Salinas Californian
Septmeber 26th 2009
On the eve of the 100th anniversary celebration of the Salinas Public Library system, organizers are preparing a novel activity: A time capsule is being filled with artifacts of the 21st century to share with the Salinas residents who will open it 100 years from now.
What's inside? Among the items are an iPod, letters from schoolchildren, a copy of today's edition of The Salinas Californian and a cell phone.
That got us to thinking about what the founders of the Salinas Library might have included in a time capsule 100 years ago had they put one together for us to unseal Sunday. Technological advances were few. Books served as the Internet in those days. They were the portal to the world and the universe.
In 1909, they might have placed a photo of one of the Model T cars to come off the first Ford assembly lines in America. A copy of "The Road to Oz," Frank L. Baum's fourth book in the classical series about Dorothy and friends might have been included. Maybe a short-wave radio the first successful overseas broadcast took place in 1909. And, of course, letters from schoolchildren.
The role of the library then and now hasn't changed much. It is the nerve center for information and reference material about the immediate community and government. It also is the local link to a network of national and global resources for information and entertainment.
What has changed in 100 years is the sheer volume of information and the number of people with access to it.
A visit to the Steinbeck Library branch on Lincoln Street on Thursday afternoon found it to be more of a community center with a library component. The place was teeming with residents young and old, computers everywhere. The Literacy Center was filled with computer novices. Rows of children and teenagers surfed the Internet at numerous computer stations throughout the building. Two girls chatted quietly outside the Digital Art Lab on black lounge chairs. Across the room from them, a teenage boy sporting a Mohawk battled two younger challengers in a video game displayed on a flatscreen TV.
At the east end of the library, young mothers sat at tables in the juvenile section reading with their toddlers. Elementary school age children sat at yet more computers. Sprinkled about were what you might have seen in 1909, men reading a magazine or today's newspaper, girls and boys buried in reference books finishing a class assignment. Today's library is a fountain of resources and media videotapes, audiotapes, DVDs, books on tape, music CDs, speaker forums, children's shows, tutoring.
Did we mention the books?
Be it 100 years ago or 100 years in the future, a city expects its library to withstand the test of time. It's one of the institutions you point to when defining a city. The library speaks to a city's survival, its progress and culture, its quality of life, its soul. (There may be a few potholes in the street, but the library has the new Dan Brown novel!)
Over the course of its first 100 years, the Salinas Library itself has much to be thankful for. It couldn't ask for a better icon to promote its role, not only in this community but across the nation and internationally. How fortunate to have a Nobel Prize winner in literature to hang your hat on. The genius of John Steinbeck has helped put Salinas on the literary map. That significance sometimes is lost among local residents, but it's a huge deal. People travel across continents to visit Salinas, the home of Steinbeck and the Salinas Valley, where so much of his works take place. It's hard to imagine the city library system without him.
The city library has evolved from its rather elitist beginnings when it served an educated few into a thriving information and resource system with three branches, and a need for a fourth, serving a population in size and diversity unimagined by its founders.
As we know, progress hasn't come easy for the libraries. The Steinbeck name was not initially embraced by the city fathers. The author himself didn't like the idea of plastering his name on a public building. He preferred they name a bar after him.
And don't forget the perennial battles against the budget crises that have plagued us in the beginning of this century and still threaten the future of our libraries and other vital public services. That is, until people stood up to fight for their interests.
Come to think of it, that is a key ingredient to the time capsule that should be included: the resolve of Salinas residents to fight for their library; their thirst for knowledge, their need to stretch their intellects and imaginations; the moxie it takes to save the libraries financially and politically. These things, too, need to be in place 100 years from now.
Happy 100th anniversary, Salinas libraries.
