Thoughts on Sonja Boon's Lecture: Serendipity, Tactility, and Community: Library Research As A Practice Of Wonder"

An amazing colleague of mine suggested that I subscribe to Library Link Of The Day which hooks up to your email account and sends over a link (just one) to a news item, video, etc. pertaining to libraries every single day. There's no format as to what you get, so for the subscribed not affiliated with the group that runs it, it's fairly random. I signed up for it and found this lecture:  "Serendipity, Tactility, and Community: Library Research As A Practice Of Wonder" by Sonja Boon that really attracted my attention. In the first few minutes of previewing the lecture on youtube (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=3j7DMXEXHBo ) I was roused by the idea of making room for wonder, magic, dreams, longing, desires, and space itself. I had to put listening and watching to this lecture on hold for the majority of the weekend due to previous commitments but I'm very glad I was able to finish it this afternoon.

One idea that struck me towards the end is that, for me, a lot of the project that Sonja Boon seems interested in has to do with a particular kind of object and a particular kind of activity. The object being books themselves, and the activity being the act of reading itself. Her focus on serendipity, tactility, and community is an important one, though I feel that these themes are available in copious amounts particularly in the West, to the point that we, as individuals, are in a position of stasis: our senses are attacked, there are too many points of entry into what should already be inherent within our daily lives. Playgrounds, Montessori Schools, Botanic Gardens, Forest Preserves, National Parks... painting workshops, pottery workshops, knitting organizations, zoos, petting farms, you name it - are readily available to us. The problem we should really be focusing on is how to bring the serendipitous, the tactile, and the community back home. I may expand on this later. My point, first, is that many of us feel robbed by the opportunities (advertised to us endlessly) and lack the ability to put these very important concepts into practice day to night, night to day.

Boon states a similar sentiment in her introduction: that she feels restricted by the idea of efficiency. Intellectual labor, manual labor, and every kind of economy asks us to be efficient, hardly giving us room to figure out how to play. In that vein, we might reach a cornerstone at the library. As a hub known mostly for its archival objects and books, how might the place of the library become a place of  a different kind of worldly interaction? How might the library become a kind of "playroom" for us to think, and conversely, to connect our thinking to our bodies? We are truly living in disembodied times, especially with the advent of the virtual.

Public libraries, and I stress the world public, tap into community very directly. All kinds of people across the entire spectrum are welcomed in. The public library holds the key to information directly pertaining to the community via its very resources (online databases, archives, collections, other materials like computers and printers) and, as should be more pertinent, the knowledge of the librarians themselves whose disciplines traverse academia and layman alike. But who is coming into the public library? Who is interested in it? Who, in one question, is the public? I won't and cannot answer that question here (though it is worth researching), but it is safe to say that one of the most persistent patron groups of the public library (the free public library, not the subscription libraries of England beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries) are the lower to middle classes and the homeless. We see this beginning with Andrew Carnegie, the industrial giant, business magnate, and finally the great library philanthropist who opened up his personal home to the young boys in his neighborhood  in need of a place to study. He also provided the books (obviously).

The public library is first and foremost a place that encourages the idea that one has control over the ideas, concepts, materials that they find. It is a place that allows a reflection of the outside world that is not all chaos, but instead, organized; which is in fact a way of helping people see and/or find out what they need (need based as in Maslow's Hierarchy).

But nevertheless, the public library has its own stigma, or stereotype if you wish, that it is a building full of books. With that in mind, the patron base becomes more abstract, inviting in book lovers (and art lovers), the loners, outcasts, weirdos, intellectuals, and so on from every class, bottom on up. I think this is a real opening, reaching out towards what Boon is striving for: a serendipity. Not just of the information you find, but of the people you find who are alongside you in the same place. No words need to be exchanged, no greetings are required, just presence. It is here where you find people wandering into library without a call number in hand, who are coming in to browse. Libraries in general, but particularly public libraries, pay very close attention to what gets checked out, what doesn't, what patrons are looking for, what isn't being looked for... so there is a record (nameless) of popularity and also what gaps need to be filled in the collection to allow for new discoveries - to fill in community blind spots - in hopes to provide a wealth of accessibility shared by all. This truly is magic: the placement of a particular space in the social sphere whose potential never lets up, taxes aside.

Boon talks about this fascinating mode of practice by saying habits are not always the best way to move forward. Habits become ritualized, they lose meaning over time, they might become boring, they lose their sense of pleasure. But practicing happens a lot in the library and it is a retention of meaning and pleasure, because, like Boon suggests, it allows for accidents to happen. Not just the same mindless kind of consumption we get used to in our already heavily scheduled lives, which is  designed to prevent accidents. What kind of practicing happens in the library? Sitting, thinking, reading, looking, interacting (with people and/or objects), sharing, helping, exploring, questioning... and what is honed on is sensory and intuitive (words taken from Boon), primarily because the rules are so diffuse. Librarians try to increase this through many tactics: eye-catching book or art displays in various corners or front and center is a fundamental tactic. Another is by leaving tools (creative tools) to be used. Crayons and various toys for the children and for adults, there are games (Scrabble, puzzles, etc) that are ready to be played with. Or not. The fact is they are there. Exhibits, in newer, more progressive libraries are becoming more common. For all of these, the public library is fairly unpredictable. One display changes to another, the games the change, so on and so forth. The books themselves are updated, newer editions found, older ones discovered.

As you can tell, I'm really satisfied with the library's approach to handling (pun intended, wait for it)  Community and Serendipity. But tactility is a bit harder... to... well... grasp. I love Boon's idea of making copies or, faux archival materials for patrons to touch and feel. I especially think this should be better included in grade school curriculum: STEM is huge, but young students never really view books as a tactile object to be studied itself, the book is always something from which information is only extracted mentally. If books were to be studied as objects in themselves (as archivists surely know much about - I don't. I'm not an archivist), I would think it would be a fascinating exploration into book binding, handwriting, paper (how it's made, the companies behind it, it's history...)... I could go on - but on the subject of tactility -

Experiential learning labs are now a huge marketing scheme for 21st century libraries: the main ingredient usually begs for a super expensive 3D printing machine and the rest has to do with CAD. I've never been interested in that stuff. I'm guilty of that, but I understand the phenomenon and why it is important. Rather, I believe libraries give people that 3rd space, away from home and work (either school or the office) to get away from it "all" and slow down their minds and think. To be able to do something tactile, you need to think. I'm sorry for saying this, but I'm a traditionalist in this respect: the quiet libraries offer since time immemorial is a necessary part of a functioning, healthy library that I don't want to see disappear. That is not to say meetings cannot be held, or spaces available or loud dance parties or movie viewing (things that libraries do that I think awesome!) but there is need to be that peace and quiet in the building for true tactility to become an option. Libraries that have the wherewithall and funds for it have practice rooms with a piano or other instruments that further facilitate tactility, giving people room to play with things they might not have at home or to try something different. Even richer libraries have recording studios.

Some notes in remark to discarded books: many of the books are filthy, and need to be thrown out for hygienic purposes if they cannot be saved. Other books, which have not seen use for some time (years and years), are collected and sent out to special organizations who send them the world over to places they see fit to use them. Vandalized books, if heavily vandalized, are usually discarded... but I do think it's a brilliant idea to save those for discussion in classrooms or wherever. For the most part, however, libraries like to keep their collections "clean" (which usually has nothing to do with age) so as to let readers come as close to the original text as possible without distraction. But, I will admit, part of the fun of going into library collections which are not "weeded" regularly is finding those vandalized books and thinking about them, which indeed does give us new ways of thinking about the text itself. Public libraries themselves are places of vandalization, whether it is a junkie's leftover needle, racist slander drawn in permanent marker on the shelf, a pee stain on the carpet, a torn out page. It is only in our imagination that we can find a place without rules. The fact is, those deeds are done at the public library: I doubt other places would be as forgiving.

One of Boon's most intriguing topics in her lecture is that of the specular economy. Sight distances, she says. We see things that look similar and note what is us and what is not us. Touch, Boon says, brings us together. The self and the other become connected. I'd like to say this: but seeing is touching too. As is sound. It enters the mind and stays, filling the body with emotion, with any feeling, with something. And there lies the magic, the enchantment, the spellbinding power of reading. To truly read something is to let it enter your consciousness, mingle with its chemicals and streams of thought, reside there until it gets tucked away in the recesses of memory or else stays alert and awake asking to be understood.