Week 9: Class Reflection

I love reading everyone else's blogs before I write mine, because you all give me so much more to think about than I'd come up with on my own! This post is sort of an amalgamation of things I expressed in comments on your entries from this week.

Last week in class we discussed the Toronto Public Library's decision to put advertising on the back of their due date slips (I think the fact that we don't just call these 'receipts' is interesting, by the way). About half the class was against it, but there didn't seem to be a lot of agreement as to why it was such a bad thing. Terms like "slippery slope" and "commercializing" were thrown around--but the only really convincing con I heard was from the article we read in class. It suggested that legislators, seeing a library producing some revenue of its own, would take this as a signal that the library didn't require public funding--rather than as a last-ditch attempt to make up for an already-scanty allocation. This fits in with what I thought of reading Mary's entry, in which she (rightly) stated that worrying about libraries being empty of patrons is not the most effective use of our time. I agreed with her, but also realized that libraries being full and vibrant doesn't necessarily mean they stay funded.

The only thing we have to be afraid of is that legislators, school boards, and universities don’t necessarily know that–and they’re the ones with the money. It’s encouraging to me that every time Ohio’s evil state government slashes funding to libraries (I gather this happens elsewhere too, but I’m most familiar with my home state), there’s a huge amount of public outcry. Unfortunately it doesn’t always accomplish much. So, we don’t need to worry that nobody will come to libraries, or that they’ll fade away from lack of interest–but we need to make sure the legislators know that as well as we do, and have no excuse to take money away from the very important resource we provide.

I'm not positive that putting ads on due date slips will cause this to happen--especially if libraries communicated to legislators exactly why and under what ideology and constraints they are implementing this measure. Creating a discourse with the people who hold the purse strings is every bit as important as communicating with patrons--because, unfortunately, individual voters only have so much power, and governments have quite a lot.

Additionally, I think a lot of the backlash against the advertisements comes from a wish to see libraries as non-commercial, and a knee-jerk feeling that all advertising is a bad thing. What if the ads were for local animal shelters, or charitable organizations, or local businesses that have been part of the community for decades? The strip club example in class was hilarious, but realistically there would be plenty of space for librarians and administrators to decide who can advertise on library paper. I don't see this as being in conflict with the directive to provide free and un-censored information, because advertisements are unsolicited--unless patrons ask for strip club ads, in which case the library might have a bigger problem.