A question is asked from the balcony by one of the volunteer attendants in the last session of the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival . Three panelists are sharing their favourite reads.

Now, this bit will become important soon. The panelists are a young adult author who is currently completing her Honours at University; an older author who has worked as a sessional academic teaching creative writing at a local university; a minister and advocate for a prominent overseas aid agency. The session is chaired by the literary editor of a state daily newspaper.

Anyone remember the Sesame Street segment where someone is looking for something starting with “G”, and the dancing goat in the background is soooo happy when the person FINALLY noticed something that does?

The question from the balcony:

“Where could I go to get reading recommendations for a 42-year-old man who has been turned off the idea of reading by having to do compulsory reading earlier on in his life?”

The very helpful panelists tried their best. As good supporters of local traders they mentioned the name of the main street independent bookseller. Or, really, “any good bookshop would do”. A member of the audience sitting next to me took the mic and was helpful “try reading the first paragraph of books on the shelves in the shop, that usually works really well”.

Now, I had just had the mic, to ask the last question. It would have felt very rude to ask for it again, so I waited until the inevitable suggestion from SOMEONE, audience or panelist, in this room full of around 400 self-professed reading-lovers. That suggestion that would go something like:

Most towns have at least one person paid to impartially suggest what to read to anyone who walks in off the street, or who calls, or emails; someone whose only interest is in promoting your reading, and not trying to sell you something.

But it simply did not come.

Walking away from the festival I thought

On the panel there was a university student who had recently had a school library, an academic who I know works at an institution with very active and competent librarians, a minister who used to be a mayor of a major local government area that funded a library, and a journalist who I know hosts events at local public libraries.

Like hospitals, everyone knows what a library is. What it does. And these people (and the audience) were more likely than most to be aware of that.

I thought:

If “Ask a librarian” does not come instantly to mind for these folk, then THEIR librarians have let their clients down. Why don’t they have a closer, more visible relationship with just one of these people?

Followed a little later by:

Maybe, just maybe, it is because we live in a time of restricted resources. Libraries cannot serve everyone and have to triage. Public libraries are focussing on services to people who cannot otherwise access information,  like migrants and people without extra cash to attend writers’ festivals. Academic libraries focus on students who need extra help, rather than those capable of writing their own novels, and tend to be there more for researchers than teachers. Maybe the journalist and  ex-mayor are comfortable enough that they find the financial cost of buying books outweighs the time-cost of getting them through their local library.

But, two things still bug me.

1. The people in that room, audience and panelists, are both financially comfortable and love reading. Even if they do not directly use our services, even if they do not feel like they have their own “personal librarian”, these people in all likelihood will be making funding decisions about our futures.
2. If the question had been “where can I go to get free wifi?” or “is there a place with study desks that I can sit for a few hours and work?”, then (after the first answer which is likely to have been “coffee shop” ) my guess is that the room would have suggested the library.

What does this mean? Libraries are more salient than librarians? What we think is a major part of what we do is not what some of our most sympathetic supporters would identify?

I don’t quite know. But it is … worrying…

 

The part of my brain that belongs to Cataloguing (yes, a very, very small corner) wonders whether one would consider this a single instance of a work, ephemera, a performance, a collection or several separate works (one for each session? Each output?).

This is a 10 minute experience for festival-goers at the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival , an art installation,  Amoment caravan that has been travelling the country.

Imagine if you will, a tiny wooden caravan, with a young masked woman in white outside it:

You sit on a wooden box and she fits you with a headset connected to an old white iPod. You listen as an 8 year old girl speculates about what her life will be like in 20 years. You think about it.

Then, you take off your shoes. Climb into the caravan. Press play on the next track.

Inside is white, with eclectic white objects (plastic spoons, lace, pill packets, spools) attached to the ceiling, a mattress with crocheted white rug on the floor. The walls are adorned with tiny typewritten notes, pinned with pearl-headed pins. They are notes to a future self.

A small blue typewriter, with a container of tiny white pages is set up in front of you. Although you want to keep reading the notes, you take up the invitation to write your own note to yourself in 20 years and pin it to the wall.

Outside, when you put your shoes back on … you eventually notice the tiny note tied with a tiny white ribbon. (You also discover later that your shoes have been photographed and added to the accompanying website )

And receive some wise words for today:

Yesterday I went to sessions at the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival with people who I have long admired. They all talked sense, articulately, in an entertaining way …

• Michael Palin
• Clementine Ford
• Jane Caro
• Kerry O’Brien
• Robert Drewe

When I grew up in a South West country town, we had a small Soldiers’ Memorial Hall with a proscenium arch stage, red velvet curtains and dark, waxy floorboards – smelling of equal parts floor polish and dust, with an overtone of mustiness. The setup at the Margaret River Community Centre was quite different from my childhood:

 

As I said yesterday, the most interesting session for my of the first day of the  Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival was called  “The right to belong“, with William Yeoman facilitating a conversation between Tim Costello, Abdi Aden and Isabelle Li . I am only going to touch on a few points made, but my notes are below and I am happy to explain the context of any of the fragments.

 

The discussion was based around the question “What does it mean to belong in Australia ?”. Tim Costello was CEO of World Vision and writes about equity issues. Isabelle Li was born in China, but came to Australia voluntarily to resettle in 1999 after living for five years in Singapore. Abdi Aden was a Somalian refugee who came to Melbourne at 17 and now works as a youth worker.

The most library-relevant part of the talk was Isabelle Li describing her annoyance at being asked “but how could you understand what it was about?” when she revealed that she had read Dicken’s David Copperfield several times as a teen because she loved it so much; the presumption being that a 20th Century young woman in China would not have anything in common with a young lad in Victorian times. But, “of COURSE I could empathise with the characters. That’s the POINT of literature”.

It made me think of libraries, particularly public libraries, as “empathy peddlars”. By providing a wide range of literature, much of it people would not come across for themselves, do we provide more chance for people to put themselves in each others’ shoes? Do our programmes for such a wide cross section of the community give people exposure to ideas and people that they would otherwise avoid ? Does the common purpose of using wifi or a comfy workspace, and the fact that NO ONE IS FORCED TO BE THERE, mean that people get to understand that other people  with whom they think they have nothing in common, actually make similar choices to themselves?

I think that there is a lot to be written about the role of empathy, kindness and compassion in libraries (particularly public libraries), and library staff as “empathy workers”. I hope to elaborate later in June…

The tension throughout the session at the writers’ festival was  how to welcome new people and help them identify as belonging, while avoiding this identification creating a strong US that then needs a THEM to exclude (to better define a stronger US). How can we avoid re-tribalization when people are seeking belonging, and how does this fit in with attempts to create an ongoing peace? I liked Tim Costello’s analysis of people being willing to follow the Gods of Blood and Soil, which leads to increased racism and nationalism – both allowing demonization of scapegoats (and as has been shown, providing a mechanism that has got people elected).

Isabelle Li talked about the difference between her, as someone who came to Australia by choice, and Abdi Aden as someone who had no choice. Abdi had earlier made the point that, unlike many others who migrate to Australia, he is currently and permanently displaced from a culture that now no longer exists anywhere, having been destroyed by war. He recounted being told that the lack of acceptance by Australians of Somalian refugees would be a passing phase ” The Greeks went through it, the Italians went through it, just wait your turn” … but he is not sure that he wants to wait.

Isabelle asked what we had done here in Australia to fail the young Abdi so badly. And how may we be continuing to do this? This was taken up by the panel as they examined questions about whether only caring for the poor in one’s own country, or only caring when they end up displaced to one’s country, is a failure of compassion. And maybe simply creating problems economically and politically that could be solved more pragmatically by greater foreign aid?

Briefly touched on, but I liked the idea, was the thought that belonging in a new country can happen when one feels confident that one can contribute to the future of the country.

As I said, there was a lot more in the hour-long session (like Tim Costello posing the question “Can the best of our Faith defeat the worst of Religion?”), but many of the ideas would spark their own separate post.