The Importance of Deep Reading

I’ve long wondered about the differences between reading in print, reading online, and reading in mobile formats. Science is bearing out my belief that our brains apprehend and process language differently in different mediums.

Technology is changing the way we read, with a much greater emphasis on skimming and speed reading. Apps like Spritz—well-intentioned though they may be—intrinsically promote an idea that reading isn’t worth investing time, a belief that deep reading is flawed because it’s inefficient.

I can’t believe that this is a good thing. So I was very happy to read this article:

Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer by Annie Murphy Paul (posted by Time on June 3, 2013)

It’s an excellent summary of the importance of deep reading. Intentional, invested, slow reading.
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Education & Empowerment

Education and the empowerment of marginalized people are essential values for me. They form the core of my ethics, my morality. This is why I chose to go into public library service.

For the past several decades, we’ve witnessed a steady and dramatic increase in the gap between those who hold the greatest wealth and power, and those who don’t. More wealth lies in the hands of fewer people than ever before in the modern world, and more people in the middle and lower classes are struggling harder just to get by. Fewer companies control larger portions of industry and the market. We’re witnessing the destructive consequences of this.

Those who possess wealth and power have a vested interest in holding on to it and in guarding it against those who would compete with them for it. Over the past several decades, those who control the purse strings have been enforcing changes in our nation’s educational milieu and social empowerment systems to produce the kinds of workers who will fit harmlessly into the economic and social structures that reinforce the wealthy and powerful in their power and wealth. The last thing powerful people want is to lift up those who would threaten their position.

The last thing they want is the kind of universal education and social empowerment that public libraries hold as a core value.
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SF as Psychological Exploration

I love this article exploring the connections between storytelling and memory:

What Novels Can Tell Us About Memory by Charles Fernyhough (posted on The Huffington Post on January 28, 2014)

We’re storytelling creatures, it’s built into the most essential processes of our consciousness. Storytelling and memory are how we define our identities—biological, individual, social, cultural.

As always, whenever I think about identity and storytelling, I think about why I love SF stories and novels.

I’ve long believed that SF (speculative fiction—scifi, fantasy, horror) offers the best venue for us to explore what it means to be human: biologically, personally, socially, culturally.

SF allows us to create situations as extreme as we can conceive, and then imagine how people might behave, react, adapt to them.

In trying to imagine beings that aren’t human at all—aliens, fantastical creatures, paranormal entities—the contrast throws into stark relief what it means to be human.

Consider how our sense of self must change when we imagine how we might be changed through science or magic: technological enhancements to our bodies; computer enhanced consciousness; bodiless consciousness; transfiguration. How must humanity be defined when we adapt ourselves to multiple worlds? When we transcend corporeality and become patterns of information in a matrix? When we exist across and outside of perceived linear time? When we can transform ourselves into other sorts of creatures?

When we radically alter the most basic elements of our existence, what’s left? What are the irreducible, essential things that make us human? How much can be changed—in ourselves, in our environment—before we stop being human?

How varied can human beings become and still be contained in humankind?

SF is one big thought experiment exploring the breadth and depth, the capacity and essence, the potential of human nature.

It’s said that art holds up a mirror to the world. SF allows us to create mirrors that are unlike anything else.

Education & Reading in America

In my last post, I vowed to do better at raising my awareness of how different the world can be for different people.

People like to think that they’re typical—we each like to believe that we’re the norm. I believe that much of the conflict that exists between social classes and political parties stems from our inability to see (or, more accurately, our inability to accept and truly understand) that the world for other people isn’t always the same as the world is for us.

I grew up in a family of well-educated, avid readers. Pretty much all of my friends are well-educated, avid readers, too. I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t read, or where all of my friends and family don’t read. Where the majority of people around me don’t have college degrees. I just can’t picture it.

Today, Stephen Abram posted some highlights from the Digest of Education Statistics, 2012:
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Further Thoughts on the Morton Grove Public Library Controversy

The first and most fundamental obligation of a public library—of any tax-funded public service—is to serve all members of their community equally and impartially.

A public library cannot be allowed to take any action, nor take any official public stance, which jeopardizes or undermines their impartiality or the equity of their service to members of their community.

A Library Board should never be allowed to take any action that puts a public library in such a position.
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Controversy at the Morton Grove Public Library

I saw this article on the Chicago Tribune website today:

Morton Grove Library trustees rejects atheist blogger’s donation by Lee V. Gaines (posted on December 20, 2013)

This really bothers me. That the Board Treasurer is so ignorant and intolerant that she considers atheism a “hate group”. That she took it upon herself to act as the morality police for the community. That five members of the Library Board consider it more important to take this discriminatory stance than to accept needed funds to maintain library services.

The article makes no mention of any stipulations attached to the donation, and I confirmed that there were none—the Morton Grove Public Library wouldn’t have been required to purchase materials on atheism with the money, or take any action to promote atheism to the community. The donation was a no-strings-attached attempt by an interested private citizen who wanted to help.

Furthermore, public institutions funded by tax revenues are prohibited from taking any official stance on religious matters. To render any explicit judgement—either positive or negative—regarding the legitimacy of any religious belief or system is a violation of the public trust.

I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t say with certainly, but I would be curious to know if it’s a violation of law, too.

To refuse a donation from a private individual because of that individual’s religious beliefs is an explicit negative endorsement of those beliefs. That would make it an explicit violation of the prohibition against a tax-funded public institution from taking such a position.

I encourage all interested tax-paying residents of Morton Grove to petition the Library Board to reconsider their decision. I encourage the community to consult with civil rights attorneys to establish the legality of this action.

And please understand—this is not an action undertaken by the librarians or staff of the Morton Grove Public Library. This decision was made solely by their Board.

Frustration, at a Crossroads

This blog is stagnating. When I started it, I wrote about so many things—mostly about libraries and the issues we face, but also about… whatever I felt like. I always had dozens of little notes all over the place with ideas for new posts to write.

At this moment, I only have two new posts in the works. And the frequency of my posting has trended consistently downwards since I began this blog.

It’s not that I’m any less passionate about libraries than I was when I started it. It’s not that I’m any less committed to figuring out all the myriad things we need to figure out. It’s certainly not a lack of ideas or opinions!

It’s just that I’m tired of writing about these things. I feel like I’m writing and not doing.
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A Librarian’s Thanks

More than ever, author John Scalzi is a personal hero to me. Not only because he’s one of my favorite authors, not only because he’s smart, hilarious, and—by all accounts—a kind man, but because he expresses the value of libraries better than I could ever hope to:

A Personal History of Libraries (posted on his blog, Whatever, on February 23, 2013; accessed via Library Journal on November 27, 2013)

Honestly, between Mr. Scalzi and Neil Gaiman, I’m just going to sit back and point people to them when I feel compelled to try and express the value of libraries.

Whenever people like Terry Deary or MG Siegler proclaim the end of the library and insist that libraries no longer serve a useful function in our communities simply because they themselves no longer use them, we should all respond with this quote from Mr. Scalzi:

I don’t use my local library like I used libraries when I was younger. But I want my local library, in no small part because I recognize that I am fortunate not to need my local library—but others do, and my connection with humanity extends beyond the front door of my house. My life was indisputably improved because those before me decided to put those libraries there. It would be stupid and selfish and shortsighted of me to declare, after having wrung all I could from them, that they serve no further purpose, or that the times have changed so much that they are obsolete. My library is used every single day that it is open, by the people who live here, children to senior citizens. They use the building, they use the Internet, they use the books. This is, as it happens, the exact opposite of what ‘obsolete’ means. I am glad my library is here and I am glad to support it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’m grateful for all the libraries in my life and in all the communities in which I’ve found myself, whether I personally used those libraries or not. I’m grateful for vocal supporters of libraries, like Mr. Scalzi and Mr. Gaiman, and everyone in my community who makes the library an essential part of their lives.

More than anything, I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve my community and make my living as a librarian. My connection with humanity extends beyond the front door of my house and I’m happy to dedicate my life to this fact.