Nicholson Baker resurfaces (fwd)

[Publib Poster]

Sender: kgs at bluehighways.com (Karen G. Schneider)
Subject: Nicholson Baker resurfaces

Dear folks, as Graceanne informed us last week, Nicholson Baker is at it
again, and he has moved beyond his tearful defense of the "card catalogue"
to more verdant pastures.  The October 14 New Yorker has an article, "The
Author and the Library," in which Baker (whose shadow has never darkened
the door of a library school, unless I am greatly mistaken) expounds at
length on library weeding, space requirements, the evils of
"telecommunications enthusiasts," the strange new phenomonon of private
funding for public libraries, and so forth. His discussion is liberally
peppered with quotes from librarians who met him via email or furtively in
coffeeshops, lest they be discovered.  (In case you're wondering what the
punishment is for talking to Baker, it is being exiled to "branch duty," oh
horror of horrors.)

Through Baker's journalism and careful pedagogy, we find out that the San
Francisco Public Library has been indiscriminately tossing out books left
and right--a process, we learn, called weeding, which reduces the public
library's collection to an anorexic shadow of its former self and detracts
from its true mission as repository of Italian novels and old gardening
guides.  (Strangely enough, this has been going on in my library as well,
and we're only a public-*access* library.  Is this some weird alien thing
going on?)

I am so galvanized by Baker's arrogant and wrongheaded interpretation of
the mission and purpose of public libraries that I am dragging my laptop to
and from work each day so I can write on the train.  (O.k.--I'm also
finishing a policy manual... but it sounds much more cool to say I'm
writing a response to a New Yorker article...)  After emailing a select
group of colleagues to ask for input and advice--I do plan for *my*
comments to be at least a *little* scholarly, even if Baker didn't set the
precedent-- I've also received a charming post forwarded from some fired-up
librarians in Iceland who protested Baker's presumption (and who presumably
wouldn't be caught dead whispering into Baker's ear electronically *or*
over a cuppa joe), and another, quite different post from a professor of
library science at a certain university east of the Missippi who claimed
that Baker "makes wonderful sense" and urged me to "relax." (I don't think
so.)

Anyway, I hope you all read Baker's article.  On one level, I'm as ticked
at the (presumably real) librarians who whimpered that they might be sent
to "branch duty" and second-guessed every weeding decision as I am at
Baker.  I received my first library card in the West Portal branch of San
Francisco Public Library, and this cozy, "popular-reading" (to use another
Baker pejorative) library was the source of much comfort, excitement, and
sheer bookaholic delight.  I didn't visit the central library til I was 16,
and only then because I was hired as a summer worker (to pen call numbers
on book spines). It was nice enough, but it was not that homey little place
just up from the streetcar stop, where tall smiling librarians guided me to
the new-book shelves and then left me, mercifully, alone.  But now I am
getting ahead of myself.  Read Baker and know what the New Yorker is
reading about us.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen G. Schneider * kgs at bluehighways.com * schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
Author, The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman at icm.com)
Director, US EPA Region 2 Library * Cybrarian * Columnist, American Libraries
Visit our library at our new URL: http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/
These opinions strictly mine!