They Are Coming for the Library.
Pardon the pun, but it’s the oldest trick in the book. Viking invaders pillaged Irish monastic libraries; Alexander the Great built his library using the seized collections of others; the British burned the infant Library of Congress during the War of 1812; the Nazis bombed and emptied museums all over Europe; and the United States and the United Kingdom willfully permitted the destruction of Iraqi cultural institutions. If an invading force wants to demoralize and humiliate a people, the first thing to do is erase their cultural record. It may seem like a quaint concept in an age where we believe that everything is electronic and therefore permanent, but witness the outrage this morning as people learn that one of the casualties of the eviction of Zuccotti Park was the 5,000 volume People’s Library. It is an effective tactic, whether the destruction is purposeful or not.
It is appropriate to be infuriated by a crime against information and speech. But make no mistake: One way or another, failing a plan to counter them, the police were always going to destroy that library. As long as the relationship between law enforcement and the protestors was tense, as long as the right of the people to inhabit that park was contested, that library was a target. The librarians, as students of their profession’s history, should have known what the police were going to do even before the police themselves realized it.
If a library is located in any sort of contested area, someone is coming for it. If you are a librarian affiliated with such a library, you need to know this, and, more importantly, you need to be ready to do something about it. People’s Libraries functioning within Occupy protests are particularly vulnerable to destruction, as they are in contested space and lack a permanent structure to protect them. Abrupt, late-night evictions are becoming standard practice on the part of local law enforcement. The librarians working in these spaces need to know, in advance, what they are going to do to make the collection part of that eviction. They cannot rely on the goodwill of law enforcement or local officials. They cannot rely on having a lot of time or a truck or a chance to negotiate.
We can learn some important lessons from the librarian’s detailed account of what happened last night in Zuccotti Park. It is difficult to say what any of us would have done in the moment, but, reflecting on the situation, the necessary parts of a plan to save a People’s Library in the midst of an abrupt eviction become clear. Moreover, having this plan in place well in advance of the chaos of such an event makes it more likely that the librarians present for the eviction will be able to keep a level head and respond in a way that keeps both themselves and the collection safe.
- Have the collection stored in such a way that it will be ready to travel on a moment’s notice. Evictions come, generally speaking, without warning. Use sturdy plastic tubs as shelving units for your collection. Number them. Make sure that, packed, they do not weigh more than 50 pounds. Have the lids on hand and ready to go. I must admit that this part of the librarian’s account of what happened in Zuccotti last night frustrated me. Why did he choose to spill the books on the ground to thwart the police when he had them packed in boxes, ready to move?
- Recognize that you may not be able to save everything. A well-organized collection will allow you to prioritize. Special collections out first, in the hands of a trusted individual or individuals, followed by whatever strikes you as most urgent.
- Have volunteers. You are going to need people to move those books, probably on foot. Make this known to the governing body or be ready to call on recruits quickly when the moment arrives.
- Use your time effectivelyThe Zuccotti librarian tells us that he had time to read two poems after the police announced their intention to clear the park. Let’s assume that means he had five minutes, maybe ten. In five minutes, a librarian can gather personal items, call for volunteers, and get the lids on the boxes of books. Set up a line to pass the tubs out of the park or grab a tub and run like hell, whatever the situation allows.
- Have a safe house. Take what you were able to save and head for a public library. Have maps to the safe house attached to the lids of the tubs. It won’t be far – In the case of Zuccotti, the nearest branch of the New York Public Library is a one-mile walk away. Wait until someone arrives to open the building. It is extremely unlikely that a librarian is going to refuse someone seeking a temporary safe space for books (in fact, it would arguably be a violation of the second part of the ALA Code of Ethics), but it would probably be best if, as part of your escape plan, you contact them in advance.
- Know thyself. Are you willing to stand between the police and your collection? Are you willing to be tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed? Arrested? There is no shame in answering no to any of these questions, but answer them in advance and plan accordingly.
This morning, I visited the People’s Library page on the New York General Assembly website. They have done some impressive work, amassing a sizable, responsive collection in a short time, welcoming notable guest speakers, and creating a welcoming, functioning public space. But they didn’t have a plan in the event of a forced eviction,* which, with the benefit of hindsight, was a critical error on their part. According to most reports, the collection is in the back of a garbage truck this morning.** That didn’t have to happen. They are always coming for the library. What are the librarians going to do?
* – Update 3 (11/16/2011): Please see the thorough and detailed comments left by the Occupy Librarians below that explain, in considerable detail, the plan they had in place. I don’t want to tinker with the original language in my post, for the sake of clarity, but it should be noted that the issue, really, is that the emergency plan was not published (an infinitely reasonable choice). I am choosing not to summarize their thoughts in my post as I think they should be allowed to speak for themselves. Again, I appreciate their contributions.
** – Update 1 (11/15/2011): According to a tweet from the New York City Mayor’s office on 15 November 2011 at 3:44 pm EST, the library is safe and available for pickup at a garage tomorrow. Image of the collection here.
** – Update 2: (11/16/2011) According to a post on the People’s Library blog, the safety of the collection was grossly overstated. Many items are missing and/or damaged. Please follow this link for details and many pictures.
- Posted on November 15th, 2011
- Posted by rainabloom
- 15 Comments »
- Filed under: libraries, occupy wall street
- Tags:
15 Responses to They Are Coming for the Library.
You’ve lost perspective. You are blaming the librarians for the destruction of the People’s Library, not the ones who destroyed it. You are putting a great deal of importance on the “crime against books” of the Library’s destruction, and none on the harm being done to the people and the movement, or how the willful and deliberate destruction of the People’s Library was an act of brutality by police, the likes of which we haven’t seen since protests to the Vietnam War.
Your position as a librarian gave you an opportunity to show some unique insight into the reasons why libraries are destroyed, the repercussions, and the implications. But your perspective ultimately spoiled this blog post.
The crimes here are not against books, and the villains are not the librarians who “failed to protect their collections”. The crimes are against the public, and the villains are those who think that silencing opposition is worth any price, and are willing to do these horrible things to that end.
Jonathan, The destruction of a source of information is harmful to a people and a movement. As I note in my post, that is why opposing entities are so keen to damage libraries and museums. It is a brutal and direct attack on a culture and a group of people.
To make myself clear – libraries are seized/destroyed by law enforcement and invading forces to destroy the record of a people. This is the reason, the repercussion, and the implication for destroying a library.
Nowhere did I state that the only crime was against the books, nor did I suggest that protecting the collection is a goal unto itself. Library collections are important for their practical and symbolic value and, in light of those facts, protecting them is a responsibility that librarians should take seriously. I agree completely – this can be construed as a crime against the public, but it is a crime that, knowing the history of their profession, the librarians of the People’s Library should have anticipated. It is not their fault, not at all, but no one should be surprised that it happened. Librarians at other People’s Libraries would be wise to learn from the experiences in Zuccotti and develop a contingency plan in the event of a forced eviction.
Finally, please do note that the quotes in your comment imply that I have used those exact words somewhere in my post. I have not.
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Hi, We actually did have a plan – and we met about it and talked about it as a working group. The plan was to let the NYPD take the books. This is because we aren’t asking for permission to have the library or the encampment there. We’re occupying.
The end goal is not preserving the books in the library, it’s preserving our right to occupy space and engage in participatory democracy.
I truly appreciate what you’ve written and your concern, but in the same way that we don’t try to avoid getting arrested, we don’t try to avoid having the books seized. Point is, they shouldn’t be arresting peaceful protesters and seizing books. The city of NY, the NYPD, the DSNY and Mayor Bloomberg are the ones who made the critical error. Not the library.
Hi Michael –
I sincerely appreciate your comment. Thank you for taking the time to leave it during what is surely a challenging moment for all of you.
I’m glad to have insight into your thought process and, for what it’s worth, I respect your decision to allow the books to be seized. My goal here was to offer advice to those who might want to take a different path and use resisting the seizure as a political gesture. It’s a complex question and one that our colleagues in Occupy libraries all over the world may find themselves confronting in the coming weeks.
Best of luck to all of you in rebuilding and making sense of what has happened to your collection. I am following the story and your blog with great interest.
Absolutely – and it’s excellent advice for those who want to pre-emptively close their libraries. We’ve had to deal with weather every day, with closing the library due to big rain storms and we did have systems in place for all of that – tents, tarps, a system of numbered boxes for every book, etc.
We’re taking the position that: our library is staying open no matter what and if they want to close it, they’re going to have to do it themselves. They’re not going to be able to scare us into closing the library.
If it results in the loss of property, that’s a crime and a tragedy, but lost property is replaceable, lost principles aren’t.
Hmmm, Michael. That seems like an odd argument. The cops shouldn’t be taking our books in the first place, so we’ll just let them take our books
What I’m wondering, then, is what was the purpose of the library in the first place? If it wasn’t to be a resource to serve the occupiers (and thus, presumably, worth preserving on their behalf), why was it even there?
Hi MLIS Student – we didn’t “just” let them take the books. We’ve been fighting every day to keep the library open, against threats from the police, against the weather, against every force that has tried to shut us down. But when it comes to the moment that the police are violently taking over the space and forcing us out – we would rather leave the library there and open exactly because we refuse to close our library.
We encountered this same issue when they asked us to leave the park to clean it on a prior occasion and decided that instead of packing up the library and closing it down, we would keep it open up to the point that they would have to take the books out of our hands before we would close the library. We did the same thing this week.
I think any librarian would do the same.
“I think any librarian would do the same.”
All due respect, I think this assumes quite a bit. There are a myriad of approaches one can take when confronted with forced shutdowns:
www.cronaca.com/archives/001254.html
Hardly comparable circumstances, of course, and I don’t mean to put this up as “the right” approach to your “wrong” approach, but this particular librarian chose to preserve a collection over proving what may have been a powerful political point.
Now, I’m thoroughly sympathetic with OWS goals, and I’m no stranger to mass protest movements, having been a Wisconsin public worker over the last year. But, as a librarian and a protester, I’m having trouble discerning your message. Statements like this (from www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/11/02/essay-librarians-occupy-movement):
and (from peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/)
suggest concern for a collection that, based on your comments on this post, you simultaneously want to function as a symbolic sacrifice, of sorts. I also wonder if Douglas Rushkoff’s being “honored for Life Inc to have been among the texts that librarians attempted to save with their actual bodies” would be undercut somewhat by the revelation that no librarians actually tried to do this at all, but purposefully left those books to be seized. (Perhaps not, but doesn’t it generally make a stronger statement to resist rather than to sacrifice?)
Again, SUPER sympathetic here. I want to believe in what you guys are doing and what I hope you continue to do. But you’re sending out some mixed messages.
Also, Rushkoff wrote a great piece about this question today: “A book can have more influence for being destroyed than having existed in the first place.”
www.rushkoff.com/blog/2011/11/16/zuccotti-451.html
I do admire Mr. Rushkoff. Thank you for sharing that link.
Hi All,
Michael is right–the plan was to allow the police to seize the books. By allowing the books to be seized we give the police and the Bloomberg administration the opportunity to show their true faces. A reasonable and just government does not seize books. It does not arrest librarians handing out free materials donated by concerned citizens. It does not arrest peaceful protesters seeking a redress of grievances and exercising the right of peaceful assembly. Only by maintaining our peaceful activities and acting as citizens in a democracy who have the core political rights of speech and assembly can we demonstrate what a police state we are all living in now.
The library is gone, long live the library.
Mandy
Wait, what? The plan from the start was to get the library confiscated? The whole thing was a setup?
And really, I don’t see how any “true colors” were exposed. The NYPD didn’t give a damn if it was a library collection or someone’s personal belongings, they were just clearing everything out. It wasn’t some kind of anti-library action.
I’m totally sympathetic to whats happening, but this tactic just doesn’t make sense to me.
Hi, folks. Another OWS librarian here, weighing in.
As Michael states above, we did, in fact, have a plan, and that plan did, in fact, include leaving the books in the library.
First of all, to understand why we made the decisions we made, one must understand the conditions under which the library operates — books are stored a plastic tubs that, until very recently did not have a roof over them, space is very limited, power and internet access is extremely spotty at best, five or six of the librarians sleep among the stacks at night, etc. This is not a normal library.
After the first attempted “clean up,” during which we had a few snafus, we met to work out a plan on what to do next time. We fully understood that, sooner or later, there would be a next time. For me, the only surprise is that it took so long.
Our plan was to remove everything but the books and furniture — the generator (before the FDNY nabbed it last week), the staff materials and office supplies, the archives, and librarians’ personal belongings. The books would stay. This is both internally important, as the library and its knowledge is central to our movement and it’s goals and theory, as well as being important for relating to the rest of the world — as a sign one librarian carried last night said, “Historically, the “good guys” were not the ones throwing away books.” Librarians who were on-site at the time of an emergency might soft- or hard-lock to each other or the furniture. We’d discusses our individual levels of arrestability — that is, who must be evacuated and who could risk going down with the ship. That, if nothing else, should tell you that the plans we have in place at the People’s Library are by necessity different than other plans put together by other libraries. At our last group meeting we had planned to review our plans and have further training later this week.
We’ve had repeated and lengthy discussions, and reached consensus on, the fact that any item in our camp, be it book, computer, or chair, might disappear at any time, might be stolen, borrowed and never returned, broken, or confiscated. We have computers without hard drives, because they were free and we wouldn’t be as devastated is a couple walked. And, in contrast with the destruction of historical libraries, almost all the books we held at the People’s Library are highly replaceable. We don’t have rare editions, or fine bindings, or the only extant copy of something. Which sounds horrible when put like that, but it’s possible that every work in our library could be replaced with another copy of the same work. The carting off of our library is not the fire that almost lost the manuscript containing Beowulf, which did destroy the things shelved next to it. The things next to Beowulf — we don’t even know what they were, forget having another copy of it. So, we planned to leave the books.
Yesterday morning, the librarians present carried out our emergency plan admirably under the given conditions. All except two decided to evacuate; they grabbed their personal belongings and some of the non-book stuff, including the poetry anthology, and ran it to a friend’s apartment nearby. They tried to come back for the rest of it, but could not re-enter the park. It was 1 AM when the police showed up, which is about bedtime in the library. Those of us who live off-site were mostly in bed by then. I got to there at 2 AM, from Brooklyn, and a few other arrived shortly after. We couldn’t get within two blocks of the library.
The two librarians who stayed to the bitter end initially remained with the library, and later joined the rest of the remaining occupiers in the kitchen — which was in the center of the park — where the police gassed, beat, and arrested them. Has that even happened in your library? No? Well, we expected it, and we planned for it. As of this writing, one of those two librarians is waiting to be arraigned, after spending yesterday and last night in jail. We haven’t even been able to locate the other yet.
“And, in contrast with the destruction of historical libraries, almost all the books we held at the People’s Library are highly replaceable. We don’t have rare editions, or fine bindings, or the only extant copy of something. Which sounds horrible when put like that, but it’s possible that every work in our library could be replaced with another copy of the same work.”
That doesn’t sound horrible. That sounds perfectly sane and reasonable. As I said in my original post, there is zero shame in knowing where the line is and what you are willing to do. Much respect.
And, for the record, I can’t say that I have ever been gassed and beaten in or near my library (a fact for which I am grateful to say the least), but I have been involved in conversations that boiled down to “Law enforcement is at the door. What are we going to do?” So, no, I don’t understand working under the threat of physical harm, but I absolutely understand what it is to work in a library whose freedom to function has been threatened and having that difficult conversation about how you’ll react, both collectively and individually. It’s never, ever easy.