make the library an essential resource in the school that is integrated with students’ experience. One long-term goal of the VITAL grants is to create a community of stakeholders who will ensure that the school library program is not dismantled. At one grant recipient, Curtis High School on Staten Island, this stakeholder community includes such diverse members as a parent coordinator, assistant principals, custodians, and the school’s robotics teacher.

    In another New York City Public Schools project, in the early 2000s, the Robin Hood Foundation’s Library Initiative helped fund the construction and overhaul of libraries in some of the city’s poorest elementary schools. It enlisted dozens of architects and graphic designers, who turned dilapidated libraries into vibrant central spaces.

    Schools are using many strategies to attract students to their libraries, some innovative, others tried-and-true. One is to allow students to have more input. This can include allowing students to make book requests, obtaining the books quickly, and having library “brand ambassadors” who generate ideas for the book collection, selections for the book club, and future events and programs. KC Boyd, the 2022 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year, keeps the bookshelves dynamic by rearranging them regularly. Librarians can prominently display books connected to current class topics and projects, which requires communication with teachers. The librarians at Fauquier High School in Virginia run “book tastings” in which students rotate from table to table sampling books of different genres using a five-minute timer. And some libraries are hosting events for reading literature or original poetry, or adding podcast recording spaces and makerspaces with supplies.

    From a design standpoint, many school libraries have added artwork, like murals and sculptures, and comfortable, all-mobile furniture. Some have put high-traffic offices, like the student activities office, nearby, so students must pass through the library to get there. And many school libraries have seen student use skyrocket after changing to a “learning commons” model, which designates separate zones for classroom space, quiet study, and collaboration with “team tables” and laptop charging stations. Librarian Rebecca Webster of Fauquier High School in Virginia says, “After COVID especially, students forgot how to talk to each other,” so she loves seeing students talking at the team tables. Her fellow librarian, Becca Isaac, says, “Before, [the team areas] might have been the ‘shushing zone,’” but redesigned partitioning allows students seeking conversation and quiet to coexist.

    Perhaps the most fundamental way to attract students to school libraries is to have a friendly, helpful librarian who knows students by name. But many are disappearing. For example, in Massachusetts, a recent article reports that the New Bedford School District has 13,000 K-12 students but only one librarian, who works at New Bedford High School. None of the district’s eighteen elementary or middle schools has a librarian, making it a “librarian desert.”

    Good librarians can change lives. As Leah Gregory of the Illinois Heartland Library System puts it in a 2023 article, “A school librarian can turn a resolute non-reader into a voracious reader by suggesting a magical book that converts them. It’s a miracle that happens regularly in school libraries, but it requires a staff member who has the time to build a connection, a collection to pull from, and the skill to do reader advisory.”

    Sometimes, all it takes to get students looking at books in the school library is someone taking them there and pointing out interesting examples of what is available. For example, a decade ago, I was teaching geography at community college, and I had assigned a project to research and design a trip to another part of the world. The instructions required at least ten sources, including three books. “Three?” students said, as if this was way over the top. A few weeks later, one piped up that they had been to the college library and found it contained no books about Mozambique, their destination, nor about Africa in general. Skeptical, after class, I strolled down to the library and found a long bookcase filled with books about Africa, with many sections on Mozambique. It was then that I realized how little experience some students have with finding books in a library, rather than just using it to chat and work on their laptops. So I collaborated with the librarians to set up mini-field trips to the library in which we showed the students where they could find books on every inhabited region of the world. Over the rest of the semester, I found myself bumping into my students in the library, looking for books for their project.

    There are also schools that never had a library to dismantle. “I have never worked in a school with a functional school library,” wrote Philadelphia public school English teacher Lydia Kulina-Washburn in her 2022 Education Week article Book Bans? My School Doesn’t Even Have a Library. “In the absence of school libraries, it is not uncommon for teachers to create private classroom libraries from donations. Like mine in Room 250, these usually take the form of clusters of orange Wawa shelving crates.” If book apps on phones were enough, as an increasing number of school districts seem to believe, why would teachers be scrambling to build physical libraries in their classrooms?

    A US Department of Education study found that 61 percent of low-income families with kids had zero books for children in the home. This often leaves it to school libraries to introduce students to the world of books. But the current trend of closing, shrinking, and repurposing school libraries robs many students of the opportunity to discover and love books. Moreover, it stands in stark contrast to America’s long history of finding innovative ways to connect people with books and spaces to explore them.

    For example, the concept of a bookmobile—a library on wheels—was invented by an American librarian with the mind of a social entrepreneur. In 1902, Mary Lemist Titcomb became head librarian at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, Maryland, which had just opened the year before as only the second county library in the US. It was there that Titcomb started a book outreach service which sent boxes of 30 books each to some 66 “book stations” located in stores, post offices, and other public places. But she realized that the books still were not reaching many rural dwellers. So she enlisted Joshua Thomas, a janitor at her library who lived in a rural area, to drive a horse and buggy full of books out to the countryside. Her instructions were to make sure families have enough time to browse and enjoy the books. “The book goes to the man,” said Titcomb, “not waiting for the man to come to the book.”

    Long before Mary Lemist Titcomb invented the bookmobile, many of America’s Founders also worked extensively to build and support libraries. For example, in 1731, a 25-year-old Ben Franklin and his philosophy club, the Junto, founded the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first public library in what is now the United States.

    Thomas Jefferson allowed friends and the public to use his library at Monticello in Virginia, where he amassed between 9,000 and 10,000 volumes. It was the largest personal book collection in the early United States. Jefferson inherited some of his books, while others he obtained through book dealers in Georgetown, Washington, DC, New York, and Philadelphia. And he procured many books during his five years in Europe as America’s Minister to France. He sailed home to Virginia with trunks full of books from across Europe. In 1814, after the 3,000 volumes in the Library of Congress were lost when the British burned the US Capitol building, Jefferson more than doubled the size of the library by selling the government 6,487 of his own books. They were left in their original bookcases, which were put into ten horse-drawn wagons and hauled 300 miles from Monticello to DC. Jefferson described the collection he sent in a letter to his friend Samuel Harrison Smith, DC’s most prominent journalist and newspaper owner:

    “I have been 50. years making it, & have spared no pains, opportunity or expence to make it what it is. [W]hile residing in Paris I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hands … [and] during the whole time I was in Europe, in it’s principal book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and London, [I searched] for such works relating to America as could not be found in Paris. … and after my return to America, I was led to procure also whatever related to the duties of those in the high concerns of the nation.”

    When the final shipment left Monticello for DC, Jefferson wrote to Smith, “Our 10th and last waggon load of books goes off to-day. … [And] an interesting treasure is added to your city, now become the depository of unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the US. and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.”

    What Jefferson, Franklin, Titcomb, and Carnegie all understood was the value of putting books in people’s hands. Too often today, centuries of work are being reversed by misguided initiatives that shrink the distribution of printed books. A 2024 article in Publisher’s Weekly reported that “In 2022 there were 162 million fewer books on US library shelves than in 2010, a roughly 20% decline.”

    On the other hand, in 2021, six Congressmen from both houses introduced the Build America’s Library Act, which would provide $5 billion to build and upgrade libraries in underserved communities across the country. And the exploding classical school movement centers on daily reading and discussion of great books. These developments are in step with Americans’ long history of finding innovative ways to connect people with books. 

    I was fortunate. As far back as I can remember, I was read to almost every night by my mother or father. Whether it was Curious George or Alice in Wonderland, it was something I looked forward to every evening. My first memory of a birthday or Christmas present was a Childcraft Book Set. For the uninitiated, think of it as a youngsters Encyclopedia Britannica. I devoured that set...time and again. And because of my father's profession as a minister, as well as his literary interests that went far beyond religion, there were a lot of books in the house as I grew up. I understand exposure like that is rare. But reading to a child at bedtime should not be rare. 

    As I got older, beginning in seventh grade, I was fortunate enough to live right up the street from a Bucks County Public Library. I was new in this huge school district called Pennsbury, I didn’t know a lot of kids. And believe it or not, I wasn’t the cool, suave, dashing guy in seventh grade, that I am now, who easily makes friends! Dorkasaurus! Sort of like now, right Boss? Yes, Sancho...sort of like now. That public library saved me. I spent a whole summer in that oasis of books that opened my mind to other worlds, other ideas...and a host of friends. I believe that is one reason we read. Because we can never have enough friends. And literary friends can be just as important and real to a youngster (or even an adult) as a real human being can. The thought of dismantling and/or repurposing public or school libraries saddens me no end.

    Backward cultures find reasons to dismantle libraries. Wise, flourishing cultures find ways to build and expand them. Rather than using new technology as an excuse to downsize and repurpose libraries, we can better use it to orchestrate funding and logistics to expand school library collections and design and improve library spaces. Anyone donating to schools should recognize that school libraries are often an endangered species and consider stipulating that their donations are for the maintenance and expansion of libraries—especially ones on the brink of extinction. The real progress lies in creatively improving school libraries and educating students about what they have to offer, turning deserts into springs once again.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com