Uxbridge_Public_Library.JPG

Uxbridge Free Public Library

(Wikipedia Commons)

Uxbridge's new library director said she was "blindsided" when her request for a new fire escape turned into a debate with a selectman on the role of libraries and the value of fiction.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone attack a department like that," Carolann MacMaster said in an interview Tuesday. "And that's what it was, he was attacking the library."

On Monday, Uxbridge selectmen were presented with the town's proposed capital projects list. Among the $72 million in projects proposed for the next four years was $75,000 to add a fire escape to the Uxbridge Free Public Library.

The meeting ended in a "heated exchange" over the role of public libraries between selectman Peter Baghdasarian and the town's new library director, according to Telegram & Gazette coverage of the meeting.

Baghdasarian questioned the amount of fiction in the library's collection, and explained he is wary about spending taxpayer money on a luxury that is more about entertainment than education.

"If you think about it, why do people go to libraries? They want to get a bestseller and they don't want to pay for it," Baghdasarian said in an interview Tuesday.

The selectman, a former member of the school committee, said libraries are no longer a necessity, as they were in the 18th century when Benjamin Franklin started America's first lending library. Back then, he said, people who couldn't afford books went to the library to learn, while today they are used for entertainment.

To back up this claim, Baghdasarian said the library's collection is 70 percent fiction.

"In addition to books, we have DVDs and so forth, which are very nice but it's an expanded use of the library," Baghdasarian said.

MacMaster disputed the selectman's statistics, saying the library has more non-fiction sources than works of fiction. Baghdasarian said he got his figures from a report by the town's previous library director.

MacMaster said she couldn't understand how her request for a fire escape led to an assault on the library's collection.

"Charles Dickens was a fiction writer, do we not value him in a library because he wrote fiction?" MacMaster said. "It kind of takes the fun out of life."

MacMaster, who started the job on Dec. 21, said she attended the meeting intending only to introduce herself.

The new fire escape would allow the library to make better use of its third floor, which is now only accessible by a narrow spiral staircase. The library's community room is up there, but it can't be used for that purpose because staff members fear people wouldn't be able to get out quickly in an emergency, MacMaster said.

The library's North Main Street building, built in 1876, also needs a new boiler, MacMaster said.

Baghdasarian said he is happy to have a library in town, but when the town is nearing its borrowing limit and still has to pay for roads, bridges and an upgrade to the sewer plant, the library takes a back seat.

"The question is, what portion of the money we (the government) take from people, by force, should be allocated toward that?" he said.

Personally, Baghdasarian said his home library has more than 4,000 books, many of which were purchased from libraries clearing their shelves of little-used titles. He doesn't have much use for fiction, though.

"Napoleon is always Napoleon, but in a fiction book the names are all different, so I can't retain them," he said.