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Andrew Carnegie, Seattle, and the Internet
By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant Professor, Information School, University of Washington.
intlib@ischool.washington.edu
Column for February 2004
It’s February in Seattle. If that conjures images of hip people in Gore-Tex and fleece clutching lattes and dodging rain, you’re mostly right. (We don’t dodge—what’s the point?) This year, though, February will be a little brighter, as a few thousand of our colleagues join us for the Public Library Association conference.
As I was thinking about welcoming the PLA folks to town, I started to contemplate the act of philanthropy that boosted the American public library movement around the turn of the last century. Andrew Carnegie paid for the construction of 2,509 libraries in North America and around the world. Without that money, it’s difficult to imagine how things might have been different, in the library world and in the greater society.
So—in the spirit of the old Saturday Night Live “What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?” sketch—I pose the question: Would Andrew Carnegie have funded Internet access in libraries?
The simple, and likely correct, answer is no. He paid for buildings and that was about it. He required that communities receiving his money commit to taxation and ongoing library support, to the tune of 10% of his grant, but he rarely gave money for books, or for much of anything else for that matter. Indeed, a number of communities refused grants over that required commitment, and others built buildings that stood empty for lack of materials, support, or staff.
So it’s fairly easy to conclude he wouldn’t be funding Internet access, certainly not on a continuing basis.
Except . . . .
Those buildings must have had some sort of infrastructure: heating, lighting, shelves, furniture, equipment. My research assistant and I weren’t able to find evidence that spoke to whether or not Carnegie funded that sort of thing or not. I’m not sure that’s even the right parallel to consider, but I can’t think of a better one. Telephones were only just entering the picture by that time too, so that doesn’t help either.
Carnegie’s actions (and inactions) don’t really tell us much. His motivations were clear, though: He seemed to sincerely want to improve society and give people a means of self-education; but only the buildings seemed of particular interest to him, and not the contents, staff, or operations.
It’s impossible not to consider the Gates Foundation library program in this context, and I swear I thought of this column idea before American Libraries’ December Bill Gates cover story (p. 48–53). The facile Bill-Gates-as-modern-day-Carnegie thing has been done to death, so let’s take a different angle.
Libraries as vehicles
Carnegie was interested in helping people become self-educated, and built library buildings to help achieve that goal. The Gates money was always intended to help people get online access—so that they could get on the Internet and take advantage of its learning potential, and public libraries were seen as the best, most efficient way to achieve that goal. Both were interested in public learning, and chose libraries as vehicles toward that end.
But the grants weren’t for libraries qua libraries. We were a means to an end. And while it might be a little disappointing not to be appreciated, and funded, purely in our own right, the Gates philanthropy seems to me a reaffirmation of the public library’s role as the "people’s university."
And, let the record show that they could just as easily have picked community centers or schools or heaven forbid government offices, but they didn’t. They picked us, because they knew we’d be good at furthering those goals of public learning, even—no, especially—in an information world that includes the Internet. We should be thought of as a means to an end; we help people use technology (books, the Internet, clay tablets) to get information they need.
Carnegie made communities buy their own books for a reason. Books, and by extension any physical information resources, are perishable, and must be constantly replaced to stay current. Forcing communities to be responsible for this refurbishment will continually focus their attention, he reasoned, and ensure their continuing support of libraries. The Internet, though, doesn’t need refreshing. All librarians now have to be canny in articulating the need for resources of all kinds—free, digital and otherwise—and for that continuing support.
I spent a chunk of time thinking about this in the University of Washington main library’s lounge, newly wireless and with a nice little espresso bar, wondering how Andrew might have felt about coffee stands in his libraries . . . but that’s another story.