Are Libraries just for the Have-Nots?

In fall 2009, I was teaching high school and I surveyed all 65 of my students at a small private Christian school in Charlotte, NC about their thoughts about libraries. A couple of different students commented on the survey that they didn’t use the library, but they did think libraries are important for the less fortunate. Is that all that libraries are good for? Do most Americans see libraries as being just for the poor? Do the rich see them that way? Obviously these students thought they had access to all the information they needed, they had internet at home (and also most likely on their cell phone), could buy whatever books they needed, and could either download or buy whatever movies and music they wanted to. And honestly I sometimes wonder if the public library is really an institution mainly for the less-fortunate. I use my public library often to check out materials and to go there to read. I don’t use it for internet access because I can afford that at home. I use it to check out materials, because I can’t afford to buy them all.


School and academic libraries to me are clearly NOT just for the poor, because they both have important missions of teaching their students how to evaluate, find, and choose worthy information sources. Additionally academic libraries have access to tons of journals and articles that students need for their research, that it would be silly most of the time for a student to buy those articles and journals (unless everything went to a pay per article format). In the case of academic libraries students need the library because through the library is their only way to access these useful sources of information.

But public libraries… is it sacrilegious to say that I think the lower and middle classes probably use them much more often than the upper classes. Really for these classes the public library is an essential service. Please don’t misunderstand, I think public libraries are wonderful and awesome and should be a mandated service of the government because they provide services to all and in many cases help equal the playing field when it comes to access to information. But I am not sure that the rich in America need public libraries. They can get internet now in Starbucks or even McDonalds, many bookstores are now holding weekly story times… So are libraries just for the have-nots? Or just mostly for the have-nots?