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National What Week??
April 18, 2008
I was amused by the Annoyed Librarian’s April 16 good old days rant about the beginnings of National Library Week (NLW) when the publishers (the National Book Committee) who started it thought the best strategy to support libraries was to promote reading and books. ALA suckered along. I remember those beginnings, and the angry criticism of the emphasis on reading and books by many library leaders. “Why not call it National Reading Week?” they said. In truth NLW has not done very much for libraries or books. Despite Annoyed’s assertions to the contrary, the popularity of libraries grows more than that of books. While the number of library uses and users grows at high rates, sales of books grows only in dollars, since the number of units (individual books) sold has declined for some time. In fact, book borrowing from libraries has declined as a percentage of why people use libraries. Books are still the main objective, but new library users come to borrow or use other media and formats, things brought to libraries by those who Annoyed calls the “twopointopians.” That's progress!
Posted by John N. Berry III on April 18, 2008 | Comments (1)
