It would be really easy to become reactionary and conservative as time goes on, to try and resist every change whether it be good or bad, simply because it's a change. To try to keep things the same at all costs could become an overriding futile goal, destructive in its shortsightedness. This easy decline into unthinking slavishness to the status quo is what we strive to avoid as intelligent thinking people, or at least it's what I strive to avoid. Hence, when someone from higher up comes into our volunteer led village library, a successful community project of good standing, and starts talking about their being too many books and taking away shelving for empty floor space, it can be a challenge not to overreact in a haze of bibliophilic fervour. Can this be a good thing at all? Does any of it make sense? Is it blindly reactionary to resist or actually sensible?
As one of the many volunteers at Pontyates Village Library, it is my pleasure and privilege to help a community service continue to function. Once a week, for a couple of hours, I toil away for a session with a shift buddy, doing all the mundane library assistant duties or loafing with a good book in the lulls. Sometimes there are lots of lulls, and sometimes it's very busy, as you would expect from a public service. It used to be much busier, but the last rash of centralised interventions forced restrictive use of the public computers, and oddly people stopped coming in to use them. How odd it is that people would stop using the public computers once they had been made less convenient and easy to use? Halt. Stop. Is this a reactionary haze or reasonable annoyance dripping from the words? Let's say it's reasonable annoyance for now. We can always change our minds later.
Amongst the other touted ideas from the higher up - and this is not meant to cause trouble, but instead clear my head - eliminating the popular Welsh language and interest books, taking down all the pictures, separating fully the continuous spectrum of the teenage and junior fiction into fairly arbitrary sections, and mixing the large print books into the main body of the books. The last one is particularly ridiculous, once you think about it even a little. All of this as well as replacing yet more of the remaining shelving with lower capacity units. Is this beginning to sound like enough for a reactionary response yet? What do you think? What about keeping only the two newest books of a given author and having to send out for any others upon request? The Grisham fans would go up in flames! (Note: That last consequence might be a point in the plan's favour.) Go ahead and react, if you dare.
I must sound like a fuddy-duddy, but the transformation of the county libraries during my lifetime has been a totally destructive one. The number of books on display seems to have halved, the furnishings have become inadequate and sterile in place of warm wood, and the selection has settled down to a dull state of mediocrity. Staffers mutter about not sending books back to the centre as they'll be destroyed and little libraries try to make as little noise as possible in case they're noticed and gutted by the forces of progress. It's madness! Madness! If ever there were a time for independent community libraries then this would be it. How difficult would it be to start a community library now? The software would be easy as there are open source systems dedicated to it. What about the other expensive things? It's a good question to consider. Local government is rapidly running out of funds to support basic services so if communities don't do it themselves then who will?
Perhaps we've been a little vague so far, and missed out some words. Perhaps being reactionary is okay if it's positive reactionism, and not negative resistance. Maybe we can keep our village library in good shape, with some support from the community and maybe our local representatives? Maybe this is all a storm in a teacup? It might be, if the calendar weren't whirling. Less than two weeks to planned remodelling and de-booking of the library. Let's try to make something good happen, or keep something good with us.
O.
No comments:
Post a Comment