Applying Reason to an Unreasonable World: A Review of Public Libraries and Resilient Cities
Bill Crowley
In the preface to Public Libraries and Resilient Cities [1], Michael Dudley, the volume’s Canadian editor, recounts his work in various capacities in the public libraries of Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta. Dudley also discusses how he earned a graduate degree in city planning prior to becoming the indigenous and urban services librarian at the University of Winnipeg. It is a background of education and experience that clearly brought a number of assets to the work of securing contributors and editing a volume aspiring to “demonstrate that public libraries can contribute to a city’s diversity, adaptability, and learning capacity” (ix). It is equally true that the city planning lens Dudley employs draws much of its initial inspiration from the American Progressive Era good government movement of the early 1900s. As such, city planning is a field whose philosophical DNA remains committed to substituting data, fairness, and reason for the partisan political and self–serving interests that then — and now — characterize so many North American and other municipal governments.
In considering the value of Public Libraries and Resilient Cities, this reviewer — whose own background includes twenty–three years of work in public, cooperative, and state libraries, and stints as a library association state legislative committee chair and Federal Relations Coordinator — will endeavor to avoid the error of reviewing the work that he wished had been written rather than the work before him. In consequence, this appraisal will initially address the value of the monograph, which is considerable, and focus on its substantial omission only at the review’s conclusion. For now it will be sufficient to note that the book would have been strengthened had Dudley included a chapter on the perceived value of the public library to city resiliency written from the perspective of a still active or retired politician. He might have even achieved the proverbial “twofer” had such a chapter been authored by his fellow Canadian Ken Haycock [2], a librarian and educator whose distinguished career includes practical experience as a local elected official.
The theoretical components of Public Libraries and Resilient Cities are supplied through Dudley’s “The Library and the City”, “Partners for the Future: Public Libraries and Local Governments Creating Sustainable Communities” by the Urban Libraries Council, and “A ‘People’s Palace’: Public Libraries and Placemaking” by Maija Berndtson. There is also a chapter entitled “Public Libraries, Peak Oil, and Climate Change” by Matthew Evan Havens and Michel Dudley, which describes a future so bleak that it makes Dante’s vision of the netherworld almost optimistic by comparison. For the most part, the work consists of the “how we did it good” accounts so valued by experienced public librarians. Notable in this category are the chapters “In the Wake of Hurricane Ike: The Houston Public Library Responds” by Meller Langford and Roosevelt Weeks, with Dr. Rhea Brown Lawson; “Baltimore’s Equalizer: Lessons in Social Equity from the Enoch Pratt Free Library” by Vanessa N. Francis; “Queens Library’s Literacy Zone Welcome Center at Long Island City” by Deborah Olley Murphy and Denise Clark; and “Summer Foods, Libraries, and Resiliency: Creative Problem Solving and Community Partnerships in Massachusetts” by Melissa S. Rauseo and Julie Biando Edwards.
By far, the most valuable chapter in Public Libraries and Resilient Cities is Dr. Glen Holt’s “Exploring Public Library Contributions to Urban Resilience,” an inspiring account about how various public libraries — in particular Holt’s own St. Louis Public Library — played by the political imperatives to make their programs of demonstrated value to the lives of politicians, voters, and customers alike. This chapter also contains the Holt’s “Rules for Library Contributions to Urban Resiliency“ (51), a valuable checklist that in itself is nearly worth the price of the book.
No honest critique of Public Libraries and Resilient Cities would be possible without a consideration of the problem of viewing public libraries and their parent municipalities through a city planner lens. Setting aside the example of the multi–jurisdictional planner Robert Moses of New York, who was renowned for his political savvy but castigated for his lack of commitment to sustainability [3], it is pretty much the case that city planners operate at decision levels far below those of elected officials. Public Libraries and Resilient Cities contains a chapter authored by the Urban Libraries Council, adapted from the Council’s similarly titled Partners for the Future: Public Libraries and Local Governments Creating Sustainable Communities [4]. The reworking of several chapters of the report is of value. However, American public libraries, unlike so many of their Canadian brethren, have suffered financial disasters in the wake of the Great Recession. As such, they would need to gain greater financial support from local officials for their roles in advancing municipal sustainability. Of more value would have been a chapter summarizing critical points from the International City/County Management Association’s Maximize the Potential of Your Public Library. Ironically, this is a work whose development was brokered by Urban Libraries Council senior staff [5]. Although not elected officials, city and county managers differ from city planners in that they report directly to mayors and municipal councils or county board presidents and county boards. These managers know how public libraries can become valued allies of the elected officials who control the funds so often needed to advance sustainability. Without such financial infusions the ability of public libraries will too often remain undervalued, under resourced, and unable to effectively contribute to city resilience.
In conclusion, Public Libraries and Resilient Cities is a volume with clear positives, yet remains a work that would have benefitted from a stronger dose of political realism. Cities yet remain governed by partisan political and self–serving interests. Nevertheless, through his recruitment of praiseworthy chapter authors and his effective editing (only one chapter suffers from lack of noun–pronoun agreement), Michael Dudley has provided the reader with a number of valuable case studies, particularly Glen Holt’s account of his St. Louis experience. The result makes the volume worth purchasing by North American and other major public libraries, state and provincial library agencies, and library education programs, including those accredited by the American Library Association.
Notes
1. Michael Dudley, ed., Public Libraries and Resilient Cities (Chicago: American Library Association, 2013).
2. http://www.kenhaycock.com/index.php/Principals/ken-haycock.html (accessed January 15, 2013).
3. Robert Moses biography, http://www.biography.com/people/robert-moses-9416268 (accessed January 15, 2013).
4. Urban Libraries Council, Partners for the Future: Public Libraries and Local Governments Creating Sustainable Communities ([Chicago, IL]: Urban Libraries Council, 2010).
5. International City/County Management Association, Maximize the Potential of Your Public Library: A Report on the Innovative Ways Public Libraries Are Addressing Community Priorities (Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association, 2011).
About the author
Bill Crowley is Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University.
“Applying Reason to an Unreasonable World: A Review of Public Libraries and Resilient Cities” by Bill Crowley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.