Jacqueline Barlow
[Address redacted]
(514) [Redacted]
jacqueline.barlow@mail.mcgill.ca
To: Some Ladies
Evergreen Regional Library
Gimli,
Manitoba
R0C 1B0
8 March 2008
Dear Gimli Branch of the Evergreen Regional Library,
Recently, I tried and failed to find
a picture of the Gimli Library online. This should be a
cause for concern for a few reasons, not least because the
Arborg branch has a picture up on their town site, and
we don’t have one on ours. Arborg! Arborg just recently
achieved village status. Arborg doesn’t have a nice
beach like ours, or our thriving tourism and fishing industries,
or the Islendingadagurinn
for chrissakes. But Arborg Library got it together and put
a picture of their library online, and I say, if Arborg
can do it, so can we.
I mean, so can you. I know how this will sound
– Gimli girl skips town, gets fancy
degree, and tells you how to run your library –
not even to your face – well, yes, it’s a bit
presumptuous. But you know, I still kind of love that town.
I don’t even want to love that town, but there you
have it. And obviously, I have a thing for libraries. You’ll
recall that I worked at the library in the summer of 1999;
the Pan-Am
Games were in Winnipeg and we were hosting the sailing
competitions. We kept a map on the wall and stuck stickpins
in every country we saw represented by an athlete walking
through our doors. It was exciting. But I digress.
The best place to put a photo of yourself
online would be on your website, I guess, but you don’t
have one. I found a link online that said it led to your
website, but the listing I was looking at was from 1993
and the link is now broken. That’s not surprising.
But what happened? Why didn’t you try again? I recently
discovered that a lot of small public libraries are hosting
their sites for free on blogging sites like Blogger and
Wordpress. You could always do something like that.
To be clear, I am not insinuating that you
don’t know that the internet has changed things, and
that it’s an important development in the way we communicate.
Of course you know that. Everyone knows that. My question
is, if you know that – which you must – why
aren’t you taking advantage of it? I have my suspicions,
and the main one is this: that you think the library and
the World Wide Web are opposing sources, and that the World
Wide Web is slowly but surely pushing you into irrelevance.
It doesn’t have to be that way, and
I can explain why. Even better, I’ve thought of a
way you can sell it.
As you know, I am not of Icelandic descent,
like
many residents and former residents of Gimli. But when
I was in school and learning about the Icelanders in Social
Studies, Language Arts, Music, Math, and occasionally Phys
Ed, I formed a pretty good opinion about Icelandic traditions,
both here and back in Iceland. The thing they told us all
the time (or maybe, just because of who I am, this is the
thing I remember the most) was that the Icelanders were
such a literate people. I know this won’t be news
to you. Everyone knows that every Icelandic cottage, no
matter how remote, had a shelf of books. Everyone knows
that in the one little trunk the emigrants were allowed
to take with them on the ship, they left room for a few
books amongst all their wool socks and rope. It’s
also true that life in Iceland in the mid- to late-nineteenth
century frankly sucked, what
with the volcanic eruptions and sick sheep and oppressive
Danish government. The books were important to them
because, whether they were in their sod houses on the fjord
or their wooden shacks on the Canadian Prairie, books were
a link to the outside world.
You have some of those books now. Researching
your library online I discovered that you
have over 4716 Icelandic titles in your collection (and
441 Ukrainian books and 270 French books – let’s
not forget them). That’s a lot! Maybe you think of
these books as relics. They kind of are, I guess –
relics of a time when the Icelandic language flourished
in North America. (I guess the Manitoba education system
took care of that). Anyway, the books may be obscure now,
but the reason they were important hasn’t died. I
think a shelf of books in a windswept hinterland and a wired
computer in a windswept hinterland – albeit one with
better roads and sanitation – play essentially the
same role: they provide a link to the outside world.
Books still matter, don’t get me wrong.
I don’t personally think books are dying like a lot
of people say. But books aren’t the only game in town
anymore, so what you should do is stop thinking of the library
as just a provider of books. Think of the library as a provider
of contact. Heck, the Icelanders already invented
Parliament and discovered
America; why not say Icelanders invented the internet
too? Why not say Icelanders pioneered the information revolution?
A lot of people would buy that! Make it part of the Icelandic
Canon. If space is limited, get rid of rullupylsa.
I don’t know anyone who eats that.
In short, if Gimli is the capital of New Iceland,
and if its founders knew well the importance of being well-read
and informed, the elements be damned, then Gimli should
continue to champion their cause. And who will lead the
cause? You should. And you can. Let me tell you something:
the internet is a mess. It’s scattered, disorganized,
and barely literate. But it has great potential. Take it
under your wing, like a peasant Ukrainian farmer, and help
it out a little. I think you’ll both come out richer.
Sincerely,
Jacqueline Kate (Katie) Barlow
GHS ’99