Notes toward a Philosophy of Library (page 2 of 2)

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Still Tuesday
Still January 30, 2007
PAGE 2; NOTES TOWARD A
PHILOSOPHY OF LIBRARY

Dear Jaromir & Magda (Still),

It seems to be a law of nature that the rich seldom want to pull their own weight. Thus, Willard Garvey, when he was whining to me in 1986 about the faux virtues of privatizing America's public libraries (for instance) was only sleepwalking his way through the script he'd been handed at birth. The only reason I chose to begin my NOTES TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF LIBRARY with Willard and my going underground to spy on him and his kind way back in The Age of Reagan (which is still very much with us) was to lay the groundwork for beginning to discourse upon my understanding of WHAT WOULD BE LOST if such a demonic scheme as the privatizing of America's public libraries were ever to be successfully perpetrated by some future neo-feudalistic (i.e. fascist theocratic oligarchic, counter-Enlightenment, counter-democratic) autocracy in some dystopic 22nd century scenario. Like the one which has continued to loom larger and larger in the dark bowels of the Zeitgeist since the 1980's.

When I began writing today, I was hoping to have more time than I ended up with. But at least I got started. Magda is only the third person I've had the opportunity to observe "up close and personal" going through an MLS program. Arthur's younger brother Don in Iowa City I've already talked about with you. He was the second; the first was Art's and my very good friend Larry who graduated from Wichita State the same day I did and who decided on getting his MLS from the University of Texas in the mid-1970's, only after he realized that the M.A. he'd earned in Latin American History at the University of Indiana in Bloomington was never going to put food on the table. In the summer of 1976, Art and I visited Larry at his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he'd moved to find his path to prosperity and attempted happiness as an excellent reference librarian at the main library at the University of Arkansas.

I just now noticed how amazingly many times I've used the word "university" throughout today's open letter. I suppose that that should be no great surprise. We are, after all, traveling together today through The Land of Informational Democracy. Ironically, however, my own experience has been that I've felt myself to be most totally present in The Land of Informational Democracy only after I'd made my escape from The Land of Academia. As a natural-born Outsider and a Professional Heretic (Mythoklast) by training and apprenticeship, I'll be watching with very special interest Magda's progress through The Land of Library Orthodoxy.

This is not meant to be the end of these notes toward . . . etc., only the point at which I must stop for the time being.

RSVP,

Galen