We here at Olivia Waite can’t seem to stop talking about libraries—especially since every other day there is some new game-changing idea or industry development that needs thinking about.

Today’s (or actually yesterday’s) thing was a post by Andy on Agnostic, Maybe that argues in favor of corporate sponsorship as a way of finding funding for libraries with shrinking budgets.

If you’re anything like me, your brain went here:

Fierce Creatures (Theatrical Trailer) by NakedBrotha2007

And if you’re anything like me,  especially if you’ve seen Fierce Creatures, you have a hearty distrust of corporate sponsorship. You’ve looked at its effects on major league baseball, for instance, and the terrible things that can happen when corporate interests are at odds with customer interests.

Agnostic, Maybe got this wonderful, awful idea after watching a recent documentary about product placement by a filmmaker whose name rhymes with Schmorgan Schmurlock. Earlier this week, Edward Champion at Reluctant Habits posted an interesting review of this very film and its whole gimmick:

I had hoped that the Unnamed Documentary would be a legitimate protest against corporate sponsorship using its very tools — see Chumbawamba taking money from GM to use “Pass It Along” in a commercial and then disseminating the GM money to Corpwatch to protest it, which is a very funny statement about the futility of activism. But the Filmmaker plans on taking all the money. To my knowledge, he doesn’t plan on giving the profits to anti-corporate forces or people who want to fight advertising in all of its horrific forms. There is nothing in the press notes or the end credits to suggest that he will do this. In other words, the Unnamed Documentary stands for nothing save the Filmmaker’s materialistic gains.

In short, the film is about how product placement happens, but it never questions the consequences of product placement on either individuals or the larger culture. I find this morally suspicious—especially since there are rumors that the filmmaker is planning to make another movie just like this one, therefore playing us all for suckers.

Corporate sponsorship is a dark and soulless place where libraries should fear to tread.

One of the reasons that Andy supports this unsettling proposition is that we will no longer have to listen to the gripes of people who believe that libraries are a part of the wasteful government spending all the kids are talking about these days:

The ideal of the public institution for the common benefit is no longer good enough to win the budget day anymore; the common anti-public library refrain is that “I don’t want my tax dollars paying for other people’s entertainment/literature/ computer use”. Compared to the relative status of police, fire, ambulance, and even sanitation, the library is perceived as a luxury community expenditure. In taking money from interested corporations, public librarians can tell those anti-library people that their money is no longer being used for that.

For one thing, I could find you plenty of people who don’t want tax dollars to go to police, fire, ambulance, sanitation, or anything else—is this a good enough reason for the government to stop providing police, fire, etc.?

For another, if libraries are perceived as a luxury expenditure, then maybe a better idea would be to change the perception rather than allowing library critics to carry the argument.

Or—we could find a third option.

Read more…