Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The idea is that libraries can (theoretically) be an aid to class mobility, which other public services can't (even theoretically) claim.
Anecdotal evidence proves that it *can* happen, albeit nowhere near as often as it should.
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I'm a little skeptical of a strong form of this claim - there is really strong evidence that public education adds to class mobility (education is second only to inherited wealth as a determiner of class), but I haven't seen anything comparable for libraries (which, in any event, only work if there is some baseline literacy).
I suspect that library supporters in the 19th century did have class mobility as a goal, but in practice having access to Principia Mathematica or The Aenead did not lead to members of the working class with an 8th grade education teaching themselves calculus or Latin. Basically, mere access to books is not enough. However, libraries can be used to leverage already existing education - if, having learned calculus or to read the Aenead, you want more calculus or Latin, libraries are good at meeting this need.
I think that this kind of leveraging is important, as it can dramatically increase the breadth of your education - but it presupposes a certain level of education in the first place. This may well add some to class mobility, but not in a dramatic way.
It is possible that the availability of children's books - especially for preschoolers - may have an effect on class mobility, as there is good evidence that reading to young kids makes them smarter and better students. So if parents of modest means are able to obtain a lot of books to read to their kids (and libraries do contain a lot of books of these types), there may be stronger effect on class mobility than otherwise. It is just hard to know what this might be, as the effect can only work if there are also actively interested parents who will go to the library, find the books, and then take the time to read them to their children. Kids with parents like this may do well under any circumstances.
All of these examples deal with children; I can't see libraries having much effect on social mobility after age 18...with the important exception of free internet access.
Of course, public libraries have been around a long time (over 150 years in my city), and their mission has changed quite a bit: originally, they were about access to knowledge, in the sense of technical works or works of classic literature; now (and I think since the 50's) they are a lot more about access to books, especially fiction, generally. You can see this in the Dewey Decimal System, which simply assigned literature a number, like any other small branch of knowledge: American literature was assigned 813. This is also why I've never been to a library that used DD for fiction, since that would result in probably half of the books in the entire library (or at least in a branch library) being in the 800's.