In the rush to save branch libraries, let's not forget problems at the central library

The telling quote in that blog post comes from Michael Ross: "The BPL is tailor-made for philanthropy." That's the essential attitude toward libraries from our municipal leadership these days. They're luxuries. If rich people want them around, they should pay for them. And if that's true of the branches, it's doubly true of the central research collection.

This is a betrayal of a great public trust. The BPL has several historical claims to fame: it was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use. As a public research library, it is eclipsed only by New York's, and stands well ahead of any other collection.

So what? Why does Boston, home to some of the leading university collections, need to support a first-rate research library, the bulk of whose collections are used by a comparative handful of patrons?

Because of what it does for our city as a whole. We provide all sorts of services that are used directly by a few, but whose public benefit ultimately diffuses to the many. A research collection serves to attract and retain a large scholarly community. Given that higher education is among the city's leading industries, it's a crucial advantage. People travel from all over the world to use the resources at the BPL; they also come to live in Boston, in part because they know they'll have access to them. That's not true of the university collections, most of which set strict limits on public access, or charge steep fees. The fruits of the research at the BPL serve a public good, as well - much like other, better understood forms of research. Just as we grant tax breaks to research institutions to subsidize their work, maintaining a public research collection subsidizes the production of generally beneficial works.

More than the practical value, there is the signal of our values. We built the thing in the first place because we wanted to signal to the world that Boston took its cultural and educational responsibilities seriously. It worked. Boston thrived as a center of the knowledge based economy a century before anyone thought in those terms. Conversely, allowing for the slow erosion of the institution sends the opposite signal - that Boston is no longer a place that sees education as a public good, that it has abandoned its commitment to expanding access to knowledge. That, I suspect, would be the most damaging thing of all. We don't benefit from an abundance of natural resources, from a central geographic location, or from a concentration of industrial production. Boston's economy is driven by knowledge. If the city disinvests in its great repository of knowledge, it places that at risk.