The medicine cabinet theory

This is an accompanying post to an earlier blog post of mine: "Google is not your friend"

Here is a question:

Do you call a cupboard with painkillers and antihistamines in it:
A) A medicine cabinet
B) A hospital

If you answered A, then you shouldn't call a red telephone box reconstituted to hold books a library.



http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/428572/What-a-novel-idea-villagers-transform-redundant-phone-box-into-a-LIBRARY

It isn't a library. It is a telephone box with books in it, though.

A room with books on shelves in a house isn't a library. It is a room with books in it, though.

A library space used for a coffee shop isn't a library. It is a place to get a cup of coffee, though.

A library, at it's most basic, is an intellectually curated collection of authored materials. It has expertise to guide to what's in the collection. It finds things which are not in the collection. It is beyond loaning books. It is about good information and broadening horizons at all stages of life without prejudice. A library is an organic communication system.

All libraries are important. So why would I disparage this apparently good willed concept so utterly?

Book exchanges in otherwise unused rural village telephone boxes is actually a good idea. Why not? And libraries are big on loaning free books and information. But, these boxes are not ever libraries.

Thinking red telephone boxes are libraries is a short leap to thinking tables of books set up once a week in a community hall is a library. It is a small step from putting non-expert volunteers into managing a building designed to be a library and thinking it is a library.

Library and information professionals know this and are quick to point it out. Some non-library and non-information professionals, however, take surprising umbrage to this. They swear they see only a difference in scope between an information professional led service as a library and 170 books packed into a leaking, red painted iron container for one.

The problem is a few non-library and information professionals have hijacked the word "library" and use it, unwittingly diluting the library profession's position and the potential of libraries.

I don't really blame them. This is because non-library information professionals no longer know what a library is. They don't know what a library is for. They don't use libraries properly and then, whenever they see free-to-borrow books on a shelf, they see a library. They are not idiots, they are simply mistaken.

Yes, they see a medical cabinet and think it is a hospital. They see a strange bloke in a car pulling up in the dead of night alongside offering a lift for a "favour" as basically a licenced taxi.

The truth is, librarians are on their side. Librarians want better libraries, they want to help non-librarians have libraries they will love to use. Librarians should be praised rather than receiving laughably chastising comments from non-librarians accusing librarians of not knowing what a library is, or for being accused of being petty whenever pointing out when the word "library" is misused. Librarians are the good guys in this!

Librarians are the only ones standing between a space to provide information provision and standing in a telephone box without a telephone.

By the way, if you answered B, then I look forward to you trying to walk your dining table on a leash because it has 4 legs like a dog has 4 legs.