Libraries and Reading
Joseph Branin, Director of Libraries
After-dinner Speech, December 14, 2000
Ohio State University, Orton Hall, Geology Library
Good evening. Thank you President Kirwan.
This beautiful library in Orton Hall where we are having dinner tonight is our oldest operating library on campus. The first site of the University Library was in University Hall, where Dean Hogan and the College of Humanities are located today. In 1893, when the collection had reached about 13,000 volumes, it was moved to this site in Orton Hall, and this library served as the University Library until 1913, when the new Main Library, the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library opened. Now the Orton Hall Library serves as our Geology Library. Its size, proportions, beautiful woodwork, and careful preservation make it a true University treasure.
I want to thank Patti and Brit Kirwan, Deborah and Jerry May, and Virginia and Michael Hogan, and my wife Anita for hosting this dinner for us in this beautiful and historic geology library and museum.
And I do want to recognize the development staff who are here this evening who work so hard and effectively to connect us with our wonderful friends and supporters: Linda Seitz, Shannon Tippie, and our newest development officer, Kaye Madden.
I would like to talk to you this evening for just a few minutes about a topic that is often taken for granted at a university – that is the topic of reading. Because it is such a fundamental skill, we don’t often recognize its importance in higher education. But recently I was reading an announcement about the University’s latest Selective Investment awards, and it made me think about this topic. The purpose of Selective Investment awards is to recognize and invest in our best academic programs at Ohio State, those programs that show great promise of bringing national and international recognition to themselves and to the University. This year the selective investments were awarded to five academic programs: Cardiovascular Bioengineering, the Department of Economics, the Department of English, the College of Law, and the Department of Mathematics. James Phelan, the Chair of the English Department, made this statement about his program after winning a Selective Investment award. “English is one of the central disciplines in a liberal arts education. We train people to be good readers, writers and critical thinkers, and we keep alive a significant part of our cultural heritage by making literature of the past relevant to the present. The core of what we do is central to the university, and educates the citizenry of the state and country.”
There is much in that elegant statement of purpose on which I could comment, but I just want to draw your attention to the first part of it: “we train people to be good readers.” What a simple, profound, self-evident statement this is. “We train people to be good readers.” I hope we take that purpose very seriously in all of our roles as educators, parents, community leaders, and employers -- for reading is the gateway to knowledge and the most basic, fundamental skill of a modern literate, scientific, and technological society.
But we should never take reading for granted. Do you know that according to the National Institute for Literacy, more than 20 percent of the adult population in the United States read at or below a fifth grade level. The United Nations has declared literacy to be a basic human right, yet there are more than a billion adults worldwide who cannot read or write at all, and more than 40 million American adults who have difficulty with basic literacy.
We must do all we can to assure that children grow up with plenty of books around them and that they learn to read at an early age and grow to appreciate and enjoy reading throughout their lives.
One of the principles of our new Academic Plan is to view education holistically. The University must be and wants to be involved in the community, and we want to be part of K-12 education – and I think this is particularly important in the area of reading skills and reading appreciation. Patti Kirwan provides a good role model for us in this effort. She has been leading the University’s involvement in the ColumbusReads program, which is part of the larger OhioReads program championed by Governor Taft. As a result of Mrs. Kirwan’s efforts, 200 university faculty and staff now volunteer two hours a week to tutor young at-risk students in reading at Columbus public schools. I am proud to be one of those tutors, and I can tell you it is a most worthwhile and rewarding experience.
Reading literacy opens the gateway to knowledge, but in today’s information rich world, that gateway often seems like a floodgate that we cannot shut. In addition to traditional print formats such as books and journals, today, we have to contend with a new array of digital formats such as Web pages and e-mail messages. Regardless of the format, reading skills are still necessary, at least as far as I can tell.
As I reported to some of you about a month ago, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, recently released a report on the enormous and rapidly growing size of the information universe. These Berkeley researchers estimate that there is now between one and two exabytes of information produced each year worldwide. An exabyte, by the way, is a billion gigabytes. I am not sure exactly what that means, but it’s a lot of bytes of information!
So in addition to basic literacy, educated readers must also be critical, discriminating readers and possess what we call information and computer literacy skill. What information is most important, what information is accurate and reliable, where can I find the kind of relevant and correct information in the universe of exabytes that I need to complete my assignment, my research paper, or answer basic questions about health care, business, or consumer decisions?
This more advanced form of information and computer literacy is a skill that librarians at Ohio State try to provide to our students. We actually have one of the most advanced information literacy training programs in the country. Through lectures, research assignments, one-on-one reference assistance, and now online tutorials and guides, we try to reach every undergraduate at the University.
A library of the size and complexity of ours at Ohio State is usually referred to as a “research library,” but I also like to think of us as a “teaching library.” We want all students at Ohio State to graduate with strong skills in basic and advanced literacy. If you have time, I recommend you take a look at the online tutorials and guides we have prepared for students that are available from the Libraries’ homepage. One online option is called the “Gateway to Information,” and it is designed to guide students through a subject search for information in a systematic and effective manner, beginning with background information and ending with advanced, specialized sources for the subject in question. The other online tool we have created is called “net.TUTOR” and it is an online tutorial in how best to use the Internet for research. NetTUTOR was created with support from a University Academic Enrichment Grant, and last year it was used by 110,000 people, 104 classes at the University, and was linked to 454 other educational sites on the Internet.
Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the first English language dictionary, use to say “knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.” We want our students to have both kinds of knowledge.
Finally, let me mention an aspect of reading that is very dear to my heart, and that is the place where we best facilitate and celebrate reading – our libraries. One of my favorite books about libraries is entitled Reading Rooms. It is an anthology of what American writers, such as Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen King, James Baldwin, and Annie Dillard have said in their stories and poetry about libraries and librarians. Contained in this anthology is a passage from an autobiography called Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood that I would like to read to you. It's written by Susan Allen Toth, a Midwestern author, who was born in 1940 and grew up in Ames, Iowa. This is what Ms. Toth remembers about libraries:
Whenever I hear the words inner sanctum I think of the Ames Public Library. It was a massive stone temple, with imposing front steps that spread on either side into two flat ledges, overhung by evergreens. Waiting for my mother to pick me up, I could sit almost hidden on the cool stone blocks, surveying passing cars with a removed superiority. Safely perched on my pedestal, surrounded by my stacks of new books, I always felt unusually serene, bolstered by the security of the library behind me and the anticipation of the books beside me. Even to the moment of leaving it, my visits to the library were high occasions.
Of course, I want visits to all our libraries at Ohio State to be “high occasions” for our students, faculty, and friends. With your help and support we can ensure that reading and reading rooms flourish at this great University. Thank you and I wish you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year!
Joseph Branin
December 14, 2000