A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Libraries asks questions about what libraries represent for people today. The Meaning of the Library: a Cultural History was edited by Dr. Alice Crawford, digital humanities research librarian at the University of St. Andrews Library, Scotland. For thousands of years, libraries have been essential to knowledge and scholarship. Open stack libraries, such as the Pridi Banomyong Library and other branches of the Thammasat University Libraries, allow readers to browse for ideas, the way they would browse in a shopping mall. While libraries are also useful for ordering exactly what the ajarn or student needs, either from interlibrary loan or in the form of an electronic document, sometimes researchers do not know in advance exactly what they want or need. They may look at the shelves of a library to get ideas for a research paper or article, examining many books before discovering what they can use  to inspire new research. In the same way, it is difficult to find anything new or publish creative scholarship if we only order books that we are certain will be of interest to us. Scholars must look at a lot of different books, some of which may not be of interest, in order to find one that may be surprisingly interesting. So for imaginative researchers who wish to be productive and publish in journals of their field, it is important to have access to an open stacks library, where books may be examined on shelves in well-lit comfort instead of hidden away in storage areas. As in the world of retail marketing, putting books where they can be seen by readers is much like putting things to be sold where they can be seen in malls by shoppers. Looking at a book and deciding whether to take it home or not is an experience much like shopping, except that in the case of the TU Libraries, for all students, ajarns, and staff, the book can be borrowed for no extra cost. So the worlds of intellectual research and retail marketing are not very far apart. If books are made visible and placed where they can easily be found, examined, and consulted, more productive original research is the result. If books are less available, hidden away or made inaccessible, then students and ajarns are less likely to have good new ideas about things to research and write about. Nor are storage areas, even when housing some books that are taken out less frequently than others in ideal conditions, the best help for researchers.

Since no library keeps statistics on what books are looked at in the library itself, libraries only keep track of what books are taken out. Books that may be of use now or in the future can be overlooked. Although electronic technology is a major help to any researcher, much is still not available in digitized form. Only in certain fields of study do ajarns and students mostly read online sources. In the social sciences, for which TU has a deservedly distinguished reputation, printed books are still essential sources for research productivity and look likely to remain so in the future. As it well known, subscriptions to digital databases are increasingly expensive, and when the subscription stops, access to information also stops. While if a book is purchased, it remains in collections for years afterward. The ideal library has many complex answers and approaches, not one categorical decision. Printed books and digitized material are needed, not just one or the other. Libraries have always been places where readers can enjoy a quiet atmosphere for study, yet as students know, they can also be social centers for group activity and lots of talking. Libraries are places where people concentrate on written material that requires much thought to be understood, yet readers also deal with Line messages from their faculties or friends and other instant communication. Assembling a great collection of books is not enough, they must be maintained and preserved. This requires lots of planning and effort. In The Meaning of the Library, the British historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree notes that after books could be printed, they were less well preserved than in former times, because it was considered that they could be replaced relatively easily:

The majority of books published during the Renaissance fell victim to… mundane dangers: rats and mice, birds and moths, worms or damp. Fire, neglect, and use all took their toll. But it does illustrate vividly the great gulf between the rhetoric of the humanistic book world, and the practical experience of those who sought to build a library. It might have been thought that the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, and the huge increase of the availability of books, would usher in a great new age of library building. In fact, the opposite was the case. Many of the great Renaissance collections were broken up, the victim of predators, politics, or neglect. In the sixteenth century the library… took a backwards step… Mostly, though, it was the sheer profusion of books that doomed the Renaissance library. Before print, the creation of a library was the work of a lifetime… Something like 9 million printed objects were in circulation before 1500… Assessed country by country, the Europe-wide production of printed books amounted, by 1600, to some 345,000 separate editions: about 180 million printed items… Suddenly books were no longer an object of wonder.

According to one count, between 2010 and 2012 over 150 English language books about libraries were published, when budget cuts forced the closing of 140 public libraries in the United Kingdom. With budget pressures everywhere, the value of libraries becomes more clear. In one chapter in The Meaning of the Library, Professor Richard Gameson of Durham University, UK, a specialist in the history of the book from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and in medieval art defines libraries as

simultaneously collections of books, spaces in which books are kept, and concepts.

Professor Gameson notes that early artworks showing what libraries looked like at the time were rare, since a thousand years ago and earlier, libraries were symbols of getting knowing about religion and the world. Only around 600 years ago did people start to think of libraries as places to get knowledge for its own sake. With the invention of printing, libraries became guides to organized information, helping people remember and share human knowledge. This is still a key purpose for libraries today. Naturally, libraries welcome all students and ajarns, not just those who have the money to buy individual copies of books, some of which can be expensive. This generous aspect of a library can be overlooked by people who take it for granted. Yet even a famous thinker such as Voltaire (1694-1778), who owned land where farmers worked, stated that he wanted farmers to be working on his land all the time, and not spending any time reading books. Over the years, in Europe some people have struggled and even died for the right to print and read books. The novelist Charles Dickens, author of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, which are available in the circulating collection of the TU Libraries, believed strongly in making books available to all readers, not just the ones who could afford to buy books in stores, in the

earnest hope that the books made thus available… prove a source of pleasure and improvement in the cottages, the garrets, and the cellars of the poorest of people.

Some people in the time of Dickens, the 1800s when Queen Victoria reigned, were worried that novels by Dickens were too exciting for workers to read, since they were so dramatic and also had sympathetic descriptions of poor people who work hard.

In The Meaning of the Library, James H. Billington, former director of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, from 1987 to 2015, explains that libraries play key roles in the global democracy:

Libraries are places for the pursuit of truth… Books are our guardians of memory, tutors of language, pathways to reason, and our golden gate to the royal road of imagination….    As librarian of Congress I am fortunate in my own working life to have responsibility for the world’s largest foraging ground for this pursuit – a 158-million-item collection built by the Congress around the amazingly rich personal library of Thomas Jefferson. For him, the pursuit of truth was the highest form of the pursuit of happiness that he extolled in our Declaration of Independence. This pursuit differs from others in life, because it is inherently noncompetitive and communal. One person’s discovery enriches another’s search.

Thailand and Libraries

In March 2016, The Nation reported that TK Park Roi Et, the first Thailand Knowledge (TK) facility in the Kingdom’s northeastern region, had opened for service. The goal is to promote reading habits among children and young adults. Books, magazines, and computers are available and one special feature is a Quiet Zone where kids can sit and concentrate on what they are reading. This follows results of a survey, also announced in March 2016, that Thai people are spending almost twice as much time reading each day as they did as recently as two years ago. Almost 80 percent of the Kingdom’s population, nearly 50 million people, are constant readers, especially those between the ages of 15 and 24. These young people typically read for over 90 minutes each day. As The Nation noted:

96.1 per cent of the respondents read traditional media such as books and newspapers, while 55 per cent opted for digital media, which suggests that Thais still prefer reading printed material, the survey showed.

This significant fact shows that predictions about digital media replacing books are premature and do not correspond with the reality of reading in the Kingdom.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)