Hour Correspondent

"Books and libraries are doing fine," said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Gregorian was at Westport's Bedford Middle School on April 29 to talk about the importance of libraries in society. The discussion was the sixth in the Annual Malloy Lecture in the arts, an educational venue that encourages dialogue and discussion, hosted by the Westport Library.

The optimistic speech was given to a filled auditorium, which seemed to prove Gregorian's point: "On the whole, humanity loves reading."

Gregorian is a leading authority on library philanthropy, not only as president of Carnegie, a grant making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911, but also as president of the New York Public Library for eight years.

David E. McKinney, former president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former colleague of Gregorian's from the days they both were at Brown University, speaks highly of Gregorian.

"He holds over 60 honorary degrees and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is loved by both the left and the right," he said.

Gregorian believes that reading is self-renewal and rebirth and is an inarguable necessity. Without it, sciences would be crippled, creativity numbed, history forgotten and humanity stunted.

"If we don't know, we don't care," said Gregorian.

He says that books and reading are rights and responsibilities that expands humanity, gives vicarious experiences, teaches autonomy, provides freedoms, is the best way to preserve memor, and is central to modern interactions.

"Reading begins a job only begun by the reader," he said. "We make the book as the book makes us."

Libraries, he said, are a nation's humanity and diaries of the human race. They are a free exchange of information, freedom of thought, of imagination and choice. They are a social institution and societies collective memory and "the greatest symbol of our democracy itself and the first amendment specifically."

He also applauds the libraries diversity in ways to retrieve information with new technologies and computer software.

"Whether you turn the page this way, or plug it in this way, how you get information isn't as important as what you do with it," he said.

While he is optimistic about libraries and reading, he said he does fear a few things he is noticing, namely the modern confusion replacing information with knowledge.

"Information is neutral; it is facts and statistics," said Gregorian. "Without critical thinking, it just remains facts and statistics, not knowledge."

He blames this on what he calls the "Home Depot-ing" of Universities. With more than 2,000 different classes offered at any given university, he believes we are losing the common bond or education. "There is no more unity of knowledge."

"Information can be dangerous without knowledge," said Gregorian. "We cannot afford the loss of American talent anymore."

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