IS KNOWLEDGE POWER?

First comes commodification, then comes status, and next comes equity. So first a town library is a commodity: worth a certain amount of money, supposed to help the children grow up to make money, and maybe to be a resource for community people who either need it to make money or need it because they have no money. An accumulation of books as wealth.

A library is a good middle-class sign of a prosperous community. People move to towns that have libraries -- I did. (It had a laundromat then, too. Even a car dealer.) High school kids use libraries. Story hour. We have no street people taking refuge in this library. I was very grateful to blog on the Valier library’s computers when mine broke. I’ve checked out books; I’ve given them books, as well as videos. They actually have my book about Bob Scriver on the shelf, but I’m not sure what they did with the Blackfeet history POD books I gave them.

For some reason, they broke up the Indian history section and distributed those books into the regular shelves. I think the issue was equity. When the state passed a law that all children in Montana would have to study Indian history, the previous librarian said to me, “I don’t see why I should have to study THEIR history!” I think that since then she has come to understand that at least in theory we are one people, so their history needs to be learned. But in a sort of revanchist spirit, that means the Indians get no “special” section because they’re “just like everyone else.”

The issue at last night’s meeting between the Conrad and Valier library boards was financial equity. The Conrad library, which sometimes sees itself as the Pondera County library, has decided that the way to solve their constant money problems is to revisit a split in funding that dates back to 1961. Half a century. But that wasn’t what really had tempers hot.

Some years ago the Conrad library lost their humanist, inclusive, progressive librarian. She was replaced by a woman who has made a good thing better by setting her salary at $34,000, which around here is teacher’s wages, more than the median income in Pondera County, $29,432 per household according to Google sources. Then, since she prepares the budget herself, she increases the salaries by 3% every year, without increasing her duties, her hours, or her qualifications. One employee was dropped. (Local teachers have been foregoing raises.) She has a bachelor’s degree in business management. She has no library degree. Montana requires librarians to earn credits. The Valier librarian just returned from a class in Indian education. She has an associate degree in business management. Clearly libraries here are in a business paradigm.

But my interest at this meeting was not the money. I wanted to rethink the whole ball game from the point of view of quality of services and inclusion of the whole county, if they really think of themselves as a county library with a county population as a monetary per capita base. They don’t. Their heads were firmly planted on charts, calculators, proportions, and monetary equity. FIRMLY. They didn’t want to think of the other small villages in the county, but were very aware of the Hutterite colonies. The word “Indian,” as in Heart Butte which is in Pondera County, froze them in their seats.

And yet now and then we came back around to glancing off of the real issue: hard feelings, mostly relating to the arrogance of this librarian. My opinion is contaminated. She gored my ox, the one with “Bob Scriver” painted on the side. I suggested that I do a reading of “Bronze Inside and Out” -- no. I’d bet you five dollars she hasn’t even bought a copy of “Bronze Inside and Out” for the library. She’s got some kind of fantasy going because her doctor daddy used to stop by to see Bob Scriver and Bob would make a fuss over her to get her daddy’s checkbook out of his pocket. She thought it was personal. Bob Scriver was the same marker for middle class status as a library.

The previous librarian had found an old microfiche machine and installed it in the library. The backbone of “Bronze Inside and Out” was what I gained from reading all the microfiches the Montana Historical Society had of newspapers from the very beginning. In fact, the notes I took are on this blog and people have used them over and over. At the time, that far-sighted Conrad librarian understood that there are some materials that can only be accessed that way and the Montana Historical Society was willing to put the microfiches in the custody of the Conrad library where I could read them without driving the 200 miles to Helena. (I could read two years a day, which took about four hours plus the thirty mile drive for months.) She was a service-based librarian. And that library could have taken credit for the publication of the book. A reading there seemed natural. The present librarian would have nothing to do with it.

In my allotted 3 minutes at the meeting I spoke about bookmobiles, about that microfiche reader, about the arrogance and snubbing that I meet in the Conrad library now (People piped up to say I'm not alone.), and about the Choteau library as worthy of inquiry. (That librarian used to run a dress shop.) They objected to everything. “But those things will all cost MORE!” Their idea is to pinch and scrimp and drop services to match their budget, rather than think of ways to generate interest and energy -- which always leads to more money coming in.

But the most daunting and maybe typical aspect of this was that the Conrad board admitted that they had discouraged people from coming to the meeting, telling them that they couldn’t attend. That they wouldn’t be welcome. Hell’s bells. It’s a public meeting! Public business! It’s ILLEGAL to keep people out. It’s always a scandal if they are barred. What is the person who is told not to come supposed think about why he’s not welcome?

The more that come, the more that get invested in what’s happening. The Valier people came, but only the same ones, the previous board members. Both boards expressed surprise that the other board was, well, HUMAN! And maybe even REASONABLE! And some of the Conrad board members grew up in Valier!

The more people are kept out, the more they go underground and get more sore and have more fantasies and vote down all levies. The rumors fly. Pretty soon the Conrad/Valier “library money grab” could be on NPR, just like Choteau where the superintendent tried to cancel, suppress, control, deny, and otherwise consolidate power. It ALWAYS backfires.

I thought I had heard the Valier board recommend that Conrad drop Interlibrary Loan, because Valier had, and it saved money. So I had to do a little research this morning. Neither library has cut themselves off that way, but Valier has imposed a fee if more than five books a month are ordered.

Then the librarian took me out to the storage to show me Valier’s microfiche machine! I had no idea it existed. What’s that old library motto: “knowledge is power?” I sure could have saved gas if I’d asked. And the Valier library was happy to schedule a reading. They know that readings get people coming in. They might even get their checkbooks out.