Happy December in a turbulent year.
I know my blog has gone dark for 6 months but it's only because I've been feverishly writing up my dissertation. "Gift of the Gab: The Audiobook and the Festive Direction in the American Library" is 99% finished. I am just applying cosmetic touches and trying to temper expectations.
Launching research during a pandemic year has been interesting. One preliminary finding I can share is that, as of October of 2020, none of the public and/or membership libraries surveyed have shut their doors for good. This is more impressive than it sounds. Restaurants and movie theatres, as The New York Times is constantly reminding us, have faced devastation. Seemingly permanent devastation.
The typical response, you may be thinking, is that no politician is going to shut down a public library. And that a public library is a shared utility like sunlight or drinking water or the music of The Carpenters. But closures do happen. My hometown neighborhood library branch was shuttered in 2009 when the town's main branch got a makeover. Sure it was a bit cramped and damp but I had my share of fond memories inside that brick edifice. The closure was a political and financial decision. Now it just sits there waiting for its next act.
In my own survey of sixteen American public and membership libraries, the fate of the structures is much more secure. You could even call them celebrated spaces. Nearly 50% of the libraries surveyed use their own buildings as venues for galas and fundraisers. Holding a fundraiser in-house is a superb way for a library to leverage its historical space. It speaks not only to the wonderful vision of Andrew Carnegie but also to the role of aesthetics in literature and education and, frankly, society.
There will be other findings and insights from my research over the next couple of months. Stay tuned.
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