Reading into Democracy: Is a Library without Books still a Library?

The main branch of the New York Public Library, the Stephen A. Schwarzman building, is poised to undergo its most radical renovation in over thirty
years. The cornerstone of the Central Library Plan (CLP), a sweeping architectural revision of the edifice’s current design, is the relocation of more than three million books historically housed under the iconic Rose Reading Room, majestically stacked as an artistic monument to the written word. According to Anthony Marx, President of the NYPL, the catalyzing idea behind the CLP is the desire to “replace books with people” since “that’s the future of where libraries are going”. More precisely, he intends to substitute computers for these volumes, many of which will be unceremoniously exiled to Princeton, NJ. Marx’s ostensible logic is that computers are irresistible magnets for eager new readers, disenfranchised from the library by all the space devoured by, of all things, books.

At first glance, the CLP is an exercise in untimely opulence, costing a minimum of 250 million dollars during a period of fiscal austerity for the library system, which has contracted its workforce by 27 percent since 2008 and its acquisition budget by nearly as much. Furthermore, the resources lavished on the renovation of the Schwarzman building come at the expense of other branches (there are ninety-one more) starving for their own rehabilitative attention.

Still, this colossal infrastructural refurbishment is modest in comparison to the tranformational rewriting of the NYPL’s core mission and, more fundamentally, an ambitious repurposing of the modern library itself. The twin pillars of this project are modernization, meaning the digitization of books, and democratization, understood as the increasing accessibility of the library as a physical space. Both of these apparently uncontroversial objectives require a seismic reconsideration of the central function of the library within modern democratic society and, even more elementally, of the way knowledge is disseminated through it. Both are inextricably connected insofar as modernization and democritization are conflated—electronic access to information is blithely assumed to conduce to ever greater political equality. However, these are assumptions fraught with difficulty.

The replacement of tactile books with their cyber-imitations is premised on an abstraction of the joy of reading, as if the book as physical object wasn’t itself a work of art, to be appreciated for its own aesthetic value. This is why the CLP is blind to the arresting visual spectacle of the famous Rose Reading Room stacks, a tangible representation of the inexhaustible font of edification available in a library. The stacks themselves are not merely beautiful but have a civic function, celebrating the freedom of thought and expression enshrined in American democracy, inspiring intellectual pursuit in the way a public statue of a celebrated statesman inspires patriotic pride. Enthusiastic readers tend to recreate their own microcosmic versions of these stacks at home, compiling and displaying their personal libraries. Someone should investigate whether the proliferation of e-readers has undermined the shelving industry. I suspect that it has not.

Moreover, the replacement of books by computers is intended to improve public access to the library, more than doubling the amount of space out of the building’s palatial 600,000 square feet that will be available to its patrons. However, this overlooks the fact readers are attracted to the city’s flagship library precisely because of its impressive storehouse of books; those who favor the digital consumption of text largely do so because it unburdens them of what they see as the traditional limitations of reading, an experience tethered to a cumbersome physical object in a particular physical place. If the grandeur of the library is exchanged for the banality of an internet cafe, why will readers continue to fill all this newfound space? The goal of fostering a democratic community of readers is undermined by the transformation of reading to a placeless, bookless exercise. One might argue, maybe a bit romantically, that there is something extraordinary about the experience of public reading, the congregation of citizens in polite silence for the collective, but still intensely individualistic, enjoyment of contemplative study.

It’s unfashionable these days to object to any technological advance on moral or political grounds and almost impossible to do so without being accused of an atiquarian hostility to science itself. It should be noted that the movement from physical to electronic books promises many advantages and conveniences for readers. However, it’s probably wrong to expect a change in the delivery of written text to inspire a rekindled reverence for the written word, as if lovers of language are consistently deterred by the unwieldy weight of bound volumes. While the instruments for reading will surely change over time with the introduction of new technologies, the experience of reading itself, or the molecular attraction we have as human beings to written communication of all stripes, cannot itself be modernized.

The argument for democratization is even more suspect. The uncensored library is, in and of itself, a democratic institution, devoted to the free exchange of ideas among its citizens regardless of social or economic standing. As the great French student of America has observed: “In democracies, it is far from the case that all men who are occupied with literature have received a literary education…” The library is a true engine of egalitarianism since it equalizes access to the tools of learning, wrenching them away from the hallowed but expensive corridors of our universities. It seems unlikely that the inclusion of more elbow room at Schwarzman is, in any politically meaningful sense, evidence of further democratic progress.

The real issue is the cardinal importance of literature to the health of American democracy which, as Tocqueville observed, is often under-appreciated given the significance assigned to efficient productivity and the corresponding undervaluation of the leisure necessary for study and the enjoyments of the arts. According to Tocqueville, Americans “do not make these pleasures the principle charms of their existence” but only turn to them “furtively” as a “necessary relaxation in the midst of the serious work of life…” The rationale of the CLP, to accelerate the speed and proficiency with which literature is delivered, subverts one of the principle boons of literature in a democracy, which is the salutary diversion from our ceaselessly productive pursuit of practical interests. Great literature helps cultivate a sensitivity to beauty and greatness, sometimes lost in the frenetic bustle of work, and amplifies our horizon beyond the narrowly quotidian. To read amidst cascading walls of books, towering celebrations of human intellectual achievement, might also help do the same.

This is a longer adaptation of a piece that originally appeared in the New York Post

Ivan Kenneally is the Editor in Chief of the Daily Witness.

Category: Books & Culture