Extra Credit-Opening talk at the Bubbler Room

My first reaction walking out of the talk was thought provoking. I wanted to stay and ask a few questions, but I was still processing the information of the talk. The talk was given by Shirley and Wayne Wiegand on the desegregation of public libraries in the American South based on their new book. I secretively love when professors offer some type of incentive to go to lectures like these because of how interesting they are and I normally wouldn't know about them or wouldn't go. I was impressed with the wide range of ages that were at this lecture. The first ten minutes I was there waiting for it to begin, the audience was primarily older people, about 50 and up. However, quickly this changed. It was nice to see this, although I am guessing that most of the younger members of the audience are somehow related or affiliated with the School of Library and Information Sciences.

My grandmother was a librarian, and many family friends were librarians and were active in the various social movements occurring in Chicago. Never once has it occurred to me to ask about the segregation in libraries and what that truly meant towards the freedom access of information and the diversification of information offered. Libraries hold such power in collecting, maintaining, and preserving pieces of information for future generations, for example the Alexandria Library in Egypt. The thing I was most surprised by wasn't the horrible actions of the white library boards in maintaining the status quo of segregation, but the impact of not trying to collect and preserve the information of black newspapers of the time, and other African American literature. Libraries should be these places of sanctuary, knowledge, peace, and safety that up until this time could not be for everyone.

My favorite story in the presentation was about a librarian's continual interaction with a young Martin Luther King, Jr. and the game they played when young Martin had just learned a new word in which he would use it repeatedly in a conversation. The librarian also found a way for young Martin to get around his children's library card by using his father's library card to check out books by Ghandi. Think if there wasn't a library where Martin Luther King, Jr. went and read everything he could get his hands on. Think if this library didn't exist, or was severely under funded and didn't have what minimal resources it did have. This story embodies what libraries should be-a place where anyone can go to expand their knowledge and minds, a safe place of knowledge. However, that was not the case and for a large part still isn't the case. The libraries I had grown up with, now reflecting upon it, as nice as they were, the books in the library were not as diverse as they should have been, partly because of the long standing tradition of white, conservative farming families in the area and the rejection of higher and diverse knowledge. Diversifying knowledge is important for growth as a person and society. If we only wanted to listen to one way of thinking then it could be and would be very difficult to progress. Luckily, today the populous is changing and it is visible in the diversification of the literature offered at the libraries and the library part of co-ops with other libraries in the southern part of the state. Additionally, with the rise of the internet and the freedom of information on it, allows students, people to gain access to this information. But what about the potential end of network neutrality? What about being able to have access to libraries that can afford subscriptions to all of these databases? Are we continuing the issue of segregating the haves and the have nots? Do we value libraries in the same way as we did twenty years ago, thirty, fifty? If not, how will that affect people who want to learn, want to expand their minds, but don't have the monetary means to buy subscriptions or be a student to all of these databases, all of these digital sources of knowledge? How do we value libraries? How do we value information in a digital age?