Vintage library poster from the New York Public Library Archives
Will the library of the future be a reliquary of precious artifacts or the information processor that obliterates them?
“I suspect that the human species—the unique human species—is on the road to extinction, while the Library will last on forever.” —Borges, “Library of Babel”
If you had visited the New York Public Library’s website during the two months between the announcement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts and the final New York City Council budget vote on June 29, you might have feared that the institution would flake apart in the city’s hands like the page of a rare book. As you entered the site, the screen went black, and a white message emerged from the darkness, imploring you to “Find the Future / Fund the Future.” No funding, no future. Unless you donated or wrote your New York City Council representative, the message warned, the library could face $40 million in budget cuts. It would be open only four days a week, children’s programs would be slashed, one-third fewer books and DVDs would remain on shelves, job help and computer time would be reduced, and many branches would close. Make the wrong choice, and the library could disappear.
But now the library is safe—or so it seems. The final budget granted the library $36.7 million of the $40 million it had threatened to take away, and Public Relations Director Angela Montefinise was eager to reassure any frantic website visitors: “The people of New York will still have access to the critically important free services we offer that are being used now more than ever—computers and Internet, books, programs, classes, job search resources, and more.” Yet into her reassurance sneaks another danger. The Merriam-Webster’s definition of a library is “a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale.” Books form the root of the library’s very name, but when Montefinise jubilantly listed the services the library could still provide thanks to the restored budget, they come in third after computers and the internet. Saved from the Council’s knife, is the library itself cutting away at its own definition?
The introductory placard to an exhibit at the library’s iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building—“Celebrating 100 Years” (open through December 31), which marks the famous main branch’s centennial by displaying some 250 treasures from its research collection—seems to think so. It reads:
As the Internet makes information increasingly easy to obtain and more experiences become virtual, direct encounters with the Library’s books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and objects reveal the collections as an indispensable public resource.
While Montefinise celebrates the social utility of free computer access, the exhibit purports to defend the physical objects in its keep against the virtualization of everyday life.
