Are Libraries a Dying Breed?: A conversation with Rhode Island’s oldest library, and RI’s young students

Between paper-bound streets, a young man sits at a small desk. Around him are amassed towers of books, each title like a glowing yellow window in an elusive night. The book is a beacon of comfort in the dark, akin to the sight of a roaming silhouette traveling through the light canvas of city windows – a reminder that we all pass through this world as ghosts. That we too, are looked upon sometimes from the street as shadows. To assert permanence in the void, we take our shadows and use words to give them flesh and bone; what we write makes the ethereal silk of the soul solid, concrete, and infinite. The library is a breathing catacomb; it is the only place where the voices of the dead are in conversation with the living.

The young man sits, surrounded by these heaving walls, laboring over a paper. A bright light streams from a window, and dust lies quietly on undisturbed shelves. Matt Burriesci, executive director of the Providence Athenaeum, watches from the corner, careful not to disturb the writer. “That desk is where people have been going for decades to write down their story, notes, whatever. They leave it for the next person to read, and it just goes on and on and on.” I watch him, back slumped, writing furiously – as though there is nothing more important than getting those words down. As though there is nothing more important than making sure that, somewhere, his story is more than just his own.

Libraries are the gatekeepers for our stories, our passions, failures, triumphs, and lessons. We go to the library to seek a quiet place to think, a solace from the harsh glare of society. Burriesci celebrates his 20th year at the Athenaeum and says, “I love this place. People who come here love this place, and it’s been loved for almost 200 years. It is a testament to liberal humanism, a temple of wisdom. You can always tell when you have a first-timer here because they walk in, and their mouth drops open.” The Athenaeum is a commendable piece of architecture, with huge stone pillars out front and beautiful, sunlit balconies full of books. Its guest list is extensive, lined with literary giants such as Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, HP Lovecraft (who lived right across the street), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, T.S Eliot, etc.

Burriesci notes that the Athenaeum is a unique place, but that, in general, the importance of reading books is “because the culture of reading releases a more just society. The core founders of the American Republic believed that if you want a public that functions, they must be readers. The virtue of reading is that once you get to know yourself, then you can challenge your assumptions and beliefs and become a responsible citizen.” As we not only enter but immerse ourselves in the technological age, hardcopy books have the possibility of ending up on the same forlorn pile as the floppy disk – there are Kindles, online articles, whole online databases, and libraries full of digital content. Like its political evil twin, Burriesci finds this “replacement theory” as “a joke. We are committed to the physical culture of the book. People forget the book itself is a piece of technology, and with a hardcopy, you can’t erase it … well, I guess you can burn it, but people still really like the tangible feeling of a book in their hands.” In our current world, a day where online information runs rampant, unchecked, and biased, it is more important than ever to prioritize the hard copy. A book, with its pages, is irrefutable, unchangeable, and pure in its intent — and the beauty is that whatever that intent is up for you to decide.

I recently went to the Robert L. Carothers Library at the University of Rhode Island to see if I could speak to a few students. When I was studying there, I used to spend hours on the third floor, roaming the stacks and exploring the margins for interesting titles. I found out a lot about myself in the place, and some of my now-favorite authors can be attributed to accidental finds that piqued my interest from the shelves.

On the first day of classes – 5pm – the library was relatively empty. A group of young women huddled over the printer, phones clutched in their hands, giggling over a printer. Molly, a junior Nursing major, said, “I come here to sometimes do work, mostly hang out with people and try to print things, but obviously it doesn’t work.” We laughed. I asked if she ever does her research by pulling from the stacks, “No. I love the library. It would be great if I had time to read, but I never do.”

Rose, a friend of Molly, studies elementary education and uses the library to help her find books for teaching. She said, “It’s the only place I can get work done. I love that you see friends here. You don’t even have to text them. You always run into someone.”

Rose looks around a little at all her friends in the corner, immersed in their phone screens, “I feel like libraries are a necessity at universities and colleges. If libraries stopped existing, I’d be sad.”

I look at Molly. She looks at the ground – at Rose – at me. She shrugs, “I wouldn’t be that upset.”

In the corner of a booth sits a young person with huge headphones attached to an iPad. Mac, a freshman in Engineering, spent most of their high school career in the library reading queer fiction. They are quiet, eyes glued to their screen, right to the point, “It is not important to read hardcopy books. Kindles work just fine.” However, they are excited to finish their boring work and get to the reading sources upstairs. When I ask them what comes to mind when they think of a library, they look up from their screen for a moment, “community.”

Burriesci believes that librarians are magicians. That there is a “value to these individuals that sometimes these researchers don’t realize, or don’t remember.” He urges students to still use books for research, saying, “It is important to engage with primary source material. Online people get a regurgitation of something in a book, rather than the book itself.” When hardcopy research and readers become its own narrow niche, what is the necessity of the library, and what will it become? A place for research, a place for community, or a warehouse of computers?

In 1836, at the opening doors of the Providence Athenaeum, a man addressed the crowd with these words, “We mean here to open a fount of living water at which the intellectual thirst of the community may be slate.” •

Photo: Providence Athenaeum, Mara Hagen