Out on the road, the public library is one of the best friends a wandering soul can have.
Last month, I drove a stunningly cold southern route from Tinseltown to Crabtown to be home for my pop?s 74th birthday. On strike with my fellow TV and movie writers since Halloween, I had plenty of time to meander, but only enough money to do it on a shoestring.
Which is where well-spent tax dollars make a difference.
Zigzagging through towns on either side of Interstate 10, I stopped in more than a dozen libraries from sea to shining sea.
Waiting with open doors along the way were clean and quiet buildings filled with books, online computers and unlocked restrooms. I read in comfort in Silver City, N.M., the Texas towns of Marfa and Ozona, and Helen Keller?s birthplace of Tuscumbia, Ala., which named its public library in honor of the pioneering educator, a true citizen of a world she could neither see nor hear.
And you won?t find a safer place to sleep in your truck between dots on the map than a library parking lot.
A visitor to the Free State would enjoy the same experience in Maryland, where an overwhelming number of residents consistently rank libraries as an “essential service” in the same way they rate police and fire protection.
“People would rather see a library in their community than any other public facility,” said Mary Baykan, director of the Washington County Free Library and the Library Journal?s “Librarian of the Year” in 2007.
(The invention of the book mobile is credited to Washington County, where librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb put books on a horse-drawn wagon in 1905 and sent it to out-of-the-way homesteads.)
Baykan led the effort to have Marylanders polled about libraries in 2006. The findings noted that up to 70 percent of Marylanders had used library service in the past month, particularly young mothers.
The data were in line with a national survey done last year with funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Urban Institute. That study found that libraries help revitalize struggling communities, much like a minor league baseball team does, be they rural or urban.
The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore has had such success with the new Southeast Anchor Library at Eastern Avenue and Conkling Street in Highlandtown.
“There are more people using libraries statewide than ever before,” said James Fish, director of the Baltimore County Public Library, which has 16 neighborhood branches in addition to the main library in Towson.
“A lot of people think that if they see something on the Internet, it must be true,” Fish said. A librarian?s job is to make sure that information is reliable.
“Libraries will always be relevant.”
Maryland libraries may have to remain relevant with less money in the coming year than expected. In 2005, the General Assembly unanimously passed a bill that increased funding for libraries in Baltimore City and the state?s 23 counties a dollar per capita for four consecutive years.
That number stands at $14 per capita and would have bumped to $15 on July 1. The O?Malley administration, in a tight budget for the coming year aimed at corralling an estimated deficit of $200 million, wants to defer the library dollar for a year.
“The first place we?d feel it is in materials, not just in books but [research] databases,” said Pratt library director Carla Hayden, noting that the deferred dollar would amount to a loss of $600,000 in Baltimore.
“Lately [library directors] have gone to Annapolis to thank the legislature,” said Hayden. “This year, we?ll try to stop the deferral.”
Despite the stereotype of a matron with her hair in a bun “shushing” people, librarians are a brave and intellectually independent crowd. In the last six years, they have emerged as a citizen?s first line of defense against the anti-privacy abuses of the Patriot Act.
But not many, including librarians themselves, think they?ll succeed with so many dark, subprime clouds over the economy. That?s too bad, because libraries are among the first places folks go in hard times.
“Libraries serve a major role during economic downturns” when information is essential to finding work and housing, said Baykan.
“The legislature should know that we?ll take our lumps along with everybody else,” she said. “But don?t forget about us when the good times come back.”
Rafael Alvarez is an author and screenwriter based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. His books ? fiction, journalism and essays ? include “The Fountain of Highlandtown” and “Storyteller.” He can be reached at [email protected].
