RETURNING TO THE CENTER: LIBRARIES, KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION

Colorado Library Association
October 29, 2001

Robert S. Martin, Ph.D.
Institute of Museum and Library Services

American libraries have a problem today. As Internet connectivity has increased, in some quarters there has been a concomitant decrease in public support for public libraries. This problem results from the considerable confusion about what libraries are and what they do. We have all heard the expression that "the Internet is just like an enormous library." I can not tell you how often in recent years I have heard elected officials and other resource allocators ask, "Why do we still need libraries-all the information we need is on the Internet."

All of us in this room today know that these statements indicate appalling ignorance about the realities of the Internet and the nature of libraries. There are actually two very different major errors encapsulated in this sentence. First, as we all know, the Internet is not a library. And "it" is not all on the Internet, and "it" isn't likely ever to be all on the Internet. More importantly, however, even if the first part of the statement were true--even if "it" were all on the Internet--we would still need libraries.

How did this extraordinary misunderstanding about what libraries are and what they do come about? It seems clear to me from looking at the historical record that we librarians are at least partly responsible for this situation. For years now, we have been telling everyone that we are in the "information business," and by implication at least conveying the message that the central mission of the library was to store and retrieve information and to serve it up to the library user. We have, in effect, painted ourselves into a corner by convincing the public in general, and our resource allocators in particular, that our primary raison d'etre is to provide information. And now that most of those resource allocators have direct access to the Internet on their desktop, we are paying the price for that misleading impression.

The roles libraries play in their communities are, of course, much more expansive and complex than this simple bromide about the information business would indicate. Libraries provide a plethora of resources and services for their communities. They preserve our rich and diverse culture and transmit it from one generation to the next. They provide social settings for numerous community activities. They support economic development. They provide extraordinary opportunities for recreation and enjoyment. And perhaps most important, they serve as a primary social agency in support of education, providing resources and services that complement the structures of formal education and extend education into an enterprise that lasts the length of the lifetime. So how did we get ourselves into this corner, with public leaders wondering why we need libraries anymore? In order to provide some perspective on that question, I would like to take a minute to review the evolution of the library profession's sense of its mission and how it has evolved and changed.

There was no doubt in the minds of the founders of the Boston Public Library that its mission was to be primarily educational. In their report to the Boston City Council, the trustees of the Library proposed that the public library in Boston would be "the crowning glory of our system of City schools" and "the utmost importance as the means of completing our system of public education." George Ticknor, the leader of the civic library movement in Boston, often spoke of the role of the library in terms of its educational mission. Communities that followed the Boston model and founded libraries in the 1850s and 1860s were explicit in citing the library's purpose to support and extend the agencies of formal education in the community.

In 1876, at the first meeting of the American Library Association, Melville Dewey clearly articulated the educational role of the library and the status of the librarian as a teacher. The first volume of the Association's new Library Journal is replete with articles by prominent library leaders extolling the educational role of the library. For example, Frederick William Poole, the ALA President, identified the library as "the adjunct and supplement of the common school system." Later, in 1883, Poole argued the point even more forcefully, stating that people chose to tax themselves to support both public libraries and public schools for the same purpose, "and that purpose is the education of the people. For no other object would a general tax for the support of public libraries be justifiable."

Although in the early years most librarians agreed that the primary purpose of the library was educational, the place of popular fiction in library collections and the obvious popularity of such unworthy materials was a cause for reappraisal. Heated debates about "the fiction problem," as it was usually called, were regular features of library meetings, and most issues of the library journals included a stirring call in opposition to or defense of the place of fiction in the library's collection. By the 1890s, most librarians had come to the conclusion that supporting the community's recreational reading was also an important part of the library's mission.

By the turn of the century, librarians added a new dimension to the educational role. The large influx of immigrants into the country during the 1890s transformed the demographics of the populace. These foreigners needed to be trained to be Americans, and the public library was the perfect instrument for carrying out that task. "There was constant insistence throughout the period that the Library is an educational institution; but the educational task was transformed and glorified." Librarians saw themselves as missionaries, imbued with the library spirit. It was during this period that Andrew Carnegie began his period of wholesale benefaction, and library buildings sprung up all over the country: in 1896 there were 971 public libraries owning 1000 volumes or more. By 1903 there were 2,283. Each of these was perceived as being an agency for education.

World War I brought tremendous changes to the library spirit. The ALA developed a Library War Service that brought millions of servicemen into contact with libraries and the services they provide for the first time. After the war, servicemen returned to their home communities with higher expectation for education and for library services. In the post-war era libraries threw themselves into the blossoming adult education movement, and claimed a prominent place for libraries in supporting the larger adult education enterprise. William S. Learned's 1924 book, The American Public Library and the Diffusion of Knowledge, envisioned a great role for the public library as the primary social institution to support adult education, and many librarians were inspired by his vision. In his presidential speech at the 1924 ALA Conference, Seattle public library director, Judson T. Jennings, argued that, "The library is logically ordained as the direct and primary agency of adult education." To respond to this challenge, many libraries devoted substantial resources to a new service, the Reader's Advisor. The job of the Reader's Advisor was to work directly with individual patrons to construct a formal syllabus of reading that addressed the specific educational goals of that individual. The Reader's Advisor service flourished throughout the 1930s.

In 1938, Alvin Johnson's book, The Public Library - A People's University, asserted again the role of the public library in supporting adult education. Johnson's book was read and discussed widely by American librarians, who agreed with Johnson on the importance of the library as an agency of adult education.

In the aftermath of World War II, the American Library Association devoted substantial energy to studying what the role of the public library in the new post-War era might be. In 1946, ALA promulgated a new National Plan for Public Library Service. This document again asserted that "the public library is an essential unit it the American educational system…. It comes closer than any other institution to being the capstone of our educational system." The rhetoric in support of the library's educational mission had scarcely altered in the century since the founding of the Boston Public Library.

American librarians were now embarking on a new initiative, that of seeking Federal support for library services. Beginning in the late 1940s, when ALA established an office in Washington, librarians lobbied members of Congress to establish a Library Services program. These efforts focused consistently on the important educational role that libraries play, and the significance of that role in buttressing our democratic society. The effort eventually bore fruit in 1955, when Congress enacted the Library Services Act. Testimony in that session in support of the bill consistently argued the educational importance of the public library, asserting that libraries were second only to schools in the capacity to educate citizens. Librarian of Congress, L. Q. Mumford, testified that, "for most people the public library is the chief --and sometimes the only--means of carrying on their education after they leave school."

Because of the "impressive results" of the program, the LSA was reauthorized and extended in 1960. As the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare re-affirmed, the Act was "designed to assist in remedying a serious deficiency in the educational program of the United States -- the lack of adequate public library services in the towns, villages, farming communities, and other non-urban areas of our Nation."

As we can see, reference to the central educational mission of libraries persisted in the rhetoric of the library profession for more than a century. In the discourse of our profession during the 1960s and 1970s, however, the traditional emphasis on our educational role was replaced by a new emphasis on information services and information science. I believe that this development is connected with the post-Sputnik rise of big science. In this era, for the first time enormous sums of public funds were appropriated to support scientific research. The rapid development of the space program during this period is indicative. Science became not only important to the life of the nation--it also became trendy, popular. To be a "rocket scientist" was the highest, most elite status to which one could aspire. I now think that during this period we perhaps unconsciously decided that if we allied the library profession more clearly with scientific enterprise, we would be perceived as more central and important, and perhaps receive more public support and resources. These developments coincide with the development of information science as a discipline.

I do not think that we significantly altered the patterns of resources and services provided in public libraries, but we largely stopped talking about libraries as educational agencies and instead jumped on the "information" bandwagon, seeing it as the vehicle for improved public support and enhanced professional status. We were no longer interested in promoting our educational role; we were in the "information business."

So what's wrong with that, you might well ask.

Used in a construction such as this--the "information business"--the word "information" is freighted with many expansive meanings, about which there is much confusion. Some take "information" to mean any and all human communication, and I think this is the connotation associated with the phrase "information business." To use the term so broadly, though-to make the word "information" mean everything, gives it no meaning at all. It is important, I believe, to distinguish information from other elements of what the philosopher Mortimer Adler termed "the goods of the mind."

Adler posits that, just as "health, strength, vigor, and vitality are bodily goods, so information, knowledge, understandin,g and wisdom are goods of the mind." Adler further stipulates these goods are not equal in value, but rather are arranged on an ascending scale of values. I would adapt Adler's typology, and speak of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom as the ascending order of "goods of the mind." They can be distinguished from each other as follows.

Data derives from the Latin root meaning "things given." Data could be defined as the essentially meaningless individual symbols or stimuli that are presented to our senses--raw symbols. In contrast, information may be defined as data upon which a human has imposed meaning. By extension, knowledge may be defined as an organized body of information, and by implication, an associated set of meanings derived from that information. Unlike information, which comes to us bit by bit, knowledge is acquired more systematically. The relationship between the component parts, their sequence and interconnectivity, has some intelligible rationale. Wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge. Wisdom derives from being able to judge what knowledge is relevant and appropriate in a given set of circumstances. Accordingly, wisdom might be defined as the prudent application of knowledge.

There are two aspects of this typology relevant to our discussion today. The first is that, contrary to common usage, there is a clear distinction between information and knowledge. Second is that the continuum of these "goods of the mind" is readily apparent. One can have data without information; information without knowledge; knowledge without wisdom. Each of them presupposes possession of the previous good.

With this typology in mind, let us think critically about what it is that libraries really do. I think that all of the numerous roles and functions that libraries play in their communities fall into one of three overlapping categories: education, information, and recreation.

The information and education functions address, in a direct and fundamental way, different levels in the Adlerian continuum of goods of the mind: information is addressed (obviously) in the information function, and knowledge is addressed in the education function. To focus exclusively on the information function of libraries, then, misrepresents-under-represents-in a serious way what it is that libraries really do. It narrows the focus to only one facet of librarianship, and ignores some very important social functions of libraries. And it helps explain, I think, why some people with ready access to the Internet now question the need for libraries.

Think about the way in which your patrons use your library. In a typical public library, only a small percentage of the people who come to the library or call on it for services are actually interested in retrieving information. Nowadays if you are trying to find out the address and telephone number of an individual or business, you can get it on the Internet quickly and effectively. Similarly, you don't need to go to the library to find out the Gross National Product of Portugal or the average annual rainfall in Afghanistan-these data are available to you readily on the Internet. But if you want to understand the structure and context surrounding these individual facts-if you want to understand what the component parts of the Portuguese economy are, for example, and how they interplay to produce that country's GNP, then you are looking for knowledge, not information, and you will find that need addressed more readily and satisfactorily by using a library. You go to the library to educate yourself about the economy of Portugal.

Is it any wonder then that sometimes resource allocators wonder why we need libraries anymore? For years we have been telling them, relentlessly and repeatedly, that we are in the information business, that we deliver information. And of course we do, and we do it well. But they now find they can get information themselves, so why do they need us?

I firmly believe that we must reverse this direction and re-institute a profound respect for the educational function of libraries. "The public library community should work to restore the identity of the public library as an institution for informal self-education. This means going back to what made the library grow, develop, and earn respect and support of the public in the first place. This means setting the library once again to the only task of importance that it ever performed, providing education for those who seek it."

Let me be clear: I am speaking here not about what librarians and libraries do, but rather about how we talk about what we do. Libraries now provide a broad array of educational services, and they have always done so. Early childhood literacy, adult literacy, and English as a second language classes are good examples of standard educational programs provided by libraries. Reader's advisory services have made a comeback in recent years and brought into sharp focus one way in which libraries continue to support the independent learner. And libraries provide significant educational services in information literacy, helping people learn how to use information technology to retrieve and evaluate the information that is available on the Internet.

Similarly, libraries provide a broad range of information services, and they should continue to do so. Librarians have always been very effective at selecting, organizing, and enhancing access to information, and especially good at evaluating its validity and relevance. We should continue to include such activities as core functions of the profession. I expect these services will become less and less important over time, as we find increasingly sophisticated users going their own way to finding the information they need. "Disintermediation" is the future for information services.

And of course libraries must continue to provide for the recreational needs of their communities. This important function is largely unacknowledged in our discourse. A full discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this presentation, but it is one the bears sober examination and discussion.

So, my point here today is not that we should do much differently than we are now doing. My point is rather that in our discourse among ourselves, and in our representation to our publics, we must stress our educational role. Education does not need to prove its value. And education is what the public wants from the library.

In recognition of this, the IMLS will be a constant leader in articulating this vision to Congress, to our various publics, and to the museum and library professions.

Next week , on November 7-9, IMLS will host a groundbreaking conference on the Twenty-First Century Learner. Its purpose is to address the need for bold new models of integrated action among formal and informal educational institutions in meeting the demands and interests of 21st century learners, and the particular potential for museums and libraries to inspire such action in their communities. At the heart of this discussion is a central thesis: The responsibility for learning is not the exclusive preserve of formal educational institutions and training centers. It is a community-wide responsibility. Lifelong learning should be a continuum - with formal and non-formal learning opportunities complementing one another.

As this project has developed within the Institute of Museum and Library Services, it has been based on this central vision and built on a ladder of premises that directly affect our work with museums and libraries. These premises are:

• In a knowledge-based economy, learning across the life span is becoming increasingly essential.
• As lifelong learning becomes more central to our society, museums and libraries have new opportunities to serve as vital learning resources. Their unique assets already establish them as trusted community resources.
• The central challenge is awareness: to establish greater public awareness of and access to these resources, and awareness of how to use these resources most effectively to foster critical thinking and enhance information literacy skills.
• To meet this challenge, museums and libraries may be most effective by becoming part of an infrastructure or network of learning resources-schools and universities, public radio and television, community-based educational activities-all sharing a common educational mission.
• Technology today provides us with new tools for supporting such collaborations.
• Finally, well-defined learning collaborations, designed to meet the changing needs of the 21st century learner, ultimately will enrich and strengthen the quality and fabric of community life.