Letters Letters
From the grassy knoll; democracy is coming to town; phenotype in the pea patch; acclaim suduko frenzy without you, I hear
Jan 31, 2012 / Our Readers and Charles Taylor
Letters Letters
The dole, relief, welfare, safety net…; spying on Eleanor Roosevelt; pipeline whack-a-mole
Jan 25, 2012 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
As Alexandria Burns… New York City In “Upheaval at the New York Public Library—Shhhh!” [Dec. 19], Scott Sherman touches on many of the covert and not so covert changes happening at NYPL. These changes have proved most troubling, both to dedicated staff and to their admiring and grateful public. The NYPL Library for the Performing Arts has experienced the same sort of mergers, dismantling of staff, and cutbacks in budget and research services as did the Forty-second Street library. The research reference desks on the third floor were closed a few years ago. Many of the reference librarians (specialists in dance, music, recorded sound or theater) were eliminated, moved off the reference desks or offered buyouts to leave NYPL. The remaining few research librarians were moved to the second-floor circulation desks and merged with the staff there. Scholars, performing artists, writers and critics who used to come to the third-floor specialists now have to stand in line at the crowded second-floor circulation desks, where people are borrowing scores, CDs or books. When they finally reach the reference desk, they often encounter someone who does not have a specialized background or in-depth knowledge of the research collections. So they leave in frustration. It appears that NYPL’s main goal is to increase the number of people coming in the doors to borrow materials, operate their computers and other devices, attend free classes and meet friends. This is fine, as the library should be a welcoming place and refuge for all. But why cut staff, services and quiet reading rooms for the specialized researchers? In the past NYPL was regarded as one of the greatest public library systems in the world, because it opened to a vast public not only great circulating collections but also world-renowned research collections. Many well-known writers, professors and scientists who couldn’t afford to go to college educated themselves by exploring the enormous richness and diversity of these collections. Consultants hired by NYPL noted that the stats for people coming into the circulating branch libraries were higher than those for the research centers. Librarians tried to explain that there is a qualitative difference between services offered to specialized researchers and to the general public. Researchers need to spend more time with the librarians, explaining their projects and having the librarians plumb the depths of the research collections to find rare, unusual materials to enhance their projects. So it seems that the goal of NYPL is to no longer be known, internationally or domestically, as a major research library but as a New York community library. As the staff, collections and reading rooms of the research collections continue to be downsized, people desiring more specialized research services will have to seek them elsewhere, such as at universities. Researchers accustomed to the superb reference services at NYPL now receive, in some cases, perfunctory assistance, and are forced to find other resources for their research. I agree with Sherman that NYPL should not be secretly making such massive changes without some dialogue with the communities it serves. NAME WITHHELD Ypsilanti, Mich. Scott Sherman raises some good questions about the “closely guarded” NYPL Central Library Plan, and, unusually, he seems to have actually talked with NYPL librarians. As the author of a biography of a distinguished woman librarian who, after a public dispute with NYPL management, was summarily fired in 1918, denied a hearing and secretly reported to the government as a subversive, I was saddened but not surprised that today’s librarians demanded anonymity for fear of retribution. The more things change… How absurd that a plan to completely change the interior and apparently the purpose of a major public building should be kept secret and the librarians not allowed to discuss it. It may be that the superrich VIPs on the board will always go for fantasies of having a big-name architect design a flashy “state-of-the-art, computer-oriented library,” but what does that really mean? Is it just another version of the microform mania once pushed as state-of-the-art, high-tech, etc.? What needs will it meet? Who will use it? Is such an elaborate remodeling really the best use of hundreds of millions of dollars? NYPL has a uniquely complex history and structure, with the central building developed from the privately funded Astor and Lenox libraries. At a time when academic research libraries were just beginning to develop, it was intended to be a sophisticated information resource for an intellectual elite. Not a social or financial elite, an intellectual elite of those doing serious, in-depth reading and research. The branch libraries were to serve the educational and recreational reading needs of the general public. John Shaw Billings’s plan for the building made the stacks central to the library’s mission, with the many reading rooms surrounding the core. That concept soon proved to be expensive and complicated to operate, and within a few years of Billings’s death in 1913 the administration had begun consolidating and closing the specialized divisions. If Anthony Marx complains that “exquisite rooms” are used for storage, he probably refers to the closed reading rooms, but what use will the plan make of them? Blather about replacing “books with people” as “the future of where libraries are going” does not clarify the mysterious plan and sounds potentially anti-intellectual. Assurances of prompt delivery from offsite ignore the fact that the research library has quite limited hours, which will add to the delays. The Central Library Plan needs rigorous public examination. Thanks to Scott Sherman and The Nation for calling attention to it. CLARE BECK
Jan 10, 2012 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Gimme a P! Gimme an A! Gimme a T!… Alexandria, N.H. Katha Pollitt scores again. “Penn State’s Patriarchal Pastimes” [Dec. 5], her column about the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal, blooms into an editorial about patriarchy in which—in one page—she embeds football in the same “rich, loamy craziness of American popular morality” as “God, the flag, the military and the family.” Her writing is as breathtaking as a last-second Hail Mary touchdown pass. Katha is a treasure. TOM DIEHL Los Angeles Katha Pollitt’s column was a superb critique of the dangerous overemphasis on athletics in higher education. Pollitt, as usual, writes perceptively about contemporary life, and her call to reduce college sports to a valuable recreational enterprise for students makes enormous sense. It is therefore unfortunate that she added a gratuitous statement that premier athletes are “hauled through dumbed-down courses in gut majors like ‘interdisciplinary studies’ and ‘social science.’” This condemnation of major curricular changes, many of which are progressive responses to rigid, educationally dubious disciplinary specialization, reflects a disconcerting lack of knowledge of academic reform efforts of more than forty years, which have created internationally respected programs in, among others, ethnic and women’s studies. A few professors in all disciplines cater to student athletes with easy classes and grades. That problem should be identified and condemned rather than making a sweeping judgment about interdisciplinary studies and social sciences. PAUL VON BLUM African American Studies, Communication Studies, UCLA Putney, Vt. I am an athletic director. Our college doesn’t offer sports scholarships, although it is often discussed. When it comes up again, I will hand each administrator a copy of Katha Pollitt’s column. She has gone beyond the obvious corruption of the system to educate me on the unfairness of leaving deserving students behind in favor of an undeserving athlete. Giving athletes a way out of the ghetto? How about giving someone who studies hard and wants to be a nurse or doctor a chance to get out of the ghetto? JIM AUSTIN, Athletic director Landmark College Old Lyme, Conn. Katha Pollitt, as usual, has a bead on the bull’s-eye, but beware the bull’s backside. Hauling the Penn State bigs off to the dunking chair might be a good public show and even have some effect, but the deeper issue is the entire university culture, these days cast in the corporate rather than the academic mold. Good corporate citizens are rewarded for loyalty and behavior that protects the brand and its marketing. In the once-upon-a-time days of shared faculty/administration governance, the moral climate was wider and more likely to encourage and protect those who spoke out. The decline of faculty authority has adversely affected the academy. The unchecked and cumulative decay exposed by the Penn State horror can be disinfected by firing its present custodians, but restoration will take a more persistent commitment to inquiry, analysis and, eventually, discovery—a process that, fortunately, defines scholarship. J. RANELLI Thank You, Readers! Albuquerque Thank you to readers Dayton, Hirschhorn, Harris and Thomas for their excellent responses to complaints about President Obama [“Letters,” Dec. 5]. As a young country, we’re still in the adolescent phase, thus our impatience with solutions that take time; refusal to support leaders who don’t immediately fulfill our desires; and thinking that not voting is a smart move. Fellow Americans, it’s time to grow up! CAROL WILLIAMS
Dec 21, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
On Naomi Klein, Ariel Dorfman, Gary Younge, Louis Uchitelle, Mary Robinson
Dec 14, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Bill Moyers hits it out of the park, Rita Dove writes and Jeremy Bass replies, Wangari Maathai was missed, comments about our look
Dec 6, 2011 / Our Readers and Jeremy Bass
Letters Letters
Occupy Wall Street, NPR, debt “forgiveness,“ George Kennan
Nov 30, 2011 / Our Readers