When it comes to fundraising and donors, it’s no longer enough for non-profit organizations to talk about the relative value of their mission, activities, and results. Funders are comparison-shopping, and they want to know that their gifts will deliver more bang-for-the-buck if contributed to one organization versus another.

Her first reference, a working paper from Harvard Business School, articulates an aspect of the dilemma quite well:

[The] literature points to two basic tensions confronting nonprofit managers. First, nonprofits that focus on measuring results at the front end of the logic chain (inputs and outputs) risk being seen as failing to be accountable, failing to convince funders and citizens that they are making a difference. Those that do try to demonstrate broader societal outcomes and impacts risk overreaching by taking credit for social changes beyond their actual control.

In libraryland, one side of the tension plays out in the manual tracking of questions received at the service desk, gate counts, library cards issued and other discrete activity measures. On the other are unverifiable claims such as libraries’ preservation of democracy or putting people back to work during the current recession.

Like it or not, public libraries are positioned more like nonprofits than governmental agencies and will likely need to increase their reliance on donated resources. Alix Vance concludes “measures of impact offer significant competitive advantages in marketing and fundraising — and can give major advantages to organizations that crack the code.” Large nonprofits are equipped to work on the challenge. Can the same be said for libraries?

How do we get patrons to use the databases? We spend a lot of money on them and no one uses them.

This question from a public librarian during one of the Reference Renaissance forums intrigued me. My first reaction was to wonder why a library would continually subscribe to resources patrons aren’t using and my second was to ponder why the databases aren’t being used.

Why do libraries subscribe to databases with low utilization?

Might it be that:

• this is one of those basic, functional things we seldom question (i.e. databases are part of the collection and collection management is a core library function);
• the databases come as part of a consortium membership or bundled with other resources, thereby obscuring their costs and making it easier to take them than leave them;
• other libraries in the area have them and yours doesn’t want to be the first to go without?

The time for bold library action is upon us, so for all resources libraries know (or strongly believe) are not being used, I say: just drop ‘em. Don’t do a survey or ask broad permission, just drop ‘em. Here’s why:

• Seeking affirmation and permission generally reinforces the status quo regardless of how costly or unproductive it is. Asking forgiveness rather than permission is an effective change management tactic. I’ve used it throughout my career when faced with outmoded, costly or unproductive elements and found that 99% of the time, the change goes unnoticed.
• Hanging on to, or worse yet, promoting resources people don’t find valuable contributes to an impression of library irrelevance. Better to use the funding spent on underutilized databases to deliver programs and services that more people will value.
• Subscribing to databases in spite of poor utilization suppresses vendor dialogue about what would make the products more valuable. As long as libraries continue to subscribe to them, there’s no incentive for vendors to make more than cosmetic changes to database products.

If you drop the databases, what about the patrons who did use them? When a user inquires:

• Be prepared to advise if the information sought is available on the open internet or another dB; reasonable users will appreciate the reference along with knowing their library is spending public funds wisely.
• In cases where there isn’t an alternate source, purchase an individual article for the patron. If the databases are truly underutilized, the annual cost (material and labor) of individual purchases will probably be less than database subscriptions. Particularly in these financially challenging times, I believe reasonable users will appreciate this cost containment.

Why aren’t patrons using the library databases?

I don’t use them because doing so is terribly inefficient. The databases themselves are inefficient; their interfaces and functionality seem 8-10 years behind the times. The brief descriptions on library websites or information on the dB interfaces haven’t helped me determine which database is best suited for a particular type of inquiry and so I may have been looking in the wrong place for information. Unfortunately, the 4-5 times I’ve sought help at a public library haven’t gone well. Staff has simply logged in and rummaged around, seemingly with no more familiarity or expertise than I have. In my estimation, Google or good content websites win hands down on discoverability; once I’ve identified a resource, I go through the tedious process of retrieving information from a library database as a last resort if it isn’t freely available elsewhere.

During the forum, the topic of usability arose in response to the public librarian’s question. Panelist Jamie Larue, Director of Colorado’s Douglas Public Library, briefly gave straightforward examples of how the databases could be organized much better. And following the forum, one of the librarians I was chatting with ‘went off’ a bit about their deficits and listed a half-dozen serious usability problems. So I’m not the only one who grades these databases as “needs improvement”.

Is database usage low at your public library? Do you have users that view the library databases as a sub-par resource of last resort? If so, what can be done about it?

The FOX affiliates put a lot of great discussion points out there and I’ll take them up over the next few posts. For now, here are the videos.

Boston: Cities and towns toy with removing libraries to save money

New York: Libraries: Luxury Or Lifeline?

Chicago: Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?

Do citizens really want it?

Oleg described an unsuccessful civic program at the Will & Arial Durant Branch library in Los Angeles: “we invited the League of Woman Voters to do a program explaining ballot initiatives etc., pushed it in the community, and still got 0 people.” Does poor attendance at programs like these suggest citizens don’t want library services around civic engagement? I don’t think so. My hunch is that poor attendance is partly because informational programs don’t address what the public perceives it needs.

Generally speaking, the public has plenty of civic information and communication. We have access to regional, national and international news & opinion sources and websites for departments at every level of government. We also get frequent outreach from elected officials and non-profits via TV ads, emails and robocalls. Citizens also circulate information and commentary via mobile devices, website forms & comments, Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Yet despite all this info and communication, many of us report we’re not up on the issues and our voices are not being heard. What’s missing are personal connections around civic matters, dialogue and the messy process of sorting it all out.

I believe millions of citizens hunger for richer, more rewarding public discourse. What we need are better ways to filter, validate and contextualize information. Public libraries can play a big role in the development of new models for knowledge generation and civic engagement — if they step up to it.

Sorting things out @ your library

My sense is that citizen disengagement is a partial response to being caught in multiple informational crosshairs; being the target of commercial and political messages, pitches & pleas from non-profit organizations and the unfortunate recipients of buckshot from distant hoaxes and scandals. I’m willing to bet citizen engagement would be stronger in discourse we helped generate.

Imagine a few engaged citizens partnering with their public library to host chats in their community’s living room. Simplicity and informality would work well here, so I’d start with a basic structure of impartial facilitation (preferably by a member of the library staff) and a few agreements to help guide the conversation. The agreements might be to ask of whatever emerges as a topic of interest: 1) are we interested enough to talk about the subject again 2) what information would we need to enrich the conversation and 3) do we know anyone else who might want to join the next one?

Folks drawn to a forum like this would likely do a good job at self-moderation and be pretty resourceful about acquiring and distributing information. Their library facilitator could also provide assistance, or course. And they’d spread the word if they felt the forum was valuable.

If the conversation series didn’t catch on, I’d encourage the library facilitator to actively find out why through participant outreach. And then I’d try another one with new citizen collaborators and new topics. As this would be new for libraries and users, it might take a few tries before the thing took hold.

I’m continually amazed at how easily non-users summarize their information needs and share ideas for how libraries could offer helpful services for them. Having people in the library for loosely structured discussions about civic topics could be incredibly fruitful for libraries as well as citizens.

One reason (of many) why this a good idea for public libraries

Librarian Emily Ford recently confessed to losing some professional mojo in a recent ItLwtLP essay and it prompted this comment:

I work in a public library. I think we should be fostering social discourse, serving as a community space, showing the community how the library can be a hub of discourse and learning, where issues of relevance to the community (e.g. economic and political) can be discussed and debated, etc. We do make some efforts in that direction, but I’d love to see those efforts amped up a hell of a lot more. I mean, honestly, the onus is on us to convince all taxpayers of our value to the community and society at-large. If we fail to provide something for everyone beyond access to free popular DVDs (and books) and services to the small portion of the population with children, then we’ve failed and have little grounds to complain when taxpayers at-large vote to cut our funding.

This hits a big nail squarely on the head: public libraries need new service offerings to attract more of the citizens who actually fund them. Let’s face it, library users are not well represented by young people entering the workforce or by 30 – 60 year old property owners who are employed full-time. Continued public library contractions seem inevitable unless more taxpaying citizens become users.

Nurturing informed, respectful civic discourse might draw us in … and it wouldn’t take a whole lot of new resources either.

What might get in the way?

I’d guess institutional culture would be the biggest barrier. Services like these would require and foster experimentation, change and new blood coming into the library. In practice, all three are fiercely resisted by public library staff, trustees and friends.

Staff education and training might also be a barrier. Think about what it would take to facilitate discussions among engaged citizens. It would require a deep and active engagement with users and information that David Lankes has termed participatory librarianship.¹ Information needs arising from these discussions might involve synthesis, curation and perhaps even the creation & dissemination of high quality civic information. How many public libraries are staffed to meet these needs today and how well are library schools preparing new librarians to meet them?

¹See A strong & sustainable vision for librarians and Lankes on librarians and leadership for excerpts from David’s recent presentations.

I’m curious to know how this statistic is compiled and what it’s meant to convey. Does it reflect library cards issued or legitimate library card holders? I ask because my hometown library purges records from its cardholder database every 5 years and a librarian I was speaking with from the midwest said her library does so every 3 years. With such long maintenance windows, these databases obviously contain records of people who have died or moved out of their communities.

Also, having a library card and using it are two very different things. I’d be interested to know how these data points correlate.

Readers may also be interested in Thinking ’bout library gate count statistics and Library statistics I’d like to see.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates population for the city of Los Angeles at 3.8 million¹ and the entire county at 9.8 million², so Mr. Gómez has either misinterpreted his gate counts or people are consistently coming from northern California and other states to use the city’s libraries. Perhaps he has conflated gate counts and users, which seems prevalent in the library world.

The Annoyed Librarian made a similar observation about ALA President Roberta Steven’s January 2010 statement that “we had 1.2 billion people coming to our libraries across the nation and checking out 2 billion items” by noting that 1.2 billion people is roughly the population of North and South America combined. Last month, arguing against budget cuts for Queens Public Library, City Councilman Peter Koo stated that 2 million people visited the Flushing Library last year. The population of Queens is roughly 2.2 million³ and Flushing is one of 48 branches in the Queens system. I’d be surprised if 2 million people visited all the Queens libraries combined last year, let alone just the Flushing branch. Even in my home town, library statistics simply don’t jive with our region’s population.

Upon encountering these mistakes, discerning individuals may subconsciously translate users to visits, but even then — are the numbers truly representative of library usage? How likely is it library staff have reliable or consistent means to adjust gate counts to subtract for staff movement and traffic generated by service providers, volunteers, rambunctious children going in and out, and people stepping in to use the restrooms? And how do they distinguish between frequent and infrequent users? If all gate counts record is bodies physically passing through a library’s doors, they seem like a crude mechanism for assessing usage (except to convey trends as Charlotte Mecklenburg Library did in its FY2011 budget overview).⁴

So how many people really do use the Los Angeles Public Library for its intended purposes? We’re told it’s as few as 9 people and as many as 17 million people per year. Common sense and a bit of research suggest neither figure is credible. The lack of such basic data is a real impediment to meaningful dialogue about managing and funding this public resource.

Readers may also be interested in Thinking ’bout library card statistics and Library statistics I’d like to see.
¹U.S. Census Bureau population of Los Angeles (city), 2006
²U.S. Census Bureau population of Los Angeles (county), 2009
²U.S. Census Bureau population of Queens, NY, 2000
⁴Gate counts for Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, 2004 – 2010

Remember libraries … from an ecological point of view, [that's] the virtuous way to go.

Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy, during a recent interview with public radio’s Tom Ashbrook.

By way of introducing Life Cycle Assessment, a cradle-to-grave methodology for evaluating environmental impact, Goleman refuted the widely accepted notion that eReaders are more eco-friendly than books. Click to Listen.

If I were a library leader, I’d embrace environmentalism as a way to improve operations, provide vital information to constituents and set an example for the communities we serve. Here are some of the things I’d do:

1. Educate myself; there’s lots of bogus information out there.
2. Perform life cycle assessments on library operations and publish the findings on the website. Invite comments and questions to spur community involvement and resource sharing.
3. Establish a fundraising program through Gazelle, a firm started by a former eBay founder to recycle electronics. Most folks want to get rid of old stuff, help the environment and support their library without paying additional taxes. They’re also looking for convenience. Gazelle delivers all these things.

LCA graphic adapted from a Proctor & Gamble illustration.

“I’m unclear about my social contract with public libraries” I said “and this is not true of other municipal agencies.” These examples then tumbled out:

• I help fund public education; I know how it works and who uses it. I also know the years I pay for it will probably exceed the years I actually use it.
• Same is true for my town’s Senior Center; they’re clear about the services they provide and for whom, and it just doesn’t happen to be me right now.
• I fund Police and Fire even though I haven’t called on them once. Lucky me. The social contract is that I pay into the system to help maintain community safety and also so that I’ll get trained, dedicated and potentially life-saving services when I need them.
• I’m far less clear about what I’m asked to fund with my public library.

The next day at work, I asked one of my colleagues for her understanding of the social contract. She replied reflexively about how we have to fund libraries — though when asked she couldn’t explain why. I probed a bit more and she got stuck … and then said she wasn’t interested enough to think about it any longer.

Many taxpayers may be like my friend; they’ll think about libraries when prompted and then move on. In the absence of more information, at budget time it seems likely their reflexive support for libraries will determine their vote or they’ll be influenced by an increasingly prevalent “police or libraries” framing.

My own voting tendencies are to support services I’m unclear about in good financial times, whether or not I personally use them, if I have a general sense they’re in the public good. My inclination in tough times leans in the other direction; I’m more likely to veto an expense where the service or value is uncertain to me.

How much are my colleague & I like other taxpayers? What does it mean if we have difficulty articulating why we fund public libraries … particularly if reports¹ correctly predict another 5-7 years of high unemployment and tough times? What information can libraries provide to help us grapple with difficult funding decisions?

NOTE: Graphic adapted from a bronze sculpture by Leo Wirth, Citizen of the World
¹Daniel Indiviglio. Rutgers: Full Employment Won’t Return Until 2017. The Atlantic. September 30, 2009 ♦ Don Lee. U.S. unemployment rate falls unexpectedly, but job losses continue. Los Angeles Times. February 6, 2010.

This was news to me; my how the educational product companies and toy manufacturers had shaped my understanding! I also hadn’t thought of toddler programs as educational initiatives. When I’ve seen adults and toddlers together at the library, I’ve usually thought “oh, aren’t those kids adorable” and “I’m glad people are getting together to have fun“. Though it now seems obvious, the educational and literacy component of Lapsit was lost on me.

This last point was intriguing, so I did some quick research. I googled “Lapsit” and got plenty of results from library websites around the country. I clicked through to the top 20 (all different libraries, by chance) and searched for the terms literacy and education in the page content, in images or as part of the navigation.

• 80% made no mention of literacy or education in conjunction with Lapsit
• 20% contained the term literacy
• 10% contained the terms literacy and education

Clearly these stats don’t tell the whole story, but they tell a good one about the help libraries need presenting information to the public.

Last month, library consultant Larry T. Nix (a.k.a. The Library History Buff) wrote about libraries’ success with early education programs in Little Kids and Public Libraries.

The science behind the importance of learning in children ages birth to three is overwhelming. Public libraries have proven they can implement excellent programs to serve this age group. The public education community is struggling to implement four year old kindergarten much less provide programs for this age group. There is a tremendous opportunity for public libraries to take ownership of learning in the most important years of a child’s life.

Why are public library administrators not recognizing and seizing on this opportunity. Why can’t we come up with major national and state funding programs to help public libraries take a major leadership role in this area?

This info ties into recent thoughts I’ve shared about running libraries like a business and getting behind an organization like a National Public Library Corporation.

Businesses know they need to be the top provider in at least one thing and runner up in one or two others to remain viable. Arguably, the same is true for libraries now that people have so many information and entertainment options. Early childhood education seems to be one area where libraries can emerge as an acknowledged leader. They’ll need help though — and focused efforts could go a long way in a more effectively structured system. For example, a comprehensive program kit on Lapsit could be used by thousands of libraries throughout the country. And if data systems were more uniform and better connected, electronic communication of program and training materials, administration and other functions would be unbelievably extensible. Just a click away, in fact.

The need to resource our public libraries more effectively is right in front us — as are good organizational, funding and technological models. The potential impact of doing so, through programs in early childhood learning (as just one example), is enormous.

Larry Nix is right about the value of a national and state funding program, however its impact would be mitigated if the funds were dispersed within our existing library structures.  Injecting funds for these types of programs into the system would only perpetuate its deficiencies based on what we’ve seen with a $350,000 library grant on digital privacy and a new $750,000 literacy grant. We need a new organization to solicit and wisely use funding for broad library initiatives and information infrastructure.

I’ve proposed an addition to the library ecosystem in the form of a National Public Library Corporation, similar to NPR or PBS. The National Public Library Corporation would be an additional resource to provide top-notch data systems, content, training and fund-raising support. Libraries would remain independent and locally governed and their association with the NPL would be voluntary. This idea would provide shared resources where it makes sense and preserve autonomy to nurture the authenticity and personalization community libraries currently provide. Because it’s an additive approach, there’s nothing to lose here that won’t be lost anyway if we leave things as they are. And there’s worlds to gain.

The cost of this grant seems to far outweigh its benefit for patrons and participating libraries. I’d think staff time would be better spent delivering direct patron services and focusing on purposeful activity within their own control than working hard for a few thousand dollars laden with substantial overhead and narrowly prescribed uses. In fact, this may sound radical but I’d encourage libraries to ignore grants like this one altogether. They are structured to benefit bureaucracies and corporations and require work that is tangential to the genuine public value libraries can deliver.

Funding and service delivery are areas where a National Library Corporation (NPL) could add enormous value. The NPL could work with donors to leverage their contributions for maximum impact. In this case, it could use the $750,000 from Dollar General to create services to promote literacy and efficiently make them available to subscriber libraries. Surely a focused team with a large budget could do this more effectively than staff at dozens of libraries with just a few thousand dollars at their disposal and other job requirements on their plate.

For donors, the NPL’s development staff would have greater resources and expertise than individual libraries to provide visibility for their contributions. For libraries, the NPL could help them demonstrate value and reach out to their communities by creating high-quality program outreach kits. These kits would be part of a coordinated library campaign to foster constituents making connections between library programs & services … and aid them in saying “ah, there’s our libraries at work again”.

A key structural element of the NPL is that it would be more than an intermediary; it would produce services with direct patron benefit such as technical infrastructure, content, outreach and library staff training.  Individual libraries would simply subscribe to the services they find valuable rather than struggle individually to scrape together resources and create the services themselves.

It would be fabulous for patrons to know their library had access to quality programs & services they’d become aware of elsewhere. I’ll bet library usage and requests for services would increase if they were high quality, well-defined and well-promoted by the NPL. I also believe the public, foundations and corporations would more readily fund concrete, proven services — just like they do today with NPR and PBS.

Wouldn’t it be great if public library staff could…

• Conveniently access consistent, quality services from a single source for a single subscription fee?
• Access a single repository of well-organized and high-quality training, education and outreach materials (for patrons and library staff as well)?
• Work from a single dashboard with email, event/volunteer/website management, news, knowledge base, nationwide colleague network — perhaps even integrated research databases, library catalogue and patron database, meaningful statistics …
• Say goodbye to costly and tedious administrivia involved in working with micro-grants, ‘free’ internet services and multiple suppliers?

Sound good? All we need is a few million dollars to get the ball rolling … just a few million dollars to reinvigorate our public library system. Trust me, this one has a great cost/benefit ratio.

Cost Benefit Analysis of Dollar General 2010 Literacy Grant

Apply for grant & follow up.
Report grant application activity to local management, trustees, etc.
Participate in a 60 minute media training session with ALA’s Public Information Office (PIO) via conference call.
Promote the American Dream Starts @ your library using the @ your library trademark, the ALA logo, and the Dollar General logo.
Inform local and statewide library networks, including your state library association, of the ALA/Dollar General grant and your project.
Contact/inform your local Dollar General store regarding the ALA grant and your project.
Contribute print and online resources, including library profiles, to the American Dream toolkit and website.
Submit quarterly reports to ALA’s project manager.
Submit a comprehensive final report to ALA documenting your library’s accomplishments, the impact of the project, and your use of funds.
Recruit tutors
Recruit patrons
Schedule training, arrange payment for tutors
Deliver tutoring session