On April 29, 1986, I stood on the corner of Fifth Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles and watched black smoke pour from the windows of L.A.'s Central Library. The big library, which I loved, and in which l
wrote my first novel, was a victim not only of arson, but of years-decades-of neglect, political bickering, and short-term think-ing. Ironically, by the time of the fire, the building's long-needed renovations had finally been scheduled. This year, those ren-ovations, made all the more urgent by the fire, will be com-piete-Just in time for another, broader library crisis.
All over the country now, public libraries are in as much danger from shortsighted budget cuts, political expediency, and neglect as the old firetrap Central Library ever was from fire. The L.A.
Library fire was a metaphor for what's happening to libraries in
Some libraries have al-
ready been closed. Others have had to cut hours, staff, services, and acquisitions.
This is not sensible! We Americans of the 1990s are sending our unskilled and semiskilled jobs away to low-wage countries just as fast as we can. We're hoping that the long-term result of this will be to stimulate enough of an increase in trade to create new, better-paying jobs. Of course new workers will need more education to get those jobs, and displaced workers will need job-market information and retraining. But meanwhile, we're saving money by cutting school budgets, closing school libraries. raising university tuitions and fees, and diminishing or closing public libraries
In my most recent book, my main character, who lives in a poorer, dumber near-future time, writes,
"Intelligence is ongoing,
individual adaptability."
And
"Civilization is ... a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptability." Just so. And in the present time of great change, public libraries, like public schools are among the best tools of adaptation and civilization that our society has.
Public libraries in parti…
In 1993, Octavia E. Butler wrote a defense of public libraries.
“Public libraries in particular are the open universities of America. They're free; they're accessible to everyone… I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries.“
