I Am - The Library



Created for the 2008 Democratic National Convention and featuring video footage I shot in the months preceding the Convention, this film shows, in the plainest of terms, how people and public institutions are one and the same, a seamless social entity, even when they may think otherwise. If, as the novelist James Baldwin once wrote, "we are trapped within history and history is trapped within us," then I Am The Library captures how "we are trapped within our public spaces & institutions and our public spaces and institutions are trapped within us."

Featuring the voices & images of librarians, library executives, book shelvers, security guards and library patrons, the film started out as a community based story corps project inspired by the Reverend Jesse Jackson's call & response speech I Am -Somebody, as well as Jackson's own early experiences using the Greenville Public Library in South Carolina in 1960.

You can see this earlier project (shot and edited by the Denver based production company Lockerpartners), here. You can also hear me discuss the ways public libraries & spaces are changing in the 21st century, here, around the 36:00 mark. I Am - The Library is regularly used in sociology of organization, as well as ethnographic and digital media methods classes. To view or obtain this film, contact me at draudreysprenger@gmail.com.