The Other Columbus: Never cut money for libraries

Setting aside the potential illegality of Donald Trump’s dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, it should go without saying that you should never cut money from libraries. That should be the minimum qualifier for calling yourself a civilized society, no matter your politics. I would go so far as to say that only the people should get to decide if an institution as fundamental to the public good as a library gets funding. That’s what happens when we vote for levies. And as far as I’m concerned, that should be as far as politics extend into libraries.

And yet, we’re facing the possibility of the largest cut to libraries across the board in 100 years (if not ever). And it somehow looks even worse in Ohio, where Republicans have proposed changes to the funding model that the Ohio Library Council said would result in a $100 million drop in state funding compared with the plan proposed by Gov. Mike DeWine. So, let’s talk about what’s being cut.

Libraries are cradle-to-grave service providers. They feed and tutor children after school while their parents work. They guide parents through fundamental literacy skills. Libraries offer programming across the generational spectrum. They provide story times to children and book clubs for adults. It is one of the few places an entire family from a toddler to a grandparent can go and be equally engaged, at no cost. Want to take your family to the zoo for free? Want to go see a symphony? They check out tickets to events at other institutions and businesses. Libraries are warming centers and respite for the unhoused. They are community conversations and retreat spaces and interview hubs. Libraries have redefined themselves entirely since the advent of the internet, which they also provide and directly help people navigate. If you still think a library is where society keeps its books, your impression is off by about 30 years. 

There are a lot of things libraries offer that aren’t book-related and which are a given now, but only so long as they have the resources to facilitate such opportunities. Even the sad busybodies who simply wanted their local libraries to be less gay probably didn’t imagine it would mean they wouldn’t be able to use meeting room spaces or computers or print out resumes or get something publicly notarized. If you actually believe in democracy, libraries should be the first indicator that you have one. If you don’t like all of the books that sit on their shelves, rest assured, they have the ones you think everyone should read, too. As frustrating as free speech can be at times, it is a small price to pay for a real-time pursuit of liberty. To butcher a phrase from “A Few Good Men,” you want libraries on that wall. 

I cannot fathom a life without libraries. When I was a child, libraries were often my babysitter. I would spend many Saturdays at the Main Library downtown, waiting for my mother to pick me up after the Salesian Boys and Girls Club around the corner closed for the day. Libraries were a haven, the original safe space.

I spent hours in the libraries of every school I ever attended, even when I did not know their full power. In fifth grade I picked up Jean Merrill’s The Pushcart War, which, being a tale about class warfare, Big Business, media manipulation and protests (heady stuff for a 10-year-old) was my first foray into the application of imagination in the interest of justice. I learned about Dungeons & Dragons in a public library. I saw my first personal computer up close in the basement of a library that pioneered hands-on access to computers. In my extremely brief tenure at Ohio State University, I spent much of my two quarters (that’s how long ago that was; it was still quarters) in the school’s many libraries, trying to soak up everything my burgeoning Blackness could handle. My first forays into political and historical research took place in OSU libraries. 

When I needed to learn how to become a professional writer after the abysmal failure of my college year, I wore out my library card teaching myself, making a syllabus of all the volumes and media I could swallow. “I would go to the library and borrow scores by all those great composers,” Miles Davis famously said. “Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just couldn’t believe someone could be that close to freedom and not take advantage of it.” 

I am living proof of that idea. Writing has taken me all over the country, rewarded me with profound experiences, and introduced me to amazing people. I believe in libraries so fervently that I even got a job in a library. I have been working in libraries for almost 30 years now. I owe my life to a short list of things. Libraries exist in the top three.

Looking back on all of the things I became because of libraries, it stands to reason that some people might see them as a threat. I would hope that anyone who does is seen for what they are. Anyone who would diminish a library diminishes democracy, builds a wall around freedom. All I have ever wanted for America was for it to be as good as its promise. When you cut funding to libraries, you edit that promise. You move the goalpost on people’s dreams. You limit what your fellow citizens can know, and conversely what they can become. No well-meaning force in the universe would want that for their neighbor. I get it; that’s a lot to put on libraries. But libraries have been making their own case for centuries. Let us not dismantle the one thing that nearly every human being can agree we got right, at least in principle. 

Now, let me tell you about museums…