Bernard Margolis on the public library and its history
Bernard Margolis was President of the Boston Public Library (BPL) from 1997-2008. Founded in 1848, the BPL was the first large free municipal library in the United States. Mr. Margolis has served on the Governing Council of the 63,000-member American Library Association (ALA), and has won many awards including \u201cColorado Librarian of the Year", two John Cotton Dana library public relations awards, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts\u2019 \u201cAward of Excellence? for his library-sponsored \u201cImagination Celebration."
He\u2019s also a master storyteller as you\u2019ll find out. We talk here about libraries as a public good, a culture of words and books designed to help everyone improve their lives, French ventriloquist and originator of the concept of the modern library Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864), the U.S. as a leader in realizing this concept, immigration and self learning, an informed citizenry as the best defense of liberty, democratic access to information, BPL as the first to have a newspaper room, branch libraries and a separate children\u2019s room, the Red Sox and the Yankees, why the ebook hasn\u2019t replaced the paperback, Brewster Kahle versus Google and the Internet archive, and the question of whether or not information will be \u2018free for all\u2019 to improve the world.