People must be amused

At Metafilter, there's a long thread about this cranky article from the Denver Post, which bemoans the state of public libraries. As a fan of literary fiction, I did my best to sympathize, but this is one of those instances where the writer proves his own worst enemy: lots of projection and over-emoting, no empirical research. (So...what's in the stacks? In the catalog? Hello?) Moreover, as at least a couple of MeFi posters observe, his grasp of the history of library acquisitions seems a bit on the foreshortened side. For the past twenty years, the branch library near my parents' house has been a fine place to get the latest popular/middlebrow fiction, read the mainstream glossy magazines, and, on occasion, check out music (small selection) or films (ditto). High literature? No. The "classics" are there, but not necessarily avant-garde novelists or small-press authors. In fact, to my knowledge, I've never been in a branch library that made high culture its primary stock in trade. That's usually the job of the central repository or the local college library.

The writer's shortcomings are a pity, because he does raise an important question: should a public library raise our literary consciousness, or just offer a cultural buffet? And how does one go about literary consciousness-raising, anyway? A taste for Stephen King won't naturally blossom into a taste for Jose Saramago without somebody providing active guidance, and it probably goes without saying that the majority of even the most enthusiastic readers will never develop a taste for Saramago. It's not quite clear what the author would have us say to those readers.