Douglas Lord, blogger for Library Journal, recently wrote a post in which he (briefly) discussed the library as an institution representative of punk rock ideals. Lord said he was going out on a limb making that claim, but I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s take a look at a couple of his points:
Libraries are by nature anti-consumerist. We offer people a place to access information, whether for education or entertainment, at no cost. While most businesses strive to sell sell sell, libraries take the opposite approach: we want you (the members of our community) to be informed and entertained, and we don’t ask for your money in return (excepting the always welcome donations).
Unfortunately for its core message, punk rock has become largely commercialized. True punk rock is about opinions and lifestyles, not about having funny hair or wearing clothes with holes and safety pins. Punk has become, like most other youth movements, largely an issue of style. The focus has been, quite simply, on packaging and exteriors. Any true punk knows these to be just false image. Libraries aren’t flashy or sexy (despite the overwhelming sex appeal of librarians). Yet we are always here, through budget cuts, staff losses and changing technologies, and our ideals are always the same.
I’d like to add a few points to those made by Lord, such as that of equality. Excepting the hideous breed of racist punks, punk rock is about equal opportunity, regardless of age, sex, race etc. The library is one of the few institutions wherein social or economic class, sexuality, race and other factors truly do not come into play. All members of the community have equal access to the library, excepting those who do not return books or who show themselves to be unable to respect our property, materials or fellow patrons.
Another main punk tenet is freedom. At the library, you are free to access whatever information you wish, using books or computers. You control what information you access, via whatever method you prefer. We have no control over what you choose to read or view.
The DIY approach favored by punks is also a library favorite. We provide the information needed to do home repair, auto work, sewing and knitting, art, music and on and on and on. We want to help you grow a garden, compost, and live a self-sufficient life, if that’s what you want. However, we don’t make the decisions for you. You live your life. We can help.
Obviously there are differences as well. Punks are often louder than libraries.
If only you guys would see the light and stop giving away people’s intellectual property works for free. You’re the reason the publishing industry is crumbling.
Naomi: right on!
Neil: We don’t give away, we just lend. Plus, fuck off, I’m a librarian.
Great, I think I’ll open a movie theater and “lend” people the movies via a giant screen. Let actors and directors and producers make their money on merchandise.
OK, enough with the funny jokes. But imagine if you were trying to start the first library in today’s world. You’d get called the Napster of the printed word.
Neil, I’m thinking you need to write a post called “Ben Franklin: Founding Freetard.” That should bring in the fringe element just like my anti-Objectivist/Libertarian rant.
I real like that comment about starting up the first library now, Neil. I may have to write on that sometime…
Wes, I enjoyed the comparison. I want you to go further: What does the Punk Rock/Library connection tell us about where libraries are headed and what librarians (and boards!) need to do to stay relevant and valuable?
Wow, Neil, I can’t believe what a big-time asshole you are. Let me guess – you’re a gun-toting neo-con who believes in god, big business, the almighty dollar, and can’t stand anyone getting a free ride, including being able to read a book for what it costs to walk or drive to the local library. Should doctors’ offices stop putting magazines and newspapers in their waiting rooms, which would allow people to read – GASP – for free? Hell, for that matter, should we close down every radio station in America for allowing us to listen to music for free, or for the cost of the electricity required to power our stereos? Or how about no more free nights at the art museum or local art gallery? Where in the hell do you draw the line?
My $.02 – thank goodness for libraries. They’re not giving anything away for free, except for the idea that money is not a prerequisite to having access to information and ideas.
What’s this comparison of a millenniums old institution with punk rock? The creators of the various cuneiform clay tablets in ancient Sumer were not punk rockers and, moreover, didn’t even charge admission to their records. The whole idea of libraries is to educate and inform the masses of people for the good of the society as a whole, not to rip off everybody for the benefit of a few. As Minds Erased says, money is not a prerequisite to having access to information and ideas.
I believe Neil was being sarcastic. Which, as many of us can attest from personal experience, does not always translate via the tubes.
Minds: Neil was indeed being sarcastic, but he does make a good point re: starting a library today. I guarantee, if we didn’t have libraries already, we wouldn’t be able to start them now. Thankfully, we did long ago.
Marde: I’m not sure I follow your criticism, if that was a criticism. You seem to be agreeing with my point (education or entertainment for all, regardless of social status, etc.). Notice I did not say libraries were begun as an attempt to continue punk rock ideology (obviously: libraries are old, punk is young). Notice also that I am referring to the positive aspects of punk rock, not to the commercialized side that benefited a few non-punks. Libraries represent was punk should have been, not what it became.
Sorry, all. Sarcasm doesn’t come across the interwebs too well… plus I’m full of piss and vitriol most of the time. Carry on!
Thanks, ME — carry on, we shalll. And your perspectives are always welcome here!
well, i guess no one’s giving information away for free, we’ve paid for the right to look at these books, films, journals etc etc with our tax money, cos luckily we live in a society that recognizes that having an educated, literate (both PC and print-literate!) population benefits everyone living in that society. (With public lending rights (PLR), authors receive some money for the use of their books).
As someone who was into “real” underground punk for years and is now in library school, I have a hard time seeing the connection between libraries and punk rock. By punk I mean bands like Anti-Cimex, the Shitlickers, Wretched, Flux of Pink Indians, Christ on Parade, Born Against, Rattus, Confuse, The Mob…etc, etc..If you were/are into the music you will know these names plus a hundred more. As much as I love libraries they have too many rules, not enough improvisation. When I think of punk I remember all the people I met doing things impulsively and creatively, no rules, anarchists trying to figure out how to live cooperatively, alcohol, drugs,people dying from drugs, people hopping freight trains all over the country, bands from Finland, Sweden, Japan playing in some crappy basement, meeting people from all over the world, fights, skinheads… This world and the library world have not connected very much in my experience although I’ve met some great people in both settings.
This was kewl =) count me in for more =^__^=
Hey, thanks for this. Occasionally I have issues with being a punk and a school librarian. While I might question the whole sex-appeal thing, I now look forward to being able to refer people to this bit of prose to show them how we are truly connected.
Thanks, Lynne! Looking back, I question the sex appeal thing as well, but I’m glad you connected with this piece!
The powerful thing about STYLE is that when it’s approached consciously by the style leaders — i.e. with the understanding that it can and will be co-opted by corporatism at any opporunity — it can become a powerful tool for subversion. (In fact that’s how corporations do it, but I’m not going into that specifically.)
Style is not just SEEMING; it is also DOING. Humans have this interesting capacity for deciphering fakes and phonies from doers and believers. Something “feels wrong”, and it’s in that moment — a micromoment that happens all over the world a hundred times a second — that a choice is made: is part of this style an irony that encompasses NOT-doing (and so is fair-game for collection into the vast consumptive morass), or is this style one that must necessarily contain DOING?
The answer to this question comes from exemplars.
Why do we exhort our teenagers to be better examples for their younger siblings? Why do we chide fathers for not practicing what they preach? Why do we consider it the ultimate punk rock betrayal to “sell out” — i.e. to apparently give in to the commercialism that punk-ism alleged to intend to short-circuit?
Because the way you protect a style that incorporates a sort of DOING that you want to encourage is to make sure there are enough enviable persons being visible in that style and incorporating that DOING.
To bring it back to ground level, the point I’m making here is that Punk’s Not Dead, not fully dead, *unless* you proclaim that it’s dead and there’s no way you can be an exemplar of true punk.
So if punkness is to embody a certain DOING and not simply an ironic sort of SEEMING: take back the style.
In other words: I want to see librarians wearing spikes and sporting mohawks.
…Or flannel and ripped jeans. Or cat-eye glasses and leopard print dresses.
…Or none of the above. Because just saying “fuck off I’m a librarian” is pretty punk too.