[Publib] Re: "entertain our diverse community"

[Joe Schallan]

A Publibber praised this mission statement:

"The Elkhart Public Library provides access to resources which inform, 
educate, enlighten and entertain our diverse community.....Books are 
just the beginning."

Maybe I'm just an old crank, but the word "entertain" troubles me
here, as does the implication that books themselves are not a
worthy end in and of themselves.

Just yesterday a young male patron raked me over the coals
for not providing a room in the library set up as a game arcade.
We do all this other stuff, he argued, so why couldn't we
spend money on a game room?  We, too, have the "entertain"
word in our mission statement.

Indeed, a parent used that statement to clobber me when we
objected to the hell her son and his buddies had been raising
in our computer lab.  The library's purpose is to entertain,
and so what was the big deal with a little noise and partying?
Why were we picking on her son?  After all, we say we
entertain right in our mission statement, which she had looked
up.

These moments are the ones that make me think we have
lost our way, and certainly have lost a clear sense of purpose.

Because of our own muddled sense of our mission, we are asked
to be everything from a social service agency to a branch office
of the MVD to a game arcade.

What happened to just being a library and being the best
at doing that?

I shall now return to my lair in the Jurassic era.

Cheers,
Joe Schallan
Phoenix