Time should not be given a chance to pass in vain.

[This text was originally published on September 2, 2007 in my blog Bitácora de un bibliotecario, one of the first blogs on LIS in Spanish. It reflects my opinions at that time. The complete compilation of that year (and others) can be consulted in Acta Académica, section “Blog Bitácora de un bibliotecario”].

Time should not be given a chance to pass in vain.

So says one of my favorite singer-songwriters, the Argentine León Gieco (author of the well-known “Sólo le pido a Dios”) in the song “Aquí, allá, hoy o mañana” (Here, there, today or tomorrow). The phrase, beyond its poetry, marks a goal to follow, not only in the personal context but also in the professional one.

Times that pass in vain… How many days, how many months have passed between our hands without our knowing how to catch them, to use them, to make them fertile with fruits and results? The question, abstract without a context, becomes a little more real when I think of all those libraries that are dying in silence, full of books but lacking users, services, ideas… Don’t you know of any? I do. I have seen them. Weeks go by, years go by, and those units ―which could be changing something in their environment, no matter how small― are still there, motionless, frozen, while those in charge of them allow time to run in vain.

I remember that, at some point in my career, I learned that a library is a system, a set of intimately related elements working towards the achievement of a goal, providing outputs (products and services) and trapping inputs (information, opinions, needs). It was much later when, from my own experience, I learned that any library is (or should be, if it is to succeed) an entity much like a living organism: it responds to variations in its environment, adapts to survive, is flexible, evolves, grows, even reproduces and replicates.

And, sometimes, it becomes paralyzed, gets sick, and dies.

The life cycle of any system fulfills a series of steps and closes ― sometimes to begin again, sometimes forever. And every living system avoids death by instinct, trying to survive through the worst adversities. I learned, from this very basic rule of life, that any library must fight and do its best to stay alive. To turn it into a simple warehouse is to kill it early, to murder its spirit without contemplation, to ruin a project that could have been beautiful and useful for a small or large group of people.

The library becomes a mere repository of materials when it has no users. At that point, it loses its reason to exist, for a library is not a building, a collection, or a group of people who work in it: it is a service. It is simply that. And the service, as the word says, must serve a recipient. When it does not serve, when the final user considers that there, in that institution, there is nothing for him/her, then is when the library and those responsible for it have failed.

Time goes on, insensitive to the circumstances of humans. And every lost minute never returns.

When is the library heading for failure and death as a system? Generally, when it pretends to give the recipient something s/he does not need, and when, on the other hand, it does not provide what s/he urgently needs. And that is something happening in every corner of our professional universe. Although this last statement may seem foolish in these times of “evaluations”, “user studies” and “library management”, there are still libraries that try to implant a certain model in their reality, without realizing that, as the living system that it should be, it is the unit itself the one which should adapt to the requirements, circumstances, and opportunities of its environment.

The replication of pre-established models can be useful in some cases, especially because it marks a safe and smooth path. But let’s not kid ourselves: what is good for you, or what worked in one place, may not necessarily work in another. Existing models that have not been previously adapted to the new conditions are often seen as foreign implants in the target communities: such implants are almost always rejected and fail miserably. Therefore, it is important to listen to the voices in need, to know the human and spatial context, to seek the most appropriate solution, and to implement it with existing resources, hand in hand with the involved community.

The library works in, by, for, and with the community. This idea should never be forgotten. There are many information units located in the heart of towns and villages that remain there, useless and empty. In their pride, they have believed themselves to be saviors, heroes capable of molding people to their liking and giving them what the dominant system sees fit to give. Rarely do users want that. In fact, it is the opposite process: the library is the clay that the people will mold to their own pleasure until it has a suitable shape. And only then will they drink from that clay container all the knowledge it holds inside.

There will never be another way. It will never be different.

Let us not let time pass in vain. Let us take the initiative, let us listen to the community, let us give voice and participation to the users/patrons, let us turn the library into the cultural and informative space it should be, answering the questions that are asked instead of giving answers to what never was and never will be asked. Only in this way will these systems continue to live, grow, reproduce, regenerate... Only in this way will we learn a little more each day. Only in this way will we stop seeing so many dead libraries, even if they try to convince us that they are alive.

Only in this way, time will not slip away from us like sand through our fingers…