Why the Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Libraries | Peer to Peer Review

There are lessons for all of us in those cardboard boxes

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Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN Aug Oct 27, 2011

Barbara Fister, Library Journal Academic Newswire columnist

Photo by Debora Miller

In the first news stories, the fact that Occupy Wall Street had a library seemed a bit whimsical, sort of like that iconic photo of a dancer perched on the back of the equally iconic statue of a charging bull. How funny! A library for a group that has no leaders and no rules? It seemed to some a contradiction in terms. Aren't libraries all about rules and organization?

Well . . . no. Libraries are fundamentally about something quite different. It seems natural to me that a social movement that springs up locally and without any centralized organizing body or criteria for membership would create a library. This is an impulse so ingrained in the idea of books that people are creating tiny lending libraries to put in public places as signals that sharing books is an important act, something that creates community.

So the Occupy Wall Street movement quickly acquired a library-not because information is needed. What with Google, Twitter, Facebook, and various streaming video sites, the movement is awash in information. It's more a way to define the community through a culturally meaningful form of sharing, a physical impulse to pass books from one hand to another. It's what you do when you come together: you pool your books so that they can be browsed and shared. Sharing books is communal nourishment, like breaking bread.

Lending without limits
As I write this, I see that the Occupy Wall Street library has over 3500 books cataloged at LibraryThing. It also has policies and procedures, as libraries do. These include how to close the library when it rains (put lids on the boxes and tuck the tarps around them in a manner that won't aggravate the police) and it has circulation policies, including how to check books out forever: "these books belong to everyone, so we trust everyone to do what they think is most effective with them. If you think you could put a book to good use long-term, by all means keep it. If you think others might benefit from it more after you've finished, we strongly encourage returns." I love that.

These books belong to everyone. There's enormous trust embodied in that statement, and it's the kind of trust that at times is betrayed by rules designed around the assumption that people will act selfishly if allowed to govern themselves. As David Carnevale wrote in his article on "organizational trust" in the Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration, "bureaucracy is a monument to mistrust." Luckily, it's not the only option: he points out that "governance systems can be crafted that take advantage of people's best, not their worst, tendencies."

There is a tie between these loosely organized boxes of donated books and the intellectual history of libraries. In a short film, Matthew Battles (author of Library: An Unquiet History) compares Occupy libraries with the libraries of the Chartist movement in England, a social reform movement and a precursor to the establishment of public libraries. He points out that libraries of this kind offer access to information, but also a forum where "conversation and reading ebb and flow, where one has the tactile experience of reading, the intimacy of reading that one shares with others."

It's not just the books and it's not just the place where they are collected; it's a combination of space and information bound together by physical proximity, conversation, and sharing of something held in common. As Battles puts it, "you find this wonderful energy of a kind of charged contemplation taking place. I think that's a quality that a library offers us as a space, a space we make together out of books and our reading of them-and the intuition of the Occupy movement to build libraries resonates deeply with the history of progressive change."

We have a library-if we can keep it
Another writer who has commented on the library and, more broadly, how Occupy Wall Street is sorting out its civic arrangements, is a blogger named Jed-Jedediah Purdy, professor of law at Duke University and author of A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom. He opens his blog post with the observation that "as an approach to library science, anarchism is at its strongest and its weakest." The library's work is done by fastidious people who organize the books into a system that is not a system, creating a lending library that believes people will share willingly, so doesn't require returns. The movement's means of debating ideas, he goes on to say, would be familiar to the men who had to devise new democratic ways to make decisions as they debated the language of the U.S. Constitution.

In my dystopian moments I wonder whether such a library will even be possible a few decades from now. We seem to be willfully careening toward a future when the people can't own books; we will only be able to purchase temporary access to them. Under such a regime, the very idea of sharing may have atrophied. It may only linger as an offense under the criminal code.

But the appearance of Little Free Libraries and the libraries springing up at Occupy sites reassures me. In our day to day work, we may feel that the people we serve just want us to provide them with the stuff they personally want, whatever the cost. We may feel trapped between intellectual property owners and greedy consumers who aren't interested in our problems. We may be nearly ready to give up the fight for intellectual freedom that nobody seems to care about but us.

But these spontaneous libraries say otherwise. People want to share. It's a democratic impulse. It's one we need to preserve and encourage.

Author Information

Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her latest mystery, Through the Cracks (see review), was published last year by Minotaur Books.

Reader Comments (23)

I think they can be compared to the Freedom Libraries of the Civil Rights movement as well!

Posted by Abigail on October 27, 2011 06:35:24PM

This is beautiful and inspiring, thank you!

Posted by Michael on October 27, 2011 04:36:43PM

Thank you for this. It is a wonderful show of support for the human spirit and for human community.

Posted by Mandy on October 27, 2011 06:58:36PM

This is wonderful. Thank you. I am a library science student and have been feeling pressured in my program to start loosening my grasp on the concept of book as place and start embracing digital tech gadgets to "stay current." While I agree that librarians and archivists should be open to change and emerging technologies, I have been struggling with a transient, destabilizing sense that books as we know them are going away. I simply do not see any validity in dismissing the greatest tech gadget of our time: the codex. But, then again, I started a phonebooth library in my neighborhood so... I find your article to be very reassuring. Thank you.

Posted by Melissa Eleftherion Carr on October 27, 2011 10:37:54PM

"A library for a group that has no leaders and no rules?" The "group" does have leaders, like Stephen Lerner of SEIU, and it does have rules, like intentionally committing economic terrorism as a means to destroy the current American government. Patrons, librarians, and libraries themselves will certainly be directly and negatively affected by the economic terrorism now being or about to be unleashed on the United States. I have no idea why any freedom-loving librarian would support the terrorists in any way, even if only to write about cute, little "libraries" where books may be loaned "forever," meaning stolen. "We seem to be willfully careening toward a future when the people can't own books; we will only be able to purchase temporary access to them. Under such a regime, the very idea of sharing may have atrophied. It may only linger as an offense under the criminal code." Right. But then the "but": "But these spontaneous libraries say otherwise. People want to share. It's a democratic impulse. It's one we need to preserve and encourage." Wrong. It's a "spread the wealth" impulse that has destroyed or is destroying every other society forced to abide it. And when books are stolen in public libraries, that's a crime, not a democratic impulse. Librarians, you need to stop supporting these occupy movements. There won't be much need for librarians if the movement succeeds in its goal.

Posted by Dan Kleinman of SafeLibraries on October 28, 2011 07:13:41AM

Thank you so much for this article. I'm so pleased that the library we've worked so hard to build & maintain is having a positive impact on people & their imaginations.

Posted by Betsy Fagin on October 28, 2011 08:40:42AM

I don't know if we have libraries in the Canadian cities where the Occupy movement is active (I havn't seen one in Ottawa), but considering the current Cdn government, they might pass a law to burn down the libraries. In support

Posted by Stéphane Aubry on October 28, 2011 08:51:32AM

Brilliant article, and perhaps it contains the distilled germ of something much bigger.

Posted by mem on October 28, 2011 10:55:03AM

I wrote a piece on "Rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods and the OWS library that you might find of interest: http://zenpundit.com/?p=4436 I've also quoted this piece extensively in a comment there.

Posted by Charles Cameron (hipbone) on October 28, 2011 12:51:24PM

Thanks, all - I must say I'm glad my library is not a Safe place. If OWS is threatening the American system, well ....this must be what Ben Franklin meant when he said we had a republic - if we can keep it. I think it's worth keeping in the face of undemocratic forces that have widened the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us in ways that harm us all.

Posted by Barbara on October 28, 2011 02:29:50PM

Thanks very much for this piece, Barbara.

Posted by Jessamyn West on October 30, 2011 06:05:37PM

The full 99% of America's citizens, simply do not realize yet, that they are indeed behind "Frenemy Lines"!! They just don't understand the concept of "Friendly Subversion", which is being practiced upon them, and has been practiced upon them, since the time of President Reagan. This tool called "Friendly Subversion", practiced by the "Frenemies" of this nation, have their craft down pat too!! The current Republican Party, mostly left-overs from the "Bush Jr. Era", and their new trainees, the "Tea Party", have been using their new learned techniques upon anyone who will listen, especially, if they are not willing to question them about the truth, and not the spun lies of their craft!! Karl Rove and his disciples, used these very same techniques, in order to steal both instances of a George W. Bush Jr. win, solidified by a bought and paid for "Supreme Court", which they had carefully set up through Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.!! To show you how bad this got to be, Bush Jr. had even tried to get his housekeeper nominated to the "Supreme Court Bench"!! We as American citizens all need to wake up right now!! Simply put, the current Republican Party, and their off-shoot the Tea Party, are not in fact your friends, they are not who they claim to be on any level!! If their rhetoric both past and present does not convince you, then take a good long and hard look, at exactly what they are trying to sell to you, and market to you as "Presidential Candidates"! Listen closely to what these people are saying, because not one of them has any good ideas for America, they indeed, only have great ideas, on how to destroy America, and destroy you!! If you don't believe it, and you continue to believe in and support these fake people (I call them "Political Monsters" and "Nightmares"), take a good look around you, what do you really have, how many freedoms do you still actually have, not supposed freedoms, but actual freedoms? Now ask yourself, exactly what did the creation of "Homeland Security" & the "Patriot Act" actually achieve, what rights & freedoms did the average American citizen lose in the bargain? Do do any of you even know? These "American Frenemies" are robbing you blind and have been doing so for quite a long time!! Wake up and rid yourselves of them now and while you still can. Or you can just stick with them, and do enjoy the chains and shackles of your new bondage, earning peanuts per day, working endlessly for corporations and businesses, that no longer have to assure your safety on the job, give you any benefits at all, in exchange for your slave work, and don't get sick, because there will be exactly no healthcare for you, and no one to fight for it for you, as there will be exactly no unions, because you are supporting there destruction from existence, even as we speak!! Understand something America, and this is truly simple to get, you only need listen, and listen good: If any of you are not counted among the top 1% in this country, you don't matter, you don't count, and you never will. The greedy & corrupt are taking over your Government, and are turning it against you, even as we speak. They are achieving this through the direct purchase of your Republican Party, and will soon be working on your Democratic Party, of which, they have already purchased a few!! This country will soon be run, lock, stock, and barrel, by only the top1%, be made up of the top 1%, and will be only for the top 1%!! Now that you know that you are behind enemy lines, and deeper in this "Class War" that was started long before you ever realized it, and was created through the top 1%'s complete ownership of the Republican Party and its' offspring, their corporations are taking over, all over the globe!! Tell me, what are you going to do about it? I would strongly suggest that you don't wait for somebody else to solve this riddle for you, nor should you depend upon anyone else to be your guide, actually read the facts for yourself, and then you decide. Because like I said, you are behind "Frenemy Lines", and your "Frenemies" are coming for your vote, what are you going to do, while you still have a vote America? What are you going to do with it? I suspect it won't be long now, and you will no longer have the ability to even vote!!

Posted by Alongwayback on October 31, 2011 10:54:10AM

While these community book swaps are interesting, I feel they are much like the "movement" themselves: a nonevent. When VH! does it's "I love the 2010s" in a decade or 2 from now, these protests will doubtless have comedians making bad jokes in front of green screens. However, they're just not that big a deal. Their own actions, from handling rape "amongst themselves" and strategically creating rules of order on the fly to decide who speaks and who doesn't to interviews showing over and over again that the people at these protests lack a fundamental understanding of economics and politics, belie their forgetability.

Posted by spencer on October 31, 2011 04:41:20PM

Yes, great things happen when humans do "what they think is most effective". The problem with this movement, and most other movements or protests, lies within the word "think" included in that gem of a phrase. There are many in the 1% who do not really think considerately and many of the 99% who share this trait. If you are in the 99% and you find yourself thinking that there is an injustice or some sort of inequality in the fact that so few people have so many material things including money, there are many included in the 1% that agree. The beautiful part of living in the U.S.A and the rest of the developed, civilized world is that everyone with 1% of a brain can go earn (a euphemism for "take") more than they have. 100% of people gain something when someone else is convinced that what they have is less valuable than something that someone else has. It is possible to live a life in America without ever entering into a contractual debt obligation with anyone else. Please do not complain if you find yourself in debt with no job. It sucks, but it is all a result of a combination of the decisions you have made and the framework to which we are all subject to regardless of race, sex, creed, religion or upbringing. In the interest of full disclosure, I made $100,000 this past year, $80,000 the year before, $65,000 the year before and $30,000 the five years before, all as an independent small business consultant. I have two mortgages, am upside down in one, have $40,000 in student loan debt, $0 in credit card debt and I'm 28 years old.

Posted by Mark K. Johnson on November 2, 2011 12:05:26AM

Inspiring and well said.

Posted by Kristen Rademacher on November 2, 2011 12:43:16PM

This might just be one of the stupidest things I have ever read. The only thing missing was a mention of unicorns and/or kumbayah.

Posted by Jason on November 2, 2011 05:14:40PM