Here’s what the article says, “wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources.” Now friends, think about what this means — especially if you are a school or public librarian: your library may be the only place for kids to find versions of the cultural richness that wealthier kids are being led to in person, on tablets, through vacations, tutors, and fun-filled afternoon spent exploring everything from Google Earth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Those kids, who need to stay in the library because their single parent is working and there is no money for child care and they are not old enough to be latch-key kids, or there is no transportation right after school — have you. And you have the books and sites to open their eyes to the universe.

Now I realize you already offer those resources, this is not easy, and a library alone cannot fix the intersecting and complex problems the experts quoted in the article found so daunting. But what Marina and I keep seeing is that school can do only so much, especially because classrooms are between the Scylla of testing (and thus teaching focusing on names and dates and testable information), and the Charybdis of the “readers and writers” teaching program which places endless emphasis on the self: what do I feel, my personal essay, my friendly letter to a famous person, me, me, and more me. Neither the tests nor the focus-on-self offer exactly what kids who don’t have resources at home need: culture, depth, enrichment, a sense of a world totally beyond and outside them that both has demands and offers new horizons of opportunity. The library, then, is the one resource that exists already, is in kids’ lives, is filled with resources that transcend the classroom, and is staffed by you.

It would be insane to imagine that librarians alone could solve the economic education gap; but it is just simple truth that you see that gap right in front of your eyes, you have resources, and your rooms are a place to start. Indeed as we debate what do about the gap, libraries need to step forward and the demand new resources they need. Just when some claim we don’t need librarians, you need to show your are more needed than every before.

We authors, and our books, are the touch point, the contact point, between knowledge as it is taking shape — right now — and young people. When some say — who needs books, who needs libraries, let’s let kids go straight out to Infotrac — they miss the crucial need for translation — not to dumb down, but to connect. Speaking for myself, as a person with a doctorate in history, I don’t go straight to primary sources — I go to academic books by experts who know how to read and analyze those sources — so that when I get to the archives myself, I am oriented, I understand the traps, the debates, the old views and the new ones. So if that makes sense for a trained reader and researcher, why not for young people — why send them out into the wilds of the net — or the tamed net of a database — without a guide. It is so strange — we overprotect and overschedule kids, one adult run music class, sports class, enrichment class after another — no pick up games, no roaming about on their own in physical real life — but then to learn, to understand, we do the opposite — as if they needed no training to gain knowledge.

Sally told another wonderful story — about one young victim of the Halifax blast whose life she tracked down in writing Blizard of Glass. The story of her detective work was dramatic in and of itself. So if last week I was suggesting one of you create a database of author’s journey’s how about a website of — the story behind the story — where we authors tape, or videotape, or type up one or two stories behind the books we publish — like the old fashioned General Store that was half post office, half food store, half haberdashery, half swap meet for stories — where we each leave one or more research adventure stories. You can linger to look at a chapter or some photos, you can click around to check out different accounts, click through to set up an author visit — and, this is a post for another day — we could even post chapters we loved but decided not to print — outtakes as they have in the bonus CDs of moviews. All in the nonfiction General Store.

The goal of the Social Network giants is to “frictionlessly” link us to our interests (as established by previous foreys) and to others with similar tastes. It is as if we were now in Hawaii, out of the waves, but tethered by invisible, and unbreakable, cords to every other surfer dude in the world — we become involuntary catamarans — every solo now just one outrigger matched by others and pulling a load. We are less and less exploratory, more and more bound into little circles, while the aggregators of information know more and more about us.

This is not like warning kids about dirty old men pretending to be cool teenagers and arranging fatal dates. It is more like living in Feed or some other dystopian novel — where the enemy is our friend and our friend’s actual ability to help us. It is as if, in the Golden Compass trilogy, our daemons turned digital, but then like cyber sheep dogs nudged us into line — making it ever easier to follow previous curiousities and to be linked to others like us — in other words to remain in an artificial childhood where we never really explore and grow. The great value of physical books and physical libraries — you need to browse, to pass other books as you meander — to your flush up against the unexpected, and by yourself to decide whether to explore it.

The fact that Stalin starved some 3 million Ukrainians to death was not entirely new to me — I researched it and wrote about it my Hoover book. But the details, the details — the details are a punch in the stomach because they push you to think about impossible choices. Stalin was able to destroy so many lives because people did his bidding — some from fear, a totally reasonable fear, that if they did not show enthusiasm for blaming the Ukrainians for their own starvation, they too would be murdered; some because they really did look at starving families and were disgusted — somehow believing that people would murder their own children to harm Socialism; some because they did not care — everyone who participated chose to do so.

Which is the powerful, powerful lesson — you must pay attention to your own doubt, your own hesitation, you must be the voice the raises questions — even if you are totally wrong; you must break the silence. Last night I saw a short documentary on Flip Shulke http://www.flipschulke.com/ I knew Flip — worked on a book with him. He worked with Dr. King — he was the eyes of the nation taking photos of the Civil Rights struggle, he chose to show the funerals, the dogs, the fire houses, the bleeding faces, the faces of white rage. He showed the nation what no one captured in the Bloodlands — individual stories that made the nation invervene, and the violence stop. One man’s choice, and history changed. For the Bloodlands all we can do is mourn, and vow to choose life, to choose truth, to choose speaking out.

Which brings me to any and all of you, librarian friends, who read this. Could someone start to compile a database of NF books (and sites linked to books) in which the author said something about his/her journey in researching and writing? Having one central listing, perhaps searchable by age and genre, would make it so much easier for the rest of us to know where to look for such books — could even create a new kind of book talk in which you compare and contrast research styles — and, not incidentaly, might inspire other authors, editors, and publishers to make this a regular and expected gift from the author to his/her readers.

If there were one place to find out what everyone is doing with research logs, we might learn from one another — following Loree, maybe we should all create book trailers on our sites — or if we go to interesting places, take some video that we upload; if we find a primary source that is fascinating in its own right, above and beyond the way we use it in the book, we could scan in the image and include it in a “research file” that is not the book, but adds to the value of the book for some teachers and students. Maybe readers could be prompted to ask as much about how we researched books as how we write them (or how much we make, which comes up so often in school visits we all ought to hire some comedy writer to provide us with a standard answer). There is much fun to be had — and all the more so if there were one central place that kept track of and displayed what we’re doing. Anyone game?

Mazower is a clear writer who has read across many languages, and establishes convincing themes. A main focus of is book is that, looking back from today it is easy to argue that liberal democracy is somehow normal for Europe, or that Europe is inherently drawn to democracy. He shows how, in the 1930s, quite the opposite was true. Two ideologies that disdained democracy: fascism and communism, were clearly gaining strength in both popularity and in the number of nations which turned to them, while liberal democracy had proven itself to be a total failure after WWI. One of the keys to the rise of the anti-democratic movements was the emotion I mention in the title: contempt. Contempt is to scorn, to dismiss, I found one etymology that links it to “a whiff of breath through the nostrils, or protruded lips” — an expression of disgust. In the 30s, fascists and communists saw themselves, and seemed to many, strong, masculine, determined, linked to modernity, to the technological destiny of the 20th century and the iron laws of evolution, science, and history. Liberal democracy was thus weak, ineffectual, bourgeois in its worst sense of simultaneously almost senile and oppressive.

That contempt allowed people to blind themselves to the implications of their own thinking — the need for the mass to overule the individual. I suspect that contempt is so powerful because it is directed as much against the inner self of the person who expresses it as at his enemy. It is a kind of self-bullying — to kill off any doubt, to crush it, to dismiss it, and replace it with the iron certainty of superiority and truth. Contempt is the direct opposite of doubt. We often teach young people about cliques, peer pressure, mean girls, gangs — they read The Crucible, and Lord of the Flies, and go through endless state-mandated anti-bullying programs. But I wonder if we might pause to look at one emotion — contempt — and another — doubt — and teach them to turn away from the easy power of the first, and value the frail, life-giving strength, of the second.

Experiment: go to your library (where you work, or one near you) and look: does it have a J NF section? Does it have an adult NF section? Does it have a YA NF section?

Thought experiment: for libraries that have NF sections in the two other ages categories but not YA, two questions immediately come to mind: why not — that is to say, what was the thinking on the part of the administration and staff which suggested that in teenage, readers would have no interest in the world, no need for information on health, sexuality, jobs, college admission, the military, war, poverty, pets, anime, sports…– and, why haven’t patrons complained — that is, what set of expectations for the library do readers 12-18 have such that they would not even expect to find such a section, and thus protest if it is not there?

Now it is true that the YA NF award from YALSA is new (congratulations to Steve Sheinkin), and the very newness reflects the fact that there has not been a great deal of older YA NF published. Although there have always been a trickle of memoirs, NF graphic novels and graphic novel memoirs, of hard lives — gangs, drugs, being a boy soldier, various forms of oppression — often with some form of redemption that are not J and not adult. And, see above, teenagers have always needed, and sought out, the kind of information NF provides. Much if not all of that sort of information can be found on the net — but that could be said of many sections of the library. A library curates — it selects and presents materials suited to its patrons. So why have neither those who run the library nor those who use it recognized this gap? Why would anyone imagine that in teenage, teenage of all age groups! — one would suddenly have no interest in NF, or need for what it offers?

Why have we equated YA and fiction even in the structure and layout of too many libraries? I leave you to check your library, and ask yourself these questions.

The Times article mentions several cautions about how this will work out. But I would add another — which relates to the kerfuffle this week between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It is one thing to say that any of us can now easily and inexpensively start creating enhanced ebooks. It is quite another to figure out the rights to all of the enhancements. Where is this video, audio, animation, illustration going to come from? Sure there are wonderful resources such as the Library of Congress. But to me this e-opportunity is also a rights crunch. To really be a land rush into new forms of experiment, we need to redefine how we clear and pay for rights permissions — for books like ours that will continue to have small budgets. Sure some creators can make their own art, and some books will do fine with what is easily available to the general public, some books will be personal and make use of the treasures of the family attic or the school yearbook — imagine an e-yearbook that includes audio and video of and by the students, sound clips from student poetry readings, home video of a clutch basket at a big game, and an embedded facebook page (I am making this up, not sure what is actually possible) where instead of signing a print copy, each student can sign in to the page (or decide not to).

There are concerns. But, friends, the message is clear: experiment, experiment, experiment. I suspect that nearly everything you or I can create easily with these new tools will be a financial failure. The world is not beating a path to our doors — or through the wilds of the iBookstore — to see what our enhanced ebooks. Most likely, we will be ignored. But we will learn — learn how to do it better next time, learn what more we need to know, learn how to direct and advise large publishers when they do (or stall and do not) consider creating their own enhanced e-versions of our books. We will learn by doing — every librarian with a teen reading group, should experiment with creating some enhanced ebook out of their common discussions and interests; every author with a gleam in his or her eye — Go Try, Friends, Go Try. That is what I plan to do.