The Public Library as Capitalist Tool?

If you give people tools [and they use] their natural ability and curiosity, they will develop things in ways . . . very much beyond what you might have expected.

n  Bill Gates

One of the goals of the Gates Foundation-funded Biblionet project in Romania is that libraries rethink their role – from being simply repositories for books to being information centers for their communities.  But not until I had visited a few libraries did I realize the challenge that entails. However, if Gates is right – the comment above came from a web site offering quotes from famous people – his foundation’s library program could make the same contribution here that the Carnegie program did in the United States (see previous blog on this topic).

            Often, the local contribution towns are required to make in order to be eligible for a Biblionet grant involves construction – the library building must be spacious and secure enough to house the computer equipment it will receive. For some towns, this is a challenge. Last winter, I visited the library in a nearby community and found little more than two dreary rooms and nowhere to sit. Its shelves were filled with dusty volumes, most acquired over two decades ago when the government used libraries to encourage nationalism and disseminate propaganda. The librarian – actually a young woman whose chief credential was an interest in reading – had an office across the street in the town hall. People who want a book have to stop by her office first so she can unlock the library’s doors.

            But it has few patrons. As the librarian noted, if a neighborhood woman comes to check out a book, her neighbors might ask whether she felt she was too good to talk to them.

            Earlier, I had visited another, larger library in another nearby town. It had been a recipient of Biblionet grant, and had rebuilt its library to accommodate its new computers. I was there for the formal opening – a delightful event with many local officials and lots of good food -- and noted an inviting display of colorful new children’s books.     

            Over in the corner, though, was a relic of another time – a wooden card catalog. I soon learned that the library had neither an electronic catalog nor a computerized circulation system. And later I realized that the books themselves lacked call numbers. Hmm, I thought, perhaps brand new computers were butter for bread that hadn’t yet been baked.

            I’d not yet visited the library in my own town, a close-knit and welcoming community of 10,000 people, as it was in the process of renovation. But one afternoon last winter I had wandered over to the chilly room behind the primarie – town hall – where the librarians were then stationed with a hundred-odd books and little else. Except I was soon offered a warming mug of homegrown herbal tea, and we introduced ourselves using their halting English and my primitive Romanian.

            The Peace Corps encourages us to have secondary projects – teaching is my primary one – and having spent most of my career in the publishing business, offering my services to the library seemed a natural.  I had a grand scheme in mind -- one in-tune with Biblionet’s goal of helping libraries become community information centers.  I’d mentioned this to my Romanian friend attending library school in Illinois – and she’d replied with a marvelous You Tube video of a librarian in Ukraine exclaiming over how the local tomato crop had been improved through information she’d found on the web. Now that’s the idea, I thought.

            The backyard gardens in my area are marvelously productive – from strawberries in the spring to tomatoes and potatoes all summer long to luscious grapes for eating and wines in the fall. But the horticulture industry that, during communism, had flourished in the surrounding hills and valleys died quickly after the 1989 revolution.  Could some product development ideas discovered by a librarian here work the same magic as the one the librarian in Ukraine had found?

            But, ah, the complexities of getting such an idea off the ground. However, inspired by a conversation with the mayor in a nearby town – made possible by a bilingual friend – I thought of how local talent could be harnessed to create a web-based economic development center housed in a library.  Students comfortable with technology could assist their entrepreneurially minded elders in finding information about reenergizing horticulture and sheep-production – two industries apparently well suited to the climate and soil here. How do you find capital? How do you find new markets?

            During the long, dark Romanian winter, my imagination began to far outpace Romanian realities. Conversations with other friends here soon noted impediments to my ideas – the surrounding fields are divided into parcels too small for large-scale agriculture, there’s a disinclination for communal effort, the regulations are daunting, and there’s suspicion -- not wholly unfounded -- that someone else might profit from one’s efforts.

            As spring came, I downsized my dream. Then the library in my town reopened, and I began to appreciate its strengths and challenges: a delightful staff, space that’s a visual delight, shelves of recent books on contemporary topics, and an ample-sized room that houses computers from Biblionet. But there is no shelf of reference books – no business directories, compilations of associations, atlases, etc.  Of course, this information is available on the web – and no doubt the designers of the Biblionet project had this in mind when they decided to concentrate on technology and training.

            But as of now, no potential entrepreneurs are taking advantage of what the library might be able to do for them; the patrons I see there are mainly students – and mainly female, too. But I’ve been impressed by the librarians’ initiative – they were, for example, the first group of people in town to volunteer for the national cleanup day held this fall, they responded enthusiastically when a college student and I proposed that they might sponsor a career fair sometime this spring, and one of the librarians herself is showing an entrepreneurial spirit. Last fall, she found a package of ornamental squash seeds, regarded them with curiosity and planted them this spring, then discovered what a delightful product she has. This fall, their intriguing shapes decorated the library – and my classroom (one of my clever students called them mutant pumpkins). But I’d bet my librarian friend could charge a premium price for them in local markets.  

            Her curiosity and natural ability as a gardener, plus all the technology she is learning to use, might give her some entrepreneurial ideas. She can also concoct a delicious herbal tea from plants growing wild in neighboring fields. And if she wants to stick to the library, she has an equally talented – and entrepreneurial – neighbor.  She and her husband produce – for sale -- some of the best polinka – potent fruit brandy – I’ve had here. They also sell the wine they make from their abundant crop of grapes.

Both these women, in their 40s, are diligently teaching themselves English, as well as having jobs, raising teenagers, and doing energetic gardening. Who knows, given some of the tools the Gates Foundation has provided, what they might be able to develop? Bihor could become a brand name!