By Neal Peirce © 2008
Washington Post Writers Group
What do immigrants and libraries have to do with each other? As our politicians wrangle over official immigration policies, can public libraries in our cities, neighborhoods and towns help assimilate the 32.5 million foreign-born already here?
Librarians and their allies argue “yes” -- that America’s libraries are successfully carrying out their historic tradition of turning immigrants into productive citizens.
English as a Second Language (ESL) classes are bring taught. Special sessions on American culture are being conducted. Materials in languages ranging from Russian to Hindi are being made available. Librarians find themselves providing counsel on computer use, Internet access, even on-line job leads.
In immigrant-heavy Washington, D.C. suburbs, many public libraries have recast themselves as welcome centers. Some checkout desks have signs in Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese. A recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic said: “I come to the library almost every day. And two days a week I follow the conversation classes. We have the opportunity not only to improve our English but to get new friends from all over the world.”
The idea of libraries as social gathering places is hardly new. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built 2,500 free public libraries around the world in response to the immigrant flows and broad social gaps of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intended they’d be places to attract young people. Robert McNulty, a library advocate and president of Partners for Livable Communities, reminds us Carnegie actually built gymnasiums, boxing rings and swimming pools into some of his libraries -- hoping that once there, the youth would “be exposed to books and learn to read.”
Our public libraries, argues library expert Plummer Alston Jones, “have remained a sovereign alchemist turning the base metal of immigrant potentialities into the gold of American realities.”
But they’re more than that. They help get children into reading habits. They can provide authoritative information, book- or Internet-based, that’s more comprehensive and often more reliable than a normal free Google search. And they can be a fulcrum of renewal in cities and neighborhoods.
McNulty told me over a decade ago that “the next hot idea as a downtown anchor will be the fun library.” It turns out he was right. Close to 20 cities have constructed elegant new multi-use central libraries -- among them Seattle, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Phoenix and San Jose. Soaring and original exterior designs, brilliantly-lit public halls and intimate spaces, conference centers, connected theaters and teen centers -- all are part of the new mix.
As Project for Public Spaces reports, “If the old model of the library was the inward-focused ‘reading room,’ the new one is more like a community ‘front porch.’” An element in the new liveliness of downtown Charlotte, N.C., for example, has been the combined ImaginOn children’s library and theater, a joint project of the Children’s Theater of Charlotte and the Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. “Some people come to the library and find the theater; some people come to the theater and find the library,” says Beth Murray, librarian at the ImaginOn.
The new champion of citywide library excellence may be Chicago, which has progressed from its landmark Harold Washington Library Center, opened in 1991, to the building or renovation of 52 neighborhood libraries. Many replace nondescript storefronts and run-down buildings that were more blight than strong points of their neighborhoods.
Major credit for the revival goes to Mayor Richard M. Daley and Mary Dempsey, the visionary manager/librarian he appointed library commissioner in 1994. Based on the library’s first-ever strategic blueprint and a professional development plan for the system’s 1,300 employees, Dempsey was able to persuade the city council to approve $170 million in bond issues to upgrade the neighborhood branches.
“I’ve purchased and knocked down more liquor stores, more no-tell motels, more really crummy and dilapidated, burned-out buildings in neighborhood after neighborhood and replaced them with libraries than I’d ever thought I’d do in my life,” Dempsey told an annual meeting of the American Library Association.
A big recognition for Dempsey’s efforts came in 2006 when she received a Governing Magazine award as one of the 10 most outstanding U.S. Public Officials of the Year.
“The Library is the People’s University, a place where people from all over the world can educate themselves, interact with their neighbors,” says Dempsey. That’s why, she adds, for “more than 100 years, immigrants have seen the libraries of Chicago and other cities as an indispensable “welcoming institution.”
For American success stories, that’s hard to top.
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