01/25/1988 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

e e e Mr. Coffey said history showed that it was a sign of a deteriorating culture or community when people began to disregard heritage, wisdom, and access to those, which was what a library was all about. "Itls also said that knowledge is that which is taken in by the sensory mechanisms of the body; wisdom is what is learned by applying that knowledge, and through the application of knowledge comes power--to people and power to a community as well. The collection and preservation of the knowledge that yields an expanding community is a library--that is where the treasure is held. As application of knowledge is to power, I believe that access to knowledge is to the potential of a community." Mr. Coffey said he viewed planning for the library as a model of the condition of the Eugene community, and he did not think the community could afford not to expand services. "Without access to the wealth of information that a library houses--in particular that this Eugene public library houses--what happens is that people canlt find answers to questions for themselves, and they lose that sense of empowerment in their own community. What happens worse is that, sooner or later, people begin to cease to ask questions," Mr. Coffey said, and he wanted to encourage the council and the constituents of the community to dwell on the abundance of this community, as represented in the library. He said a possibility existed for lithe entrepreneurs, the business leaders, the community leaders, the students, the children of this community to create a synergistic effect by meshing with the knowledge, the wisdom of people who in the past have made mistakes, learned great, profound lessons, and passed that information on for us to use and to hold in our library system." Mr. Coffey said he would not address economics, which was beyond his expertise. He was present, he said, "to feather the edges of acceptance of the fact that a library system is a huge resource. It should be considered as wealth in the community. Itls an intangible wealth. A library, done successfully, is not unlike a sunset or wilderness area-- it1s something a lot of people take for granted. But exposure to a sunset at the right time in your life--exposure to a wild area of beach at the right time in your life--can save your life. It can restore your faith in your fellow man, restore your faith in your community, restore your faith in what your calling is. Exposure to a sunset has been known to inspire people to greatness.1I Mr. Coffey closed by citing a quote from Gilbert Hyatt, who, sitting in the midst of an archeological library, had written, "Most of you have been in a library, and you1ve sat there amongst these shelves of books, some of them silly, some of them profound. These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voices, inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed day and night by electric waves beyond the range of our phYSical hearing. And just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the far, distant voice in time and space and hear it speaking to us--mind to mind, heart to heart." He said he believed it was the right of the citizens of Eugene to have expanded access to the wisdom and the MINUTES--Eugene City Council January 25, 1988 Page 9