Libraries deserve our support

Books are no cure for COVID and reading them may not be as effective as a vaccine or wearing a mask, but our 543 Iowa libraries, from Algona to Zwingle, performed well and importantly during the pandemic. When schools were closed, libraries were there as an educational resource. Some libraries temporarily closed, but quickly found ways to do what they do: educate, provide diversion from daily burdens.

Libraries have been part of our society from the beginning. Ben Franklin created a subscription library. Public libraries followed wherever people settled. In the 1860s, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie provided massive amounts of money to build libraries across the country, including in Iowa. (The first Carnegie library here was built in 1892 in Fairfield with a $40,000 grant. That today would be $1.3 million.) All of that helped make us a literate society.

But, as a result of their ubiquity and long presence, libraries are often just taken for granted, an inconspicuous part of the landscape and a quiet part of our communities. Their collections were sometimes small, their reader visits limited, but their presence was always important.

Today, Metro Library Network in Cedar Rapids has 144,129 library cardholders who withdrew books and videos over a half million times in fiscal 2021. In Johnson County, one relatively small library in North Liberty has issued 16,555 cards, including about 700 in the past pandemic year.

During the past year, use has been down due to the pandemic, but libraries found ways to reach out. Curbside pickup was a nuisance, never taught in library schools, but enabled “customers” to get the books they needed or just wanted.

Libraries today are certainly far beyond what Ben Franklin and Andrew Carnegie envisioned. Beyond books, they provide computer in-house for those who don’t have them. They are a meeting place for small groups of young and old.

Libraries also work out if sight in prisons. Early in the 19th century, clergy encouraged the libraries as a place for religious education and proselytizing. They hoped an ex-con could be a Christian. Today, libraries in prisons are concerned only with life on this earth, hopefully giving the incarcerated a chance to fill their incarcerated days with learning, instead of boredom and despair. A library book behind bars may inspire a new life, and a better one, in the community after release. We all benefit.

American libraries deserve funds and praise and embrace for another reason. They distinguish us from authoritarian countries. In Nazi Germany, they burned books written by Jews. In Mussolini’s Italy books on communism, socialism, or those considered anti-Christ, were forbidden and disappeared

Only once in our own history has our government duplicated that stupidity. While President Dwight Eisenhower was praising books, his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was trying to cleanse our libraries of books written by communists with Sen. Joe McCarthy, in a rare sober moment, cheering that book suppression. They fortunately failed.

Today, we are home to the largest library in the world. The Library of Congress has 17 million books, videos, and other material cataloged. A million people use it each year.

Libraries matter. They have helped make our country what it is. They deserve our appreciation and generous funding.