I know that I started this blog with a mission: to complete a guided course, worked out for myself so that I might have a better understanding of the career I was getting myself into. By the end of Winter Term 2010 at WOU, I was supposed to have completed a number of blog entries, interviews with library employees, job shadows, and a couple papers in order to receive a grade. However, things fell through. I got sick. I got very, very sick. I did not receive a grade at the end of the term.
Over the past few months, however--during bouts of fever, stomach viruses, pneumonia, panic, depression--I was giving this blog a lot of thought. I was giving my chosen career path a lot of thought. Some days, too sick to move and too tired to even blink, I thought about libraries. I began to think of becoming a librarian as my mission in life. It began to seem almost like a heroic destiny. By becoming a librarian, I would help people. Long before I was born and to this day, people fight injustices. People seek to right the wrongs in the world. Some travel to other countries to provide clean water, because humans, as a right, should have clean drinking water. People have fought in wars, big and small, so that people could exercise the human right to be free. People fight and have fought for equality on all levels, regarding race, class, the right to speak freely, the right to practice religion on one's own terms, the right to live comfortably and without fear.
I thought about these people, the ones who give themselves wholly to a cause. I think about the people in trouble, people in crisis who everyday face injustice. In some of the worst hours of my illness, I would station myself in front of a TV, a book, a magazine, learning as much as I could about these people. They had help in many varieties, but it never seemed to be enough. A few cents donated to build a well in a small African village; some old coats to go to children who need them; some volunteer work at a shelter. But the unfairness of the situations of the people in need still hurt. Why do bad things happen in the world? I wondered. I'm not a cynic; I don't believe that people have evil in their nature, to begin with, but that people, intrinsically good, can be misguided. Some don't know that there is anything better.
Watching a documentary one day on WWII, it was presented as fact, with the face of Mister A. Hitler himself on screen, that those in power are those who control the information presented to the people. Information can be presented falsely, it can be controlled, and it can be taken away. And suddenly I was struck with an idea that had been brewing in my head for a very, very long time: it is in every way inhumane to deny people the right to educate themselves. For almost countless centuries, those in power have sought to control those in their charge by keeping them ignorant. If people do not know they are being mistreated, if they do not know that there is any other option, it is unlikely the people or subjects will revolt. Re-reading the novel Germinal recently, it struck me that the phrase "Knowledge is Power"--a phrase that, over the years, has taken on almost humorous connotations because of its relations to children's programming--was far more powerful than I had thought. As the protagonist of the novel, who was not by any means an intellectual but was, at least, literate, began to teach the illiterate citizens of a French mining town, ideas were stirred. Injustices were no longer to be born silently; concessions had to be made, rights had to be fought for. This, all because the education of a people.
It has become my opinion that the right to be educated, to be able to educate oneself on one's own terms, is as much a right to be fought for as anything in history ever has been. Knowing this, I feel I more deeply understand what the purpose of the library is: to provide, indiscriminately, information and education to those who would seek it out. Ignorance should not be tolerated; it is my profound belief now, as I've had these few months to let it stew in a sometimes feverish mind, that ignorance, that the unavailability of information to a people, is one of the main causes for injustices throughout history and in even now. Schools and make-shift classrooms across the globe do what they can to provide a base for a person's education, but a library can take a person further. a librarian can help a person to expand and to refine their education in a manner suited to them. Even those who have access to a good education and who see libraries as more of a place of recreation, of a quiet respite from the troubles of daily life, are in a way taking their education into their own hands, choosing themselves what they seek to put in their minds, if somewhat unconsciously.
This age we live in now, the age of the internet, of satellite television reaching millions, of books being published in every medium possible, is the most important time for the library. Libraries are not an institution for the intellectual or the elite, and should never be. As information becomes wider and more available, it should the job of a library to be as an escort, guiding those who crave some kind of enlightenment.
For these past few months, through clouds of sickness and sometimes delusion, I feel I've been led clearly to the conclusion that the way--my way--to help those I so desperately feel for and sympathize with is to become a librarian--to help others help themselves. When one is educated, one is empowered; when one is empowered, incredible things can happen. Access to information is where change can begin.
I must admit that I was not expecting to rattle off this post tonight, but I feel so keenly right now the ideas that have been welling up in my head. As I start to really recover, I hope to start conducting interviews again with librarians and others, and I hope to start posting more of my own observations in this blog again. I hope this will ease some of the tension of the curriculum, and make my transition back into daily education after a long illness much smoother. Janeanne, if you're reading this, I hope you've enjoyed it and don't think I'm just a mental case. But this has become deeply personal. Librarianship for me, now, is no longer just a career choice, but a cause! I really hope that's understandable.
Cheers,
Dana W
