Exterior of Wellington Central Library, featuring temporary fencing, roadcones and a cyclist

Wellington Central Library (Photo: RNZ/Kymberlee Fernandes)

BooksMarch 11, 2021

A last bastion of public space? Why the fight over Wellington’s library was so fiery

Guest writer

Wellington Central Library (Photo: RNZ/Kymberlee Fernandes)

The shitfight that ensued over a proposal to sell office space in Wellington’s Central Library saw anxieties over public space and social infrastructure converge, writes Salene Schloffel-Armstrong, an urban geographer who researches the place of public libraries in cities.

Wellington Central Library has been at the centre of an increasingly bitter dispute in recent weeks, after the city council voted to sell off part of the library building as office space. In response to loud and wide condemnation, several councillors had a change of heart and the library was given a reprieve.

Why was the debate over a small part of this single library building – whether the current structure or an imagined future building – so polarising and emotive?

The way we talk about public libraries in New Zealand has shifted over the last few years, with a growing focus on the large number of services libraries offer, and the wide-reaching social benefits of these spaces. In the 1990s we feared that a widespread digitisation of resources would lead to the demise of the library building. That has not come to pass – instead we see a resurgence in attention towards the social elements of physical libraries. The range of services taking place in library branches – including IT lessons for the elderly, toddler rhyme time sessions, book clubs for unhoused individuals – are now more widely known and supported.

Tūranga, 2018 (Photo: Kai Schwoerer via Getty Images)

However, public attitudes towards libraries are still polarised, with significant numbers of people in New Zealand still adamant that libraries are obsolete spaces and services that are a drain on public funds. Yet the vehement defence of libraries appears to be as loud as – or louder than – the dissent. Around the world, when a library is threatened, highly visible localised campaigns spring up: see the Save Our Libraries movement that pushed back hard in 2018 when the University of Auckland moved to close some of its specialist libraries.

This changing landscape of debate has altered the frontiers of defence for supporters of public library systems. After the Wellington council vote on February 18, instead of arguing full stop for the existence of a library building, the debate shifted to focus on how the “publicness” of the public library is central to its value. The proposition to sell off a portion of space in the existing library building was framed by mayor Andy Foster as a necessary cost-cutting measure that would allow the central library to reopen more quickly. Although the mayor denied this would be privatising a public asset, a number of city councillors were quick to note that is precisely what it would be. The response to this proposal – after the library’s privatisation was voted down by the same council in July last year – has been one of widespread outrage and passionate defence of the public ownership of the central library.

Libraries have been widely described as “the last truly public space” in contemporary cities. The library’s position as a rare non-commercial site in the city gives people equitable access to resources, but also helps with basic needs like using a bathroom, or having a place to shelter from the elements. As a place that is expressly designed to serve its wider community, the library offers services to library users regardless of their financial situation, citizenship or place of residence. As noted by geographer Kurt Iveson, libraries allow “a diversity of users, and a diversity of uses” within one space. In the library everyone can be a library user, and take part in public life. This is partially due to its non-commercial focus and continued funding by democratically elected officials (in New Zealand at least) who answer to a wider public.

It must be acknowledged, however, that library systems have direct and ongoing legacies based in colonial projects around education, and an idealised vision of them as neutral and completely equitable spaces is not particularly truthful, nor useful. Although the actual enactment of inclusion varies depending on the library and specific interactions with staff, many New Zealand libraries have gone out of their way to offer services to marginal and vulnerable communities. More broadly, in the debate about the place of libraries in the city, their focus on collective resources, shared space and free access has made them a strong symbol of resistance against the encroachment of private property and individualised resources. With the library feeling like the last bastion of public space against the overwhelming logic of private, individual and corporate ownership, attempts to bring commercial interests into the library space make many people – justifiably – nervous.

In my opinion, the debate around the library in Wellington is symbolic of larger ideological battles over private property and social service provision. However, this debate is also fundamentally about a specific building. To understand how the two intersect, we must look to the global and national context.

Skateboarders enjoy the area around the Oodi library in Helsinki — Oodi library in Helsinki, 2018 (Photo: Bahnfrend via Wiki Commons)

Although many library systems internationally are fighting for continued funding, a trend for new “flagship” library buildings has grown in recent decades as well. These flagship buildings are replacements of existing central city library buildings, reflecting the tenets of what American anthropologist Shannon Mattern called the third wave of library design. These libraries lend books, but they’re also public meeting places, access points for various social services and extended cafe zones, as well as architectural tourist attractions in their own right. Increasingly, these flagship libraries are acting as what Mattern calls “downtown anchors” – central pieces in urban redevelopment projects. This trend of flagship library construction can be clearly seen across Scandinavia, with new library complexes popping up in Helsinki, Oslo and Aarhus over the last 20 years.

These mega library projects are also often key within plans to revitalise city identities, and become highly symbolic fixtures in urban space. For example, Helsinki’s new central library Oodi opened in 2018 to commemorate the city’s anniversary. Oodi is described on its website as “a living meeting place”, “part of a cultural and media hub” that is “right at the heart of Helsinki”. The identity of contemporary Helsinki is closely tied to this new library centre.

Closer to home, we can of course look to Tūranga, the newly opened central library in Christchurch.

Tūranga’s construction was undertaken as an anchor project of the city rebuild. Although Tūranga was not free from these polarising debates over library funding, most of the criticism prior to its opening has disappeared, giving way to widespread community support of the building and its services. Tūranga has been a huge success as a flagship, with library visits far higher than predicted, and has also won several international architecture and design awards.

Flagship libraries have become increasingly symbolic, both as bastions of public space in the city, and as specific iterations of unique city identities. This loads yet more pressure onto debates like Wellington just had, with Tūranga representing to different factions either a direction to follow, or a large investment to avoid. However, Wellington is also currently in an infrastructural crisis, with a number of key city systems breaking down and simultaneously requiring massive investment. As noted by city councillors Tamatha Paul and Rebecca Matthews, in funding debates the tangible reality of wastewater and other forms of hard infrastructure have been weaponised to argue against the importance of other services. A binary is being set up that disregards the importance of soft or social forms of infrastructure within urban areas.

A child stands next to an adult in a chair, in a library — Tūranga, December 2018 (Photo: Kai Schwoerer via Getty Images)

The benefits of libraries and what they allow space for often only become tangible after they are gone. This has been seen widely in the United Kingdom where in 2018 alone, nearly 130 libraries were either closed or passed from their local government to another organisation in processes of privatisation or what’s been called “volunteerisation”. Result: shrinking collections of books, fewer physical library branches open to serve their communities, and severely reduced hours of access for those that remain open.

The introduction of private interests into these spaces reframes public services as financial liabilities rather than collective assets to be maintained. Even these partial attempts to privatise public libraries in New Zealand may start the slide towards reduced access to books, services and community space, for everyone.

As noted on Twitter by Rebecca Kiddle, by losing public ownership over part of the library building, the democratic processes that dictate how that space is used are lost. Those collective rights over particular sites in the city are increasingly hard to regain. A capital city that has functioning hard infrastructure, but no public and social spaces for its communities, does not fit my definition of a successful urban centre. To maintain a central library as a public asset provides a space for all Wellington residents to be part of the city fabric, regardless of their resources. As we rebuild our cities in the wake of Covid-19, I hope spaces for community – spaces that combat social isolation, and that are inclusive to entire publics – would be considered as a priority, not as an afterthought.

Keep going!

OPINIONBooksMarch 9, 2021

Horton hears a whinge: On teachers and Dr Seuss, who is not cancelled nor banned

Louise Drummond

Guest writer

Louise Drummond has a message for teachers who are upset that a handful of lesser-known Dr Seuss books are going out of print: get a grip.

Most of the time, I’m very proud to be a primary school teacher in New Zealand. We work hard, we love our students, and we continually strive to improve our practice and get better.

Well, most of us.

I lose a bit of faith in my profession occasionally when I go on the NZ Primary Teachers Facebook group. In amongst the amazing resources, good conversation and admittedly repetitive book recommendations, there exists a reactionary aspect that I find super depressing.

This was really evident last week in a discussion about Dr Seuss.

The news? That Dr Seuss’s estate had chosen to cease publication of six of his early works, citing racial imagery that they considered “hurtful and wrong”. They’re right. Dr Seuss’s early work contains a lot of racism, which was acknowledged by none other than Dr Seuss himself, when he went back to make edits to the wording and illustrations in at least one of his works.

The six Dr Seuss books that will not be published in future

Seems simple, right? Dr Seuss wrote over 60 books. We’ve still got 90% of his work available for purchase. And the old copies of the out-of-print books aren’t going anywhere. They’re not banned. They won’t be burned. No one’s going to come and growl you for owning them.

This nuance was too complex for a few Seuss stalwarts. Highly agitated by the decision to stop publishing a half dozen books that nobody ever recommended in the “what should I read to my students next?” conversations, they ranted in the comments about the “fun police” and how the “world has gone bonkers”.

What would be banned next, one teacher lamented. Rainbow Fish? The BIBLE?!

What if I want to teach my kids about racism? I will need this book to show them the racial imagery!

Okay, dudette.

1: It’s not banned. (The Bible, however, is heavily edited for children. Who wants to read Judges 19 to their kids? No one teaches that. Yuck.)

2. You still can teach If I Ran The Zoo if you really want. The book still exists.

3. Why the everloving FUCK would you want to?

I’m going to try not to swear in the rest of this post, but I feel this warranted an f-bomb. If you, white teacher, are planning to use racist imagery to teach primary school children about racism, then stop teaching immediately. That’s not how you do it. You do not need to show a cartoon image of an Asian man with “slanty eyes” to teach racism to your multicultural students. Trust me, your Asian students have put up with this sort of nonsense from people already. The West is chock-full of anti-Asian racism, which has been connected with murder. Children of colour do not need some dopey teacher with good intentions paving the road to a racist hell. And before you say “but Lou, that link leads to an American site, NZ is much kinder!”, here’s a link to our own ugly toxicity.

Most importantly, this isn’t up for debate. It is literally in the Teachers’ Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards of the Teaching Profession. We need to be protecting our students from harm, respecting diversity and culture, being fair, and effectively managing our assumptions and personal beliefs.

Whomp, there it is.

Use your reading comprehension, teachers. Here we go.

1. Dr Seuss has not been “cancelled”.

This is not “cancel culture”. Dr Seuss’s own estate is simply choosing to take six old books out of publication. This happens to books all the time. If we still published everything ever written, our planet would be drowning in pages. (I don’t moan because they stopped publishing Sweet Valley High books. Those books were icons of my childhood, so you can cope with these ones vanishing. )

You can still purchase and teach all of his other books. The Lorax is great. Horton Hears a Who is cool. Go for it! It’s a free country! None of his books are banned, and there’s no plans for them to be!

OR, you could take a break from Seuss and teach a book from this century? There’s lots of good ones. As teachers, it’s our job to expose children to great books. This doesn’t just mean old classics. This means diverse books of all kinds, by diverse authors. This means that as teachers, we should be reading modern children’s literature and keeping up with “Best of 2020” lists, etc. We should be recommending new books. Don’t recommend the Famous Five, The BFG, or Holes to other teachers. We all know them. Everyone knows they’re good. Find newer stuff!

I introduced my reluctant reader students to Raina Telgemeier and Kazu Kibuishi this way, and they’re now massively popular authors. If you haven’t heard of them, teachers, you’re out of touch. My boys were queued up to read my copy of Smile until our librarian ordered Telgemeier’s back catalogue so we could have extra copies. I had to tape up my Amulet series because it couldn’t handle the quantity of kids passing it around. Kids love when you can introduce a book to them. Libraries can be overwhelming with the amount of choice. A teacher saying, “try this, it’s awesome!” can be super helpful to all kinds of readers.

A couple of years ago, I was searching for a good book for my Year 5 and 6 class. I chose Morris Gleitzman’s Once, a story about a Jewish boy during World War 2. I chose it knowing I would have to provide context about the war, about antisemitism, and about the Nazi regime to children aged 10 and 11. So I did. (And hey, I managed to do it without showing them any antisemitic children’s books or illustrations!)

They were free to ask any question they wanted – and they did, even about the main character’s circumcision! All of them loved the book, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I read the second one. I refused to continue after that, because I wanted to introduce them to other literature. So most of them requested the other four books in the series from the library themselves. They absorbed every copy in the Auckland library circuit and ended up having to reserve copies on a waitlist. It spread to the neighbouring Year 5 and 6 class. I had to instigate a school-wide spoiler ban. Several of the children went on to read other war-themed books, and one precocious and intelligent 10 year old even began her own independent research project on the Nazis and the Holocaust, with full support from her parents. She began reading The Diary of Anne Frank.

We have the power to inspire kids with our choice of texts. Don’t waste this opportunity by reading the same books and authors they’ve read every year.

2. Educate yourself before you participate.

Yes, there are conversations about if the Cat in the Hat is appropriate. If you want to participate in that conversation, get educated about African-American stereotypes. Don’t just prance in claiming that you “just can’t see the problem!” Refusing to acknowledge other perspectives in a discussion doesn’t add anything of value and it just makes you look foolish. As teachers, we wouldn’t put up with it from our students.

If you don’t want to educate yourself on the issues, that’s your choice. But in that case, just abstain from the conversation. You don’t have to have a strong opinion on everything, especially if you don’t know the facts. As teachers, we need to be comfortable saying, “I don’t have enough information to have an opinion on that.” In fact, we as people should all be able to say that. Being reactionary doesn’t benefit our profession, and it can damage our students.

And for heaven’s sake, read more than just the headlines before reacting. It’s embarrassing.

3. We get it, you liked the book as a kid. That’s OK.

Don’t pretend that anyone’s calling you racist for enjoying the books as a kid. You didn’t know the background of the images when you were a kid. That’s fine. But now you know, so what are you going to do?

Here’s a story. When I was a kid, I liked golliwog toys. I thought they were cute and friendly-looking. I had no idea what a minstrel was. When I learned the background in my late teens, I reflexively tried to insist that they were OK, that they didn’t mean anything here in New Zealand, it was different here. But you know what? I was wrong. When I was told I was wrong by a justifiably unimpressed African American girl online, I didn’t like it at first. It was hard to hear, because I didn’t like to think that I’d contributed to racism. I was a textbook case of white fragility. But once you’re told, you can’t plead ignorance anymore. And as an adult, I have a greater understanding of racial context and I know golliwogs are not OK. It’s about learning and growing. No one’s going to cancel you for liking these stories and toys as a kid. You can have a fond memory of them. But you can also change and grow as a person and acknowledge that context matters.

And as teachers, if we can’t have a growth mindset, then we need to leave the profession. We cannot expect our students to do things that we cannot be bothered doing. And that includes growing out of racist ideas.

This piece was first published on Louise Drummond’s blog, halfwaythere.co.nz