Introduction

If you go online right now to your favorite social media, you will find Ohio is the target of a wealth admittedly funny jokes.  But one thing Ohio residents do not joke around with is registering for their library card.  According to the 2019 Public Libraries Survey from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 74% of who live in the Buckeye State have a library card (“Public Libraries”), the highest of any U.S state and their library funding is top-notch too.  If you keep scrolling past the Ohio jokes, you will undoubtedly be force-fed misinformation and misleading posts.  This normalization of mistruths is an unfortunate aspect of modern life and poisons the free exchange of ideas commonly associated with the common ideology of liberalism in America.  The library card frames the civic by providing free flowing and credible content, practicing accountability to shape the next generation, and anchoring the community, especially for groups on the social margins.

Body

Main Point 1: Combating Mistruth

• A library card will give access to
  • Content written by experts
  • Content not widely influenced by sponsors (paid by state)
  • Databases evaluated and maintained for accuracy
  • Content doesn’t change without notice
• A library card and the librarian
  • Librarians are trained in information literacy
    • Skills to locate and use credible information
  • Commonplace: Spending lots of time à Good results
    • No, using a librarian is time and energy effective
  • Ideologies:
    • Liberalism & Individualism à promoting social progress of any view using credible fact.

Main Point 2:  Practicing Accountability

• Support your library by opening a card and using it:
  • Borrow and Return – a representation of life
    • Leave for the next person
    • Trust
  • Library Bill of Rights: “Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.” (“Library Bill”)
  • Commonplaces: “What goes around comes around” (A good thing in this case) and Karma
  • Ideology:
    • Altruism – the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others

Main Point 3:  It Serves as A Community Anchor

• Learn more about what affects your society through local collections.
• Using a plastic or digital card: Adaptation: new tech (3d Printing) and services
• More than half of African American and Hispanic people surveyed indicated a library helps them find jobs. (Horrigan)
• Lower income members of the African American community most likely to see the library as a community anchor. (Horrigan)
• Commonplaces: those on the social margins are there because they don’t work hard enough
• Ideology: Humanism – doctrine promoting the welfare of mankind

Conclusion

The time to register and use a library card is anytime that you need to further your knowledge, societal outreach, or even entertainment.  That is, there is no time that isn’t fit for a library card.  Using a library card furthers the mission of the library and civic engagement through the contribution to the flow of individual ideas.  It does this by preventing misinformation, demonstrating accountability for shared resources as well as the next generation, and by anchoring the community through a multitude of library services.  I know as Penn State students, we do not require a dedicated library card, but in your next stages of life I urge you to draw upon the library card to build the change in community you seek to surround you.

 

 

Works Cited

“Library Bill of Rights”, American Library Association, June 30, 2006.http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/. Accessed September 7, 2023

Horrigan, John B. “Lower Income Americans and Communities of Color More Likely to See Libraries as Community Anchors.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 15 Sept. 2015, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/09/15/lower-income-americans-and-communities-of-color-more-likely-to-see-libraries-as-community-anchors/.

“Public Libraries in the United States: Findings from the FY 2019 Public Libraries Survey.” Institute of Museum and Library Services: Public Libraries Survey, 2019, https://www.imls.gov/research-evaluation/data-collection/public-libraries-survey. Accessed 7 Sept. 2023.