Dmitri Moor – Capitalism Devours Everything (1920)

Resident doomer-luddite-hater-leftist checking in here once again. Though I was initially intrigued by some of the concepts being implemented at Colorado’s Anythink libraries – the nature library (Anythink Libraries, n.d.-a) in particular sounds fascinating and I am actually not mad at the idea (Anythink, n.d.-b) that libraries don’t necessarily need to be quiet spaces, at least not uniformly so – the more I read about the organization, the more I was turned off by just how business-y their whole business seemed.

The documents on their site are littered with MBA language like “branding” and “product placement” and “entrepreneurial spirit.” Patrons are “customers,” books are “products, and shelving is “merchandising.” They even proudly tout a decision to dump the eternally reliable Dewey system in favor of an organization system that more closely resembles a bookstore (Anythink, 2013). It all gave me the sinking, suffocating feeling that I was reading about a start-up, not a library. And, in fact, poking around a further lead me to “The Economics of Anythink,” a press release posing as an American Libraries article in which the company’s communication manager flat-out says “Anythink has approached its transformation like a start-up company (Ledden, 2012).” The article goes on to mostly celebrate the number of local subcontractors employed on the project and the myriad of other ways that the new libraries benefitted those oft-mythologized heroes of late capitalism The Small Business Owners (Waterhouse, 2017).

This all reminded of a book I read a few years ago, Oli Mould’s Against Creativity. In it, Mould writes about how modern neoliberal logic (“the idea that the markets must be as efficient as possible, and they must extend into every realm of life [Brehm, 2018]”) hijacks creative labor in the service of capital and how this then accelerates privatization, financialization, gentrification, and probably many equally bad -ations that I am forgetting now. Mould considers the role of the library in these systems:

“Libraries and other public institutions have traditionally been repositories of collective and civic knowledge, and archives of local cultures and histories. But they have become drawn into the creativity rhetoric by virtue of their subject matter. They have been forced to compete in the new global landscape of creative industrial activity because they are traditional places of knowledge rather than because they are designed to be competitive and commercial. This in turn brings with it the myriad of problems and inequalities that this version of creativity fuels: massive regional disparities, with investment focused on larger metropolitan regions at the expense of their hinterlands; the removal of services and activities that cater for the underprivileged and marginal; the destruction of public assets with deep local histories; and, inevitably, the privatization of social services.

Austerity has been implemented, forcing these institutions to be more ‘creative’. It has recast public cultural institutions as panaceas of this new austere world. Libraries can diversify to be social service centres; museums can hold evening classes; leisure centres can host school PE lessons. But it has primed them for appropriation because their ability to act as engines of non-capitalist knowledge and social practices has been eroded and, in some cases, completely destroyed, only for them to be resurrected as another agent of capitalist, competitive and entrepreneurial versions of creativity (Mould, 2018, p. 161).”

Reading more about the encroachment of neoliberal values upon modern libraries lead me to the work of John Buschman, who has written extensively on the topic, lamenting a system that encourages “mindlessly imitating management practices and fads, accountability/social capital/return-on-investment analyses of the institution, outsourcing of core functions such as collections and management, and silly and faddish investments in technology (such as gaming) that erode core functions. I argue that we’re changing what a library is and what it is for without much real thought or discussion. (Buschman, 2017, p. 55)”

That might be a bit too harsh (or maybe I just like gaming more than Buschman seems to!) but his concerns about the erosion of the modern library’s core functions had me wondering: Do these Anythink branches still work as old fashioned 1.0 libraries? A number of Yelp reviews suggest they do not: “This library is so small, not a very good selection of books (Lori M., 2021)”; “This library is a JOKE! A boutique library at best and do not think for a minute that you will find what you’re looking for if it has not won at least three awards and on the bestsellers list, and even then, it’s a stretch (Lisa K., 2016)”; “The selection at this library is pretty poor. The card catalog was not overly user friendly, and I could not for the life of me find the reference section and finally gave up trying. (Steve R., 2011)”

It breaks my heart to think that the success of a library system is now primarily measured primarily by its ability to “innovate” or, worse still, how well it stimulates the local economy, rather than its core function as a source of knowledge-qua-knowledge. Maybe this is a naively idealistic position to take though. I do understand that doing cool library things costs money and learning how to navigate the systems that provide the money for these cool library things is a big part of becoming a library professional but still I feel a need to announce my frustration with this reality.

References:

Anythink Libraries. (n.d.-a). Anythink announces Nature Library in partnership with City of Thornton. https://www.anythinklibraries.org/news-item/anythink-nature-library?fbclid=IwAR2DgO-k8nU6kNUODo7vTlRXKiEiYSoSeQMC8Aq0QnoLMZoT3d-QKpbSl5M

Anythink Libraries. (n.d.-b). Anythink Brochure. https://www.anythinklibraries.org/sites/default/files/imce_uploads/Anythink%20Brochure.pdf

Anythink Libraries. (2013). Visual merchandising guidelines. https://www.anythinklibraries.org/sites/default/files/imce_uploads/anythink_merchandising_guidelines_final_100113.pdf

Brehm, W. (2018, September 24). Interview with Oli Mould. [Audio Podcast] FreshEd. https://freshedpodcast.com/olimould/

Buschman, J. (2017, January). The library in the life of the public: Implications of a neoliberal age. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 87(1), 55-70. https://doi.org/10.1086/689314

Ledden, S. (2012, May 1). The economics of Anythink. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2012/05/01/the-economics-of-anythink

Lisa K. (2016, Feb 15). [Review of Anythink Wright Farms]. Yelp. https://www.yelp.com/biz/anythink-wright-farms-thornton?hrid=xPZGM7W8LI0lj2Tjgq2E-A

Lori M. (2021, April 8). [Review of Anythink Huron Street]. Yelp https://www.yelp.com/biz/anythink-huron-street-thornton?hrid=Oc7JXNzD7RirwVN_xEGO6g

Mould, O. (2018). Against Creativity. Verso.

Steve R. (2011, February 7). [Review of Anythink Commerce City]. Yelp. https://www.yelp.com/biz/anythink-commerce-city-commerce-city?hrid=ehLy116A1wFChY_F-HtUyw

Waterhouse, B. C. (2017, November 8). The small business myth. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-small-business-really-contribute-to-economic-growth