I found out about Kanawha County Public Library’s removal of its CD collection on the Friday afternoon before Palm Sunday. I called to see if there were any CDs by an artist I’d heard on the radio on my way home from a trip to pick up an inter-library loan from the drive-up window downtown.
The answer I got knocked the wind out of me: “We don’t have CDs anymore.â€
When I recovered sufficiently to ask why, and, more to the point, what was going to become of the collection, I was told, “because of low circulation†and that the collection would be split between a private organization and the rummage sale at the Book Fair. I find both options beyond insulting.
Now, getting rid of an entire library collection because of low circulation is not a persuasive argument. You could say that about libraries in general, and I’m sure the local enemies of free, public access to the arts and knowledge will use that same rationale in coming days: “Only minority elites use libraries — to the chainsaws!â€
Alternatively, I can’t see how keeping the CDs in circulation would set the library back much, if anything. They’re already paid for, already catalogued. How much does it cost to keep them dusted? Ten thousand CDs, containing a wealth of music that costs nothing to access, bought with public funds. They are invaluable and should remain available to everyone. They belong to us.
The excuse the Kanawha Library gives for the purge is that “everyone†is streaming music nowadays, CDs are a dying media, new vehicles don’t have CD players, etc.
Well, not everyone has unlimited internet access — many can’t afford it. And a lot of people I know have old cars. The obsession with streaming is thanks to corporate snake oil, selling us much less for a lot more, and too many people have bought into it — including public libraries — at vast expense.
Worst of all, streaming involves someone else, not even a person but a computer algorithm, nudging and tracking you, keeping tabs and taking notes, making you an addict in the process. Harvesting your data — spying on you — taking your life and selling it back to you.
But libraries treat you as a citizen and don’t exploit you as a consumer mark. They provide free access to the intellectual wealth of our civilization. They don’t monetize and commodify you to get to it.
But sadly, what the Kanawha Library has done smacks of just that. The dwindling circulation numbers cited as justification were patrons, still checking out CDs. I was one of them.
Just because people aren’t listening to CDs like they used to doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Vinyl came back. And even VHS seems to be on the verge of a return. I recently read about a video store in Alberta, Canada, that’s going great guns, selling used tapes to 20-somethings.
But the damage will take a long time to undo if CDs disappear the way vinyl had to before its resurgence. And the price of the rediscovered beauty of CDs will, like vinyl, substantially increase. But, by then, the Kanawha Library will be empty-handed, having sold our birthright for a mess of pottage.
Had I known what the library was planning, I would have made a point to check out more CDs, urged friends and family to do so — but getting rid of the collection was unimaginable. No one in charge said anything, no one asked us. And even if little could be done to increase circulation, so what? The CDs weren’t costing anything sitting there. But they’re not sitting there anymore. And that is a crying shame.
But worst of all is how the Kanawha Library revealed its plans to scuttle the CD collection only after the fact: No one asked the fans, and we just woke up one day to the library’s dismissive, “This is what we’ve decided, and you can lump it.†That photo from the Gazette-Mail of the empty shelves spoke volumes. It broke my heart.
This has destroyed my trust in the Kanawha Library. I’ve had a library card for 60 years, since I was 6. I’m of an age to have even, albeit briefly, gone to the library when it occupied the former state Capitol Annex at the corner of Lee and Hale streets — I remember walking down those long, curving steps holding my brand-new library card, thinking it all so grand and wonderful. I was on the Bookmobile every time it came through my neighborhood. And I can still remember the legendary Miss Wilma Brown in front of the massive old card catalogue at Capitol Street, bending down to my 8-year-old height, patiently listening to me describe the kind of book I was looking for.
Now, I don’t even want to keep my card, much less use it.
The Kanawha Library once was one of the few bright spots in the increasingly dismal prospect that is life in West Virginia. I depended on it for so much goodness that wasn’t available anywhere else. That light has dimmed immeasurably. I am beyond sad.
