[Publib] Quote about libraries

[Nann Blaine Hilyard]

There's an interview with environmental writer Bill McKibben on p. 28 of the 2/15 issue of Booklist.
I thought this quote was especially memorable:

"Not only are all the great works of environmental writing available in libraries, libraries are key in another way, too, maybe even more significantly.  They're the one institution in our society that's figured out how to institutionalize sharing. One of the things I love about being a writer is that it's a curious hybrid of commercialism and the opposite.  Just enough people buy books in order to keep those of us who write them in business.  But the great pleasure is knowing that every person in America has access to everything I've written.  All they have to do is go down to the library and check it out....The library is also the great metaphor for where we need to go as a society.  It's a historical accident, it seems to me, that this sort of sharing has been confined to books.  Why not tools? Why not cars? Why not all sorts of other things in our lives that we could think about in same way?  Libraries are a completely wonderful invention, and very American in the old sense of American, the deep commitment to small deed democracy (?? "small-D"?) and civic life."

***********************************************

Nann Blaine Hilyard, director
Zion-Benton Public Library
2400 Gabriel Ave.
Zion, IL  60099
847-872-4680  x 110
847-872-4942 fax
www.zblibrary.org<http://www.zblibrary.org/>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20080221/f44a7e21/attachment.htm