In the convivial range. Of the six balances: 2 tipping, 2 holding, 2 not assessed. Position somewhere between 57 and 85 of 100. The balances not assessed could put it past the second watershed.
- Biological degradation Not assessed Does this tool damage the living world, or the body, faster than either can recover? Not assessed: nobody has looked at this yet, so it is not counted as holding.
- Radical monopoly Holds Can people still meet the need another way, without this tool? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Overprogramming Tipping Does using this tool require training or certification that people cannot give each other? Tipping: the tool has begun to cause this problem, without going past the limit.
- Polarization Tipping Does this tool move power or advantage to a few, at others’ cost? Tipping: the tool has begun to cause this problem, without going past the limit.
- Obsolescence Not assessed Does this tool force people to replace what still works? Not assessed: nobody has looked at this yet, so it is not counted as holding.
- Frustration Holds Does this tool give back less than it takes, counting everything it takes? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
What it does
Lends books and other materials to anyone, free, and gives them a place to read, ask questions, and look things up. Borrowing doesn’t use anything up: a returned book serves the next reader.
Where it stops
At access. It offers things to learn from without deciding what you learn. It drifts toward its second watershed when it becomes a teaching device: gatekeepers between people and shelves, or hours and rules that suit specialists.
How easily you can stop using it
There is nothing to leave: borrowing creates no dependence, and what you learn stays with you. Libraries are public and locally governed, so people can push for longer hours, open stacks, and new collections.
What is scored
- The unit: The free public lending library, locally governed. Left out: school and university libraries, and licensed e-books, which are not yet assessed.
- The job it is tested against: Lending books and other materials to anyone, free, and giving them a place to read. It does this reliably.
- Where and when: Illich’s account of 1973, drawn from North America. Four of the six balances are assessed.
Illich was hard on most institutions, but not on this one. In Tools for Conviviality he wrote that at its best the library is “the prototype of a convivial tool” (chapter III, “Overprogramming,” p. 80). It lends to anyone, asks nothing in return, and a book that one person borrows and returns is there for the next.
A tool that gets schooled
He also described how a good library goes wrong. As libraries got “better,” he argued, books moved away from the open shelf into large stores, and the reference librarian came to stand between readers and the books. He pointed to the New York Public Library, which in his account had become so expensive to run that it opened only ten to six on weekdays and partly on Saturdays, making it a tool for people who did not need to be at work or school.
His diagnosis was that libraries are underused not because people do not want to learn, but because they have been organized as teaching devices, and people have been trained to wait to be taught. That is the library’s second watershed: the point where a place for finding things out turns into one more institution that tells you what to learn.
A model for other tools
Illich proposed using the library as a template. Collections of other learning tools could be organized the same way: recordings, pictures, and simple laboratories stocked with the kind of instruments behind many of the last century’s major discoveries. Tool libraries, seed libraries, and makerspaces run on this lending model now exist in many cities, and they belong in this catalogue in their own right.
How much it is used
The library has not withered. In the United States, the Institute of Museum and Library Services counted about 1.5 billion in-person visits to roughly 9,000 public libraries in fiscal year 2012. That figure is now more than a decade old; newer surveys exist and should replace it here.
The six balances
Scored as set out in How to evaluate tools. The library reliably does its job, so it starts in the convivial range.
- Biological degradation: Not assessed.
- Radical monopoly: 0. A library does not stop anyone learning another way.
- Overprogramming: 1. Illich’s own warning: libraries organized as teaching devices, with staff standing between readers and the shelves.
- Polarization: 1. Opening hours and rules that suit people who are not at work, as in Illich’s New York example.
- Obsolescence: Not assessed for the lending of printed books. Expiring e-book licences are the obvious place to look, but they are outside this record.
- Frustration: 0. Borrowing costs little, and what is learned stays with the reader.
Where the threshold falls
In the convivial range, at 57: two of the six balances are tipping, so its position is 50 + 7.
That puts the public library a little past the centre of the range. The pressures Illich named still apply: opening hours, closed stacks, and rules that make the library easier for specialists than for everyone else. A newer one is digital lending, where libraries often license e-books on terms set by publishers rather than owning copies they can lend freely.
Open questions
- Update the usage figures with the latest IMLS survey, and add Canadian data.
- How do e-book licensing terms change what a library can lend, and for how long?
- Catalogue a tool library and a seed library as separate entries.
Sources
- Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. https://archive.org/details/illich-conviviality.
- Institute of Museum and Library Services. Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2012. Washington, DC: Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2015.
- Price, Gary. “IMLS Releases New Report with FY2012 U.S. Public Library Statistics: More than 1.5 Billion Trips to Public Libraries During Year.” Library Journal, January 27, 2015. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/news/imls-releases-new-report-with-fy2012-u-s-public-library-statistics-more-than-1-5-billion-trips-to-public-libraries-during-year.