Blatant Berry: Library as 'Honest Broker';

Two reactions to Debra J. Slone's "After Oil"  demonstrate the difficulty a citizen confronts when attempting to decide where to stand on any issue on our national agenda. A letter from Robert Bryce (“Alarmist!” Feedback, LJ 6/1/08, p. 10) urges both Slone and LJ “to take a more balanced approach.” Bryce writes from his vantage point as managing editor of Energy Tribune, published in Austin, TX, and author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence.” I haven't read Bryce's work. I probably won't. The author's point of view about the impact of oil scarcity on America is obvious.

A letter from North Carolina librarian Ross Holt on the same LJ Feedback page carries the title “Apocalyptic fantasy.” Holt's sardonic shot at one of Slone's sources, Rolling Stone writer James H. Kunstler, is funny but dismissive of “After Oil,” library social responsibility, and the notion that the oil shortage is a “long emergency.”

The price of a gallon of gasoline at my local pump was $4.19 the morning I wrote this. Heating oil, a critical need in my Connecticut home, is more expensive. At the store, a quart of Italian extra virgin olive oil ranged in price from nine bucks to three times that. The trip to Europe for which we are saving has nearly tripled in price, outpacing our ability to save, thanks to the falling value of the dollar and the rising cost of travel. A financial newspaper I read over another commuter's shoulder recently said we might reach a new low in U.S. dependence on foreign oil, allowing us to need only 50 percent from other nations—that's right, half of what we use—by 2015. Currently, we import about 65 percent and, as I write this, it's $128 per barrel.

Right now, I trust Slone's slant on the oil crisis a lot more than I trust the views of Bryce or Holt. Still, the two of them made me less certain. The confusion I feel and the noise I hear about this and every other major issue leave me puzzled about how to respond.

So let me suggest that there is opportunity for libraries to serve a public confused by the clamor from those who do take sides. Free expression has always provoked debate about the problems we face. It is a blessing, but it is also hard to find understanding in the midst of the debate. It is difficult to come together to confront our problems when we are incessantly targets of partisans of opposing ideas, “authorities” who claim expertise, or pundits who know what we “must” do.

If I ran a public library, I would probably invite the oil folks, Kunstler, Slone, Bryce, and Holt—or at least surrogates with a similar spectrum of opinion—to hold forth at programs on the oil crisis. I'd want them to interact with the people, answer questions, and help us find ways to deal with the problem—or at least discuss it. I'd make sure the library web site provided space to continue the conversation. I'd post a video of the get-together on the library web site and on YouTube. I'd allocate a lot more library resources to gathering all of the competing attitudes on critical issues. I'd assign librarians, reference staff, and others to help the public sort through the mass of material. I'd want the library to be that “honest broker” and facilitator of understanding.

I would push hard, publicize loudly, or “market” (if that is the word you like) the library's undertaking of this effort: the programs and events on oil and all the other terrifyingly complex concerns about which we Americans harangue one another. I'd strive to make the library much more proactive about its role. I'd want it to be a place where the people come in peace, “after the arguments,” alone or together, to find understanding.

The partisan tells the library to seek “balance” from all sides, thus ensuring that his view will be there. Undecided, I want someone to place the debate in perspective, separate the information from the opinion, and allow me to learn.

That is a job for the public library.