The search for new metaphors - Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Perspectives on the Benton Foundation Report on Libraries in the Digital Age

Library Trends, Summer, 1997 by Kathleen de la Pena McCook

INTRODUCTION

The Benton Report (1996) provides the basis for discussion about the future role of librarians and libraries in the United States of America but characterizes our sociopolitical milieu as "an age of anxiety" (Benton Foundation, 1996, p. 4). W. H. Auden's 1948 Pulitzer Prize winning poem, The Age of Anxiety, or Leonard Bernstein's Second Symphony used as the score for Jerome Robbins's 1950 ballet, The Age of Anxiety, are reflective of the chaos of World War II and the era of the nuclear bomb. However, this half-century old metaphor used to describe the mood of the citizens of the United States on the brink of a new millennium by the writer of the Benton Report is indicative of the degree to which the report misses fundamental realities.

This article will use the Benton Report to suggest new metaphors for our time that reflect the role of librarians and libraries more aptly. First, the United States of America reflected in the report is not the United States of America in which most citizens live. Second, two central issues identified by the Benton Report will be used as a focus of discussion: (1) exploration of the nexus between the library and technology; and (2) the evolving role of the librarian. Finally, the need for an aggressive public education campaign to define libraries' roles (Benton Foundation, 1996, p. 40) is definitely in order but must be initially reactive.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN WHICH WE LIVE

Throughout the Benton Report, references to "Americans" abound. This commonly used descriptor of citizens of the United States is increasingly distasteful to citizens of Latin and Central America. In this post-NAFTA time of hemispheric upheaval, when the future of libraries and information services is posited, it must be kept in mind that a homogeneous United States is a bygone concept. Guillermo Gomez-Pena (1996) proposes a new map "of the New World Border--a great trans- and intercontinental borderzone, a place in which no centers remain. It's all margins, meaning there are no `others,' or better said, the only true `others' are those who resist fusion, mestizaje, and cross-cultural dialogue" (p. 7).

While the Benton Report identifies attitudes toward libraries by respondents to a public opinion survey, the respondents described all live in private households and exclude citizens of American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, Asian, or Pacific Islander descent. More disheartening is the enormous weight given to the focus group of eleven suburban white library users. The comments of these eleven are woven throughout the text of the report like a mantra--with one respondent's observation that "libraries should stay just behind the curve" repeated seven times.

The persuasively described statements of the focus group do have a seductive appeal. Gated and walled housing developments are proliferating all over the nation and gentrification of some urban neighborhoods provides a visible impression of economic well-being. Although home ownership has remained stable at about 64 percent over the last twenty years, the size of homes has increased by 40 percent (Samuelson, 1995, pp. 52-53). It is easy to understand why the remarks of library users who represent white middle-class affluence dominate the Benton Report. A drive through the expanding suburbs of most United States cities finds the deed-restricted, picturesquely named, enclosed development--complete with golf course and recreation center--a dominant feature of the landscape.

Yet travel a "blue highway" and find mobile homes, farmworker camps, and "affordable" housing for workers that service the fortified middle-class. Detour from the rehabbed urban brownstones through deteriorating low income housing to recognize that the Benton focus group does not speak for all who live in the United States. Real median family income has not grown since 1973, though the effect has been ameliorated by adding family members to the workforce. Those with higher incomes have become more wealthy, while the poor have become poorer in both relative and absolute terms (Bronfenbrenner et al., 1996, pp. 52-53).

Why not replace the solo white suburban litany that dominates the Benton Report with a chorus of diverse voices? By the year 2000 the population of the United States will be 12.2 percent African American; 4.1 percent Asian, Pacific Islander; 11.3 percent Hispanic; .7 percent American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut; and 71.6 percent white (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995, p. 19). A note of diversity does sound in Leigh Estabrook's (1997) article, "Polarized Perceptions," which examines some of the Benton Report data in greater detail with an amplification of opinions by African Americans and Hispanics (p. 47). However, the separation of Estabrook's analysis from the distributed report dilutes her overall impact.

A focus group held in a community such as Monterey Park, California, which in 1990 was 11.7 percent white, 31.4 percent Hispanic, 56.4 percent Asian, and .5 percent African American might give a very different picture of perceptions about libraries. This middle-class community surrounded by Los Angeles freeways is a microcosm of the grassroots meanings of diversity, immigration, class, and ethnicity (Horton, 1995, p. 9).