Celebrate librarians
When I think of today’s issues swirling about Idaho’s public libraries, I can’t help but think about Andrew Carnegie.
Once America’s richest man, Carnegie, a great builder of our nation’s steel industry, wondered, after he sold his steel industry interests, how to give away his great wealth “without doing damage.”
Carnegie recognized that giving away money has its pitfalls. Thus, he decided to donate money to build libraries (Idaho built 11 Carnegie-funded libraries) with trained librarians, so that people had the means to study and improve their lives and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. That concept, which fueled Carnegie’s own rags-to-riches life, strikes me as America at its finest: Help people in a way that they can help themselves.
It seems to me Carnegie would be appalled by those who are attacking our libraries today. If anything, we should all be working together to celebrate our librarians (theirs ain’t a big-bucks-paying job) and our libraries. Anything less feels un-American.
Steve Koehler
Grangeville
