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Seattle Public Library
OM4/LMN December 1999
Seattle Public Library Proposal - December 1999Seattle Public Library
The Library represents, maybe with the prison, the
last of the uncontested moral universes: communal
accommodations for ‘good’ (or necessary)
activities... The moral goodness af the Library is
intimately connected to the value of the book: the
Library is its fortress, librarians are its guardians...
As other mediums of information emerge and
become plausible, the Library seems threatened, a
fortification ready to be ‘taken’ by potential
enemies. In this scheme, the Electronic is identified
with the Barbaric. Its ubiquity and its uncontrollable
accessibility seem to represent a loss of control,
depth, tradition, civilization. In response, the
language of the Library has become moralistic and
defensive: its rhetoric proclaims - implicity and
explicitly - 8 sense of superiority in mission, in social
responsibility, in value.,. The Library’ s insistence an
one kind of literacy has blinded it to other emerging
forms that increasingly dominate our culture,
especially the huge efficiencies (and pleasures) of
visual intelligence. New libraries don’t reinvent or
even modernize the traditional institution; they
merely package it in a new way.
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Seattle Public Library Proposal - December 1999