How libraries sustain and support democracy

Those buildings full of free books aren't just about the free books.

Cornell University’s iconic McGraw Tower rises next to Olin Library. (Photo: Notyourbroom, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I’m the child of a librarian. More specifically, a librarian who spent the last two decades of his career working for Cornell University. My dad’s desk was in Olin Library, where he put three of his four languages to use as a cataloguer for Cornell’s Wason Collection on East Asia. He relished rubbing elbows with professors who used the collection; he was proud to be a Cornell librarian.

So when I learned that Cornell’s top bookworm — Elaine L. Westbrooks, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian and vice provost — was to speak in my city on the topic of “How libraries sustain and support democracy,” I promptly registered for the event.

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Westbrooks took the reins at Cornell University Library following stints as university librarian and vice provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in library leadership positions at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the University of Michigan. So it was no surprise to hear that she believes libraries have a crucial role to play in a democracy.

In her talk, she placed libraries squarely within our current political context, noting a precipitous drop in trust in our public institutions during the past few decades — except for libraries.

Why do libraries matter? Because, Westbrooks asserted, they:

• Educate the public. They help fill the gap left by systemic disinvestment in civic education. They help people understand threats to democracy such as authoritarianism. They foster literacy, from reading itself to information, data and media literacy.

• Serve as stewards of knowledge and facts. They preserve the cultural, historical and scholarly record in a way that’s reliable, accessible and organized.

• Support pluralistic and diverse communities. Libraries bring people in from the margins and bridge gaps. They empower people to imagine a more just and equitable world. They support intellectual freedom — the right to read what you want, without anyone else knowing.

As institutions created by humans, libraries aren’t perfect. Westbrooks noted that during the civil rights movement, libraries were just as much a target of sit-ins protesting segregation as other public spaces were. (In 2018, the leadership of the American Library Association apologized to African Americans “for wrongs committed against them in segregated public libraries.”)

These days, libraries are again a target amid a dramatic rise in book bans:

From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles.

— Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, PEN America

Westbrooks urged her audience not to just watch from the sidelines. Her calls to action:

• Champion libraries. She didn’t give specific suggestions, but I have a few:

  • Get a library card if you don’t already have one. Then use it.

  • Follow your local library’s social media accounts and sign up for its newsletter if it has one.

  • Attend events at libraries.

  • Vote for library funding measures.

• Join a library advisory council. Every public library has one.

• Join the fight against book bans. The American Library Association has launched United Against Book Bans.

It’s not the greatest moment for libraries right now. But they’ve been a part of our country’s history from the start, and I’ve no doubt they’ll continue to be for a long, long time.