LIS 5804 : Haiku and reflection

For my first week of studies in LIS 5804, The Public Library, I was to write a haiku in response to a photograph in Robert Dawson’s The Public Library: A Photographic Essay.

An open vista:
Shelves of books beckon readers
to stretch horizons.

The latest issue of American Libraries magazine had just arrived by mail, and in it, letter writer Arthur L. Friedman complained that, in the recent Library Design Showcase, “16 of 18 pictures of libraries and library interiors were entirely devoid of books” (Friedman, 2023, p. 8). Friedman further expressed that “even the discussion of these spaces seemed to articulate the ‘Who needs books?’ idea” (ibid).

So when looking for an image from which to write my haiku, I consciously chose to select one with books. I found it in a depiction of the reading room of the Central Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, taken in 2011 (Dawson, 2013, p. 82).

There were so many beautiful and provocative photos to choose from when looking through this book, and it was neat to see the town I lived in represented in this book, through a reminiscence of author Amy Tan: an essay she’d composed at the age of 8 for “What the library means to me” (Tan, 2013, p. 75). Tan shared that the books she reads, which she checked out from the library, “seem to open many windows” in the little room in her mind (ibid).

The photo of the reading-room was especially striking, with its shelves full of books ringing a large central area with tables where people could congregate to read or could, from the look of things, make use of library computers.

Our reading this week included an essay by John Buschman, “The Library in the Life of the Public,” from The Library Quarterly. At one point, Buschman asks how libraries’ “publics” have changed (2017, p. 58). One answer that occurred to me was the practice of digital borrowing as an alternative, or a supplement, to physical materials.

This past November, OverDrive announced that, 20 years after its first ebook check-out, back in 2003, “the total number of digital titles checked out through OverDrive – and Libby and Sora – surpassed three billion.” For the first time, in 2022, my local public library “reached a record-breaking 1 million digital checkouts” during that year, through OverDrive and Libby (Breedlove, 2022).

A variety of libraries offer digital resources through OverDrive, including James C. Kirkpatrick Library. UCM students can “Download popular fiction and non-fiction audio books and e-books using OverDrive and the Libby app” (Klein, 2022). I recently added JCKL among the libraries in my Libby app, and even applied one of the books I found there toward a reading prompt in Book Riot’s 2022 “Read Harder Challenge.”

A reading room like that depicted in Dawson’s photographic essay may not be as bustling as it was back in 2011, but that change can’t solely be attributed to changing patron habits.

In its annual report for 2021, of circulation “By the numbers,” the Free Library of Philadelphia noted that there were 1,350,389 ebooks circulated through OverDrive, along with 687,839 digital audiobooks. Total physical materials borrowed system-wide were 2,836,466, but the library noted that “In-person browsing was unavailable for many months due to COVID-19 restrictions” (Annual report committee, 2021).

References:
Annual report committee (2021). Annual report, Fiscal Year 2021: July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021. Free Library of Philadelphia.

Breedlove, S. (2022, Dec. 27). Sonoma County reaches 1 million digital checkouts on Libby app. News. Sonoma County Library. https://sonomalibrary.org/blogs/news/1million-libby-checkouts

Buschman, J. (2017). The library in the life of the public: implications of a neoliberal age. The Library Quarterly, 87(1), 55-70.

Dawson, R. (2013). Public library: A photographic essay. Princeton Architectural Press.

Friedman, A.L. (2023). Where are the books? From our readers. American Libraries, 54 (1/2).

Klein, J. (2022, Nov. 28). OverDrive. JCKL Library blog. University of Central Missouri. https://guides.library.ucmo.edu/blog/OverDrive

Tan, A. (2013). What the library means to me. In R. Dawson’s Public library: A photographic essay (p. 75). Princeton Architectural Press.