In This Essay

“Do School Libraries Need Books?” from Room for Debate, The New York Times, February 10, 2010

“The Library, Through Students’ Eyes” from Room for Debate, The New York Times, February 14, 2010

“A library without books” by David Abel, The Boston Globe, September 4, 2009

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic, July/August 2008

I remember reading in The Boston Globe last September that a private school in Massachusetts had given up its collection of books. I was aghast.

That Cushing Academy gave away collection of books, turning its library into a digital media center, continues to bother me.

Since reading that article, I have thought a lot about the role of libraries in our society. I have library cards for three different library systems here in Massachusetts. I joined the Boston Athenaeum, a membership library, last December after writing about them in a December 11th’s Weekly Review.

Libraries are important places. Digital technology cannot yet replace — and I hope never will — brick-and-mortar libraries.

I love going to physical libraries. I love browsing the stacks.

One afternoon while wandering through the shelves, I came across The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke a collection of fragments from Rilke’s letters, collected into thematic chapters by Ulrich Baer. Without the serendipity of walking through the stacks, I would never have found the book because I would never have thought to look for it.

I walked into the Boston Athenaeum on Saturday to visit again the art exhibit I reviewed last week, An Artist + A Poet. Walking around the new acquisitions displays on the first floor, I found Young Rilke and His Times by George C. Schoolfield. Again, I never would have thought to look for this book but I’m glad to have borrowed it.

That’s one weakness I find in my own Internet research. There is so much information out there, that unless I know what I am looking for, I have trouble finding anything at all. Reading from the Internet encourages us to read shallowly and seek a particular piece of information and continue on.

We have become sifters.

But when we enter a library, we are looking for knowledge in a broader sense than we are when we begin an Internet search. When we begin an Internet search, we are looking for answers to specific questions. When we enter a library, we are looking for answers, yes, but I think we are open to letting those answers inspire additional questions in ways we aren’t on the Internet.

All the same, I am no luddite. I know that the Internet is changing the way that we think and organize information. Perhaps libraries will become obsolete.

But I hope that we continue recognize the value of books and libraries. There are no pop-up advertisements in books, nor banner ads in libraries. Just as online, there are other things — more books, though, rather than more sites — vying for our attention in a library. Yet, I find myself able to become immersed in a book in a way that I have never seen translated online.

I hope that we keep these quiet bowers.

What are your thoughts? Share them with us.

Do libraries hold any special memories for you? Have you moved completely online? Do libraries have a future, or only a past?

How do we provide equal access to education when one-third of households do not have Internet access?

In our fervor to embrace technology, we are leaving children behind. We are creating a two classes: the digital haves and the digital have-nots.

The idea of a digital divide had occurred to me before I read Annie Gowen’s article. But the full impact had not occurred to me. I had not thought of how stressful it would be for a child of eleven or twelve to try to juggle getting to and from school when is computer lab is open with getting to and from the library when its computer lab is open.

When I first moved back to Massachusetts after more than six years in Illinois and the Midwest, I lived something of the digital divide myself. My experience illuminates problems the students have.

Siren’s Song

At first I decided to eschew getting Internet at home, in part from budgetary concerns. Although the Internet is a powerful medium for communication and research, while in the Midwest, I had been using the Internet to waste time:

• I spent most of my time just dithering around on the same few websites;
• I spent more time on social media than being social;
• I spent more time on casual games than on learning.

Vast stores of human knowledge and opinion. And I was more interested in playing Bejeweled.

Something Had to Change

I knew something had to give.

I was worried that I would fall into my old habits in Massachusetts if I established Internet access at home from the start. I was worried that I fail to reconnect with old friends. And I was worried that I would fail to make new friends.

The public library system of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium has many libraries that are open until 9:00pm Monday through Thursday, many with reasonable hours on Saturday and a handful with Sunday hours.

Home. Office.

I decided to make the public libraries my office.

I believe that I was more effective at the libraries than I would have been if I had established Internet access at home immediately. But I still was not very effective. Getting to the library was difficult: if I went home before going to the library, I usually did not want to venture out again; if I went straight to the library without taking any time to relax and unwind from work, I usually wasted time switching gears.

Plus there was the distraction of all those books. Why should I research teacher training programs when there are shelves of poetry to investigate? Why should I read teacher blogs to find out what teaching is like day to day when I could look through art monograms? Why should I write emails when I could be reading great and not-so-great works of fiction?

Failure

I established Internet access at my home after much hemming and hawing.

When I went to the library, I could not focus. Even the quiet that I hoped would help did not. I failed repeatedly to be effective at the library. These failures in spite of having many advantages:

• I have my own car so I could come and go when I pleased;
• I had full control over what I chose to learn;
• I was learning for pleasure, so I was under no deadline other than my desire to slack my thirst for certain subjects;
• I have my own laptop, so I did not need to rely on the public terminals;
• I am a grown man so I did not need permission nor have I a curfew;
• and I meditate, so I should, hypothetically, have better ability to focus than a student;

Struggling Students

Now, strip all those advantages away.

Without Internet access at home, some students are unable to get their homework assignments, participate in discussion boards, or collaborate with their classmates. As we move more our materials for schools online are we preventing our students from learning?

Some teachers, according to Ms. Gowens’s article, are unforgiving. Students who have trouble accessing the computer lab, whose work gets erased because the computer reboots after so many minutes, or whose libraries don’t have the proper software, are getting an inferior education and increased stress.

Is this our generation’s separate and unequal?

I don’t have any good answers on how to reduce or eliminate this problem. I am glad to be aware of it, so when I become a teacher I can try to find ways to compensate.

If you have thoughts on how to bridge the digital divide, leave me a comment below.