An open letter to
Jane Pyper, City Librarian, City of Toronto
Councillor Paul Ainslie, Chair, Library Board
23 August 2013
Dear Ms. Pyper and Councillor Ainslie:
For almost 50 years now, I have frequented libraries: from the small town library in the Okanogan where I came of age, to various libraries across Canada, which I visited while a travelling musician, to Toronto’s libraries which I have frequented for the past 30 years. I have loved them all because they fanatically maintained what T.S. referred to as a “lucid stillness”. I was never inundated with noise while visiting one; but I see now that I took that silence for granted—wasn’t that what I was meant to do? Weren’t libraries designed to be quiet zones away from the hurly burly of life so that citizens (not “customers” by the way) could think, reflect and learn without distraction?
No longer. These days, I enter the Toronto Public Library (TPL) system with dread, like someone who has been physically abused and is not sure from where or when the next blow will fall. That lucid stillness—the reflective quiet—is gone, replaced by a mind-ravaging disease, adversely affecting civilized and intelligent, human behaviour; a disorder infecting all public spaces, deadening all society: Cellphonitis. And those who manage the library system, guarding that lucid stillness, are helpless against it.
I was startled to learn, in the responses from the TPL to my letter to you of 3 August 2013 (reproduced below)—a lengthy telephone conversation with Gwen Robson, Manager, Main Branch, and a letter from Cynthia Toniolo, Area Manager, Don Mills/Pape-Danforth/S. Walter Stewart—that the TPL intends to cater to this unsettling trend. Both Ms. Robson and Ms. Toniolo sounded ‘the company line’; namely that the TPL has to welcome all the new technologies—the unspoken assertion being that humans have to move aside for technology on the erroneous assumption that it makes us better citizens (not customers by the way); and that this transition is being managed successfully by the TPL. This, I regret to say, is horse pucky. Ponder the following:
1. You might investigate the many studies (i.e. How Many Friends Does a Person Need? or The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; or To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, etc.) begat by the response of our young to the new technologies (no doubt an urgently expanding sociological research field). My reading of the books available is that technology is impeding the creation of character and knowledge in our future citizens (not customers by the way). Even a casual observance of teenagers in public, completely absorbed in staring at their screens, should allow you to discern that the problem is immense, alarming and growing. Is the TPL seriously suggesting that we let those who spend all their time streaming, uploading, downloading, chatting, posting, Facebooking, Googling, texting, sexting, tweeting, and video gaming on their cells, tablets, computers and laptops have the run of our library system? Wouldn’t these activities be better served at community centres where a ‘lucid stillness’ is not required? How will it be possible for librarians, surrounded by all this noise-making techno-gadgetry to maintain a constant sedate ambiance? The short answer is emphatically, ‘it won’t’.
2. In Ms. Toniolo’s letter she states, “…we have also responded to ongoing requests from the citizens of Toronto who want to see their local library as a space for many activities, not just quiet study.” I would suggest that Ms. Toniolo and her correspondents are confusing libraries with community centres. If the TPL is suggesting turning our libraries into spaces “for many activities”, we need to put it on the ballot so that citizens (not customers, by the way) can vote on whether or not we think this is a worthwhile idea. I don’t think you, Ms. Pyper, or Councillor Ainslie, or the Board would want to bear responsibility for such a weighty decision. And allow me to remind you of the old adage, “when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.”
3. From observations and readings, it seems obvious that the incontinent use of technology is creating much larger problems than we are capable of understanding or even imagining. The addiction to technology—and with it, pop culture—is creating a narcissistic, thoughtless, inconsiderate generation, ignorant in language, history, reading and writing, their gadgets segregating them from other living beings and from real experience; but more importantly, crippling their ability to learn. A sizeable segment of our young have no knowledge of the ‘real’ world around them, and more frightening, no curiosity about it. They live in cyber space, posting photos of themselves on social media, instantly available to any of their ‘friends’ by cell phone, sharing a love of gadgets and endless distraction. Does the TPL consider this behaviour appropriate to a functioning library? Again, wouldn’t these activities be better served at community centres?
4. Both Ms. Robson, and Ms. Toniolo, in their communications to me, insisted that rules were in place to ensure quiet, forcing me to conclude that either they are being disingenuous, or deluded. The signs you have in your library asking people to put their phones on ‘silent’ and to take their calls outside aren’t working. Cell phones ring all the time; and people do not leave their seats to take the calls. Period. Sometimes there is quiet but as I pointed out earlier, it is an insecure quiet (like waiting for the other shoe to drop), and the responsible library user cannot depend on its constant presence. Let me reiterate from my initial letter that pay phones were never placed inside the library; why then should we allow cell phones to be?
5. The underlying impression I’m getting from the TPL system is that it’s running scared. It’s no secret that our current city government is being run by louts; dull-witted folk whose idea of a lucid stillness would most probably resemble intermission at a rock concert. I do understand that you and your staff must appear eager to please everyone—including those with Cellphonitis—in hopes of keeping the numbers up so that the louts won’t start slashing budgets and jobs—your jobs. But where will it end? How far will you go to please the louts? Will you consider putting in a Tim Horton’s kiosk on every floor to attract “customers”? At present, you can observe young people wolfing down various fast food items (i.e. pizza slices) and drinking beverages at the tables (yesterday I heard loud straw sucking). Like the American military in Vietnam, are you proposing to destroy the village (the library) in order to save it?
6. A final point. Banning cell phone use will make it easier for librarians to enforce the rule of quiet, not more difficult, as Ms. Robson suggested to me. Once cell phones, however, have become a fait accompli and established as belonging in the library, the war will be lost, and it will prove impossible to control their use. This was my experience with the young woman mentioned in my letter to you of August 3rd, and I’m surprised, frankly, that Ms. Robson hasn’t noticed this trend happening already.
7. By the way, the Chambers 20th Century Dictionary defines the word “customer” as “one accustomed to frequent a certain place of business.” Clearly, the use of this word to describe citizens interacting with public facilities is inappropriate. It is, no doubt, a result of Corporatization, a disease as numbing and deadly as Cellphonitis.
Leadership is not for everyone. I realize it would be much easier for you to move with the times (call it ‘progress’ if you dare) and let Cellphonitis infect the entire TPL system. Banning cell phones would not be popular; and who wants to be unpopular? Councillor Ainslie might be running for re-election soon, and who knows how many voters have already been infected with this disfiguring plague?
I do bring hope however. I’m pleased to report that not everyone has caved to the madness. A medical clinic I attended a week ago had signs everywhere stating emphatically, no cell phones. No one was using one. People read and spoke quietly and the medical staff were able to concentrate on their work without distraction—it was as quiet as libraries used to be.
What I’m predicting, Jane Pyper and Paul Ainslie, is that unless all cell phones are banned in the TPL system, the death of the Toronto Public Library, as a ‘real’ library, will be on your watch. I can’t imagine that this is a legacy you would wish. Undoubtedly, the system will still bear the name Toronto Public Library, but it will in no way resemble one. We will, however, have the most comfortable (if noisy) techno-community centres in the country.
I’m urging you to buck up, to show leadership; to save our library system for what it was intended, and for what it has represented over the centuries—the very foundation of a civil society.
Your once faithful patron,
Barry Healey
Letter of 3 August 2013
Ms. Jane Pyper
City Librarian, City of Toronto
Main Reference Library
789 Yonge St.
Toronto ON M4W 2G8