As a child, I lived at the south end of an island, seven miles from one of the two bridges that connected us to the mainland and almost equidistant from shopping and the nursery and elementary schools I attended.
Across from the elementary school was the town library, a place I was always eager to visit. Going there meant I could bring back another pile of books that, at first, were read to me and later, I read on my own.
They brought the world outside of my island’s boundaries to life. They also let me know that anything could be possible, to dream, to explore places and ideas and to begin to understand how fortunate I was to have been granted the life I was born into. They gave me a desire to learn more and engraved in me the beginnings of empathy.
That word, “empathy,” became one of the points of a discussion I recently had with Ron Brown, who has spent 35 years serving Wilton as one of the trustees of the Wilton Public and Gregg Free Library. I called him to ask about how our library, like those throughout New Hampshire, was planning for the federal cuts to library funding and services.
Ron began his reply with a brief history lesson. His first statement was, “People who are not regular library-users may only remember the library they visited in their elementary school days 20, 30 or more years ago. But libraries are no longer solely for checking out the books on their shelves. They provide other services like movies, audio books and, post-COVID, digital books and other services on line like Libby and Hoopla and other research resources, as well as in-house programs for both adults and children.”
“One of the most important services libraries offer is interlibrary loan,” he said. “New Hampshire has, I believe, 234 public libraries. Most are located in smaller, historic buildings, built on small town lots with no room to expand. Some are so small they are staffed by only one person in what one would call a ‘storefront’ that must briefly close if the librarian needs to go out for something like stamps. But interlibrary loan offers patrons in even the smallest library access to any book or item on the shelves of another library. We share resources throughout the state.”
He continued, “A few years ago a system’s problem at the state level disrupted services, and people quickly learned how much they depend upon interlibrary loan for their reading or research needs. We also learned how quickly this can go away, and it’s now in danger of being completely gone with recently proposed federal funding cuts. Money is needed to pay the drivers who physically deliver books to libraries as well as the cost of the vans and the insurance required to operate this service. There is no way small towns can afford to fund the van, driver and insurance on their own.”
Wilton is part of the Hillstown Coop Group, which is a loose confederation of libraries that share information on everything from book issues and changes in technology to staffing. This group is one of 15 similar groups throughout the state. The Hillstown Cooperative members stretch from Bow to New Ipswich and include 13 other towns, but this doesn’t mean that a book from Berlin can’t make its way to Wilton and back on interlibrary loan.
Ron pointed out a recent example in Maine of what’s at stake.
“The state library was forced to temporarily close, restructure their programs and significantly reduce their staff due to reduced and uncertain funding for the rest of the year,” he said. “When this happens at the state level it impacts the future of all its public libraries and cuts off many of the services they can offer. Right now, New Hampshire is a little better off than Maine, but that’s no guarantee it won’t happen here as well. All it takes is a stroke of a pen to do this.”
He added that another resource libraries like Wilton can access is the Library of Congress online. According to the Library of Congress website, it is the largest library in the world, with “millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office and provides access to a rich, diverse and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire and engage intellectual and creative endeavors.”
There have been recent reports in the news about efforts to eliminate or significantly reduce the information available through the usa.gov website and the Library of Congress, as well as funding for agencies like IMLS, which is the primary federal agency funding library and museum services. This has raised concerns about the impact on state libraries and their users, which rely on information available from the Library of Congress and IMLS funding for grants and other programs. I asked Ron, and Rebecca and Deb, who work at the library, how this has or could impact people who seek information.
What I learned did not paint a rosy picture. Some of the changes are apparent to those familiar with information that was formerly on U.S. government sites, but now is missing.
The problem is that if you don’t know what was previously available, you don’t know what has been eliminated. To remedy this, groups like the CDC and National Park Service have begun to find “workarounds” for retrieving and storing their information in other ways. Even though much of the removed information has been restored, there is little way to know what may have been permanently removed or altered.
Ron emphasized, “Knowledge needs to be preserved. We’ve been lucky to have few book challenges and have a way to handle those that have arisen. But this is something entirely different that we didn’t expect. The loss of knowledge and our history at the federal level can be devastating to our society. There is no guarantee that when something like this is lost that it can be readily retrieved.”
This comment brings me back to thoughts on that word, “empathy.” During our conversation, Ron suggested a book I should read – one that focused a powerful light onto, until recently, a little known or understood part of our country’s history. It’s just the type of book and topic that is being eliminated from our national library database and faces challenges in others.
The book is “The Berry Pickers” by Amanda Peters. It’s a fictionalized account of real events that continued to happen until quite recently – the taking of Native American children and placing them for adoption in families outside their own culture. Instead of merely relating historical facts, historical fiction is able to find ways to help readers understand the emotional, cultural, physical and economic impact of events in a readable and explicitly comprehensible manner.
As Ron stated, “It gives readers the ability to feel and understand empathically.”