My Utopia

Generally the material that I am required to read for my LIS classes is BORING!! I find the most interesting LIS articles either on the listerserv or from my own research. For my Urban Library Seminars course, which I absolutely positively love, we were assigned to do a lot of reading this past week. My favorite article was called The Public Library in Utopia by Kevin J. Hayes. Although, the article is filled with various viewpoints I chose the three that most appealed to me.

First, Edward Bellamy’s ideal public libraries were conveniently open twenty-four hours a day (Hayes, 2010). In Bellamy’s utopia “no public service or convenience is ever suspended at the present day, whether by day or night, the year round (Hayes, 2010). When my classmate discussed this idea, he posed the question, how accurate have the predictions from this article proven to be? Last week I learned that in October, the Undergraduate Library will be open twenty-four hours. There’s an extended study area in the UGL that is open twenty-four hours from Sunday-Thursday. Now, the entire library will be open all day everyday for students and/or faculty who would like to use it.

Next, the article makes mention of how libraries were designed in the past. The stacks were designed so that librarians were able to keep an eye on the patrons and supervise everyone using the stacks (Hayes, 2010). Is it me, or does that sound completely ridiculous? Granted, they’re some patrons I find it necessary to monitor but only because they exhibit inappropriate behavior. Really, who has the time to sit and watch a patron’s activity while he/she is in the library? A librarian once told me something that I never forgot, in reference to children using the unfiltered computers in the adult section. When I asked why she didn’t stop children from doing this she said “we’re not babysitters.” My point exactly…

Finally, the article concludes within a description of the ideal public library. In fact, the last sentence reads, in utopia everyone knew how to use a library (Hayes, 2010). It is believed with any library, that the librarian must at some point show patrons how to access and/or use the library resources. While I do appreciate when a patron approaches the desk with some idea as to how to use the library catalog, I thoroughly enjoy showing he/she how to use databases or find articles. The day when everyone will know how to use the library is a scary day for me because if everyone will know how to use it, what then becomes of the librarian?

References

Hayes, K.J. (2010). The public library in utopia. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 45 (3), 333-349.