BackTalk: What a Library Closure Taught Me

In April 2007, Ashland, OR, police sergeant Malcus Williams was called to the town's public library to end a sit-in by about 20 preteens protesting the closing of the city library. The sergeant read the protesters a story—Mo Willems's Leonardo the Terrible Monster—and escorted them from the building. Then the library manager locked the doors and lowered the flag.

The Ashland Public Library and 14 others in rural Jackson County were dark for nearly seven months. It was the largest library closure in U.S. history, and it taught me something about community.

In Oregon, more than half of the state's 97,000 square miles are owned by the federal government. That means that taxable property is half of what it could be. For nearly a century, the federal government shared logging revenue with the local counties. Then Congress failed to reauthorize those payments in 2006, and my county lost $23 million, including the almost $8 million for libraries.

Closing the libraries was a big deal. One hundred employees were laid off. The 3000 people who used one or another of the libraries every day for research, leisure reading, and meetings were shut out. Thousands of books to be delivered to the homebound went unsent. High school students working on papers had to return books. Preschoolers and teens in story time and reading programs—nearly 18,000 of them—were on their own. The county Reads program was put on hold. The planned book: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

I didn't think that the libraries would ever be reopened. Oregon, like much of the West, is notoriously tax resistant and the libraries compete with public safety, human services, roads, and more. And, frankly, I doubted that there were enough book lovers to do anything.

I was wrong. Realtors, bankers, and business leaders teamed up with union organizers to get a countywide property tax levy on the ballot. They were joined by conservative Republicans, Green Party activists, and liberal Democrats, by students, parents, senior citizens, and unemployed librarians. A political action committee was formed, funds were raised, polls commissioned, signs ordered, and volunteers organized. The homeschool network spread the word. Public school boards passed resolutions. A retired judge and a state senator made a TV commercial. Ordinary folks gave up months of Saturdays.

As I, too, delivered signs, sat at tables, wrote letters, and called voters, I came to appreciate the different motivations people had for working so hard. Business leaders understood how difficult it would be to attract people to a county that didn't have libraries. The service employees union had jobs at stake. Politicians sincerely wanted literacy programs, computers, and educational materials available for their constituents. Bookstores took the long view that libraries and literacy were good for business. Working parents wanted a safe place for children to do homework after school. Public school students knew that the county libraries supplemented their school libraries. And the homeschooled knew the county libraries were their school libraries.

There was opposition, of course. Some voters were just against new taxes. Some distrusted the county government for letting the libraries close. Some hated the federal government for reneging on the timber support. And a few thought we didn't need public libraries because everything was on the Internet.

Even after the countywide special levy was voted down, pro-library groups continued to work to reopen the buildings. Individual cities discussed how to run their own facilities. The county explored private management with a firm outside the state, which said it could run the libraries for less. The contract, approved by the county commissioners, was not without controversy: the private proposal was accepted over one from the library workers' union, and concerns were raised about outsourcing, hidden costs, reduced services, and profits going out of state. Some thought we could have followed the path taken by neighboring Josephine County, which established a foundation to raise funds to staff the library.

Ultimately, the library system reopened, with reduced hours and staffs. Individual cities put forth small tax increases to expand hours locally, and voters approved them. The private firm solution was imperfect, but it was one that people were willing to try. Finally, in late October 2007, the libraries reopened. In Ashland, the flag went back up, and Sergeant Williams and the children led the public back in.

The libraries are used more than ever—for research, reading programs, story time, book clubs, and author nights. And I learned two valuable lessons: people prize librariesfor many different reasons and are willing to come together to keep them open.