» The Radical Patron – extreme thoughts on public libraries

Talking ’bout our library systems

RP — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:00:24 +0000

A few weeks ago, Library Journal published an essay I wrote highlighting systemic barriers to quality reference service. People from across the country responded and comments touched upon many aspects of library service delivery. I’m pleased the essay prompted an exchange that involved people within and (a few) outside the library community; went into detail about library services, operations and funding; and focused on the library as information resource — a function that hasn’t received much coverage in the past few years.

Here are selections from the comment stream (from the LJ site, except where noted):

Emilie Smart (via her blog): As the head of a reference division in a public library, I cringed as I read your post. And I live in fear that one day, a patron just like you will visit my staff and have a similar experience. But one point your post brought home to me was one I’ve been concerned about for awhile and am not sure how to address. Back in the day, when we used books (almost exclusively) to answer reference questions, we were answering more questions just like yours. The staff was familiar with that kind of question and was better armed to answer it — not because our resources were deeper then, but because the staff’s experience was. As I look over the questions we are asked today, I find very few that require the kind of knowledge of resources that yours did. In fact, I’m not sure how many of my staff would even know look for poetry explication sources to answer your question. I know that some of them would, but the younger/newer ones might not think of looking for an explication resource unless they had been lit majors. They may not even know the term to start looking for it. This isn’t entirely a matter of poor training — if it were, I wouldn’t be as worried about it. It’s a matter of using knowledge of resources plus acquiring more knowledge over time — and that’s just something that isn’t happening like it used to. I can train staff to use databases and books, but if they rarely have the need to use them after training, they lose what they learned. (Reference work ain’t like riding a bicycle.) I can also send out a tough weekly reference question as a training tool, but even that is only putting a tiny band-aid on an ever-growing sore. If our reference staffs don’t get constant reinforcement and regular challenges (the kind that can only be had by assisting patrons like you on a regular basis), they won’t grow into knowledgeable critical thinkers, and reference service will slowly atrophy into the the kind of service described in your post — a source of pleasant conversation and general information.
	Jean: Ms. Smart – thanks so much for your consideration of my essay. Your points are so well taken. I appreciate how out-of-the-ordinary the type of service I’m seeking is for the libraries in my area. Library work today strikes me as very challenging, particularly in the smaller public libraries that are staffed by a handful of individuals who must do everything from turning off the alarm systems in the morning to [name all traditional library services here], managing meeting rooms, programming, promotion, updating the website, and in the case of some directors also managing the facilities. There’s only so much that can be done given the way these libraries are currently conceived, structured and funded.
SJ: When libraries limit access to resources based on residing in a specific town or affiliation with a specific college, it is not because of “library culture and organization” rather it is due to the restrictions put on by the funders of these libraries. City taxes for example support local public libraries and the city sets the policy of who then is entitled to use the local services. Colleges are funded by districts or state governments and the these funding entities set who is entitled to free access. Let’s look at another example from the college sphere – tuition. If you live out of the district or state, you will pay a higher rate to take classes at those institutions. Likewise, a comparable example at the local level to public libraries is public schools. If you live in one city, you can’t send your children to public school in another.
	Jean: Hi SJ – I understand the library ecosystem reasonably well, and I’m suggesting we reconsider it. In my view, it’s an issue of vital national importance. The majority of funding mechanisms, jurisdiction, governance etc. were established at a time when information was scarce, people were significantly less educated and mobile. And of course we had no data technology. Particularly over the past 40 years, user needs have become more diverse and sophisticated, and libraries face competition from a range of for-profit and non-profit organizations. How can we expect them to evolve rapidly enough to stay viable if we place so many restrictions on them?
Karen: I have had this experience, too, esp when travelling. My husband and I are staying in a hotel, eating at local restaurants, visiting local museums, and are told we can’t use the library (to check our email via internet) because we’re not local residents (but we’re paying the onerous hotel tax). This has happened in Philly and other towns up & down the east coast. Whereas in Monterey, CA, where I used to work, we let everyone have 30 mins on the computer twice/day. It’s a big tourist town, so internet use at the library is just another aspect of being friendly to tourists. No, Monterey is not a wealthy library system–like many places in CA, it’s in trouble.
	Jean: Hi Karen – experiences like the ones you and I have described are the reason I’ve said our national library funding models are unsustainable. Chances are residents in the communities you’ve vacationed in also experience barriers and friction, as I do in my home area. What a downward spiral. Because we’re still using funding, organizational and service models that limit service levels, people like us stop thinking of libraries as resources and find alternatives. As library services become less useful and relevant for us (and because our home budgets are as tight as our municipal ones), we find it harder to support libraries at budget time. And the pattern repeats the next year. We need to break this pattern – and FAST. I believe we can do it with our existing human, material and capital resources … and would love to get a national dialogue going about it.
Nicolette: I am truly sorry for the experience that you had. I do believe that some of the experiences that you cite are functions of budgetary shortfalls, which we as a profession are trying to learn to address gracefully. The barrages of questions about your affiliation may fall into this category. We are advised as a profession, in order to justify funding, resource purchases, and, sometimes, our continued existence, to attempt to get information on the patrons we are serving, since, in most cases today, any purchase rules out some other potential purchase. Unfortunately, if a resource we are purchasing is primarily used by people outside our funding population, those dollars may need to be reallocated to a resource that might serve our core group of patrons better.
	Jean: Hi Nicolette – I know there are many restrictions placed on you and other library staff, which is why I ended my essay with the conclusion “it’s more than the system can provide”. The thrust of my advocacy is to disrupt the narrative about library funding and value. It’s true that funding levels are insufficient to support our existing library systems, however my argument is that those systems (which worked so well for half a century) are now woefully inefficient and often incapable of providing high-quality information service. What I call for is discussion about how we can use our resources to provide more service more effectively. We have the talent, money and technology to do it. All we need to begin is a change in perspective.
Tricia: I wish someone could have referred you to Gale’s Literature Resource Center. If you had come to my library, I wouldn’t have given up until you left with what you came for. Good, solid literary criticism is one of the hardest things to find, and frankly I was surpised to find it in LRC after you said it was unavailable in Lit Crit Online.
	Jean: Hi Trish – guess what? My consortia just added this resource in December. It wasn’t available to me or the people who tried to help me at the time I made my inquiry. What I also figured out based on the feedback here (and the nudge to look harder) is that the database web pages at most of the public libraries in my area aren’t up to date – so I’m going to bypass them from now on and go directly to the consortia page. There may have been more resources available to me than I (or perhaps also folks working in the libraries) perceived at the time.
SusanE: … I am an academic librarian, and I will echo that when I worked at a large, state university, I would often ask if the patron was a student or not. It’s not because I didn’t want to help our public patrons, but knowing whether they were working on an assignment as a student or simply seeking information would change how I conducted the reference interview. … If you were a student working on an assignment, I would have shown you how to use our databases, sat down with you and provided some preliminary searches for the information. Ultimately, though, I feel that it is up to the student to find and disseminate the information they need. For public patrons, I would most likely do most of the searching myself, and would leave less of the dissemination of the information to them. Basically, I feel like it is my responsibility and goal to help the student learn how to find information on their own and my responsibility to find it for the public patron.
	Jean: SusanE: Not sure how representative I am of the non-student users you support, but can share that even though the need for a specific piece of info brings me to the library, I seek the learning experience in most cases (though not all). Sometimes I just want the fish and don’t want to be taught to fish, but most often it’s the latter. I see it as my responsibility to let the library staff know what level of service I’m looking for and try to communicate that as part of my inquiry.
Marcie: I realize that by saying “I found your answer on the Internet,” I am not helping my own cause in keeping public libraries open and funded. The “other side” so to speak can always say, “But isn’t everything on Google? Why do we need librarians?” But my response would be, “Sometimes people need a little assistance in searching the Internet. Google seems so simple and intuitive, but the results may not be quite what a person is expecting. And you can’t always find magazine and newspaper articles for free, like you often can with subscription databases.” (Although I’ve been trying to refrain from such library language and not call them “databases.”) I think this may be what happened to you with your Dylan Thomas poem. I’m sure you could have searched Google yourself–and probably found the right level of criticism–but you wanted a little assistance with your search. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the librarian was ill-equipped to help.
	Jean: Marcie – Thanks for weighing in again, I just love having conversations like these about contemporary information needs and the enormous value librarians can deliver. I tried Google first, using a variety of search terms, and stumbled upon 3 types of unsatisfactory sources: loads of reprints of the poem itself, countless advertisements to purchase a term paper and a few articles written by poorly identified sources describing what they think the poem is about. That’s when I turned to libraries – and how I would have loved expert help from someone like you who could share a search strategy or tactic to help me mine info on the open web. And speaking of open web, I’ve recently argued that libraries and librarians are doing themselves a disservice by limiting their scope to resources within their own institutions or consortia. Here’s a link to some specific ideas I’ve shared about broad unmet needs librarians are uniquely suited to fill: (http://www.radicalpatron.com/category/participatory-librarianship/).
Erika: As an academic librarian, I feel the need to explain what may be going on w/ the librarians you speak to. When a patron comes to the desk, if it isn’t clear, I’ll ask them whether they’re a Univ. patron or not (in more politic terms than that)–not b/c I want to censure or shame them for coming in, but because that affects the resources I can offer them. It’s not a problem to show them the things we subscribe to, but if they’re not a Univ. staff/student/faculty, then I can’t offer to get something through ILL for them. However, other universities have different policies. We’re a state institution, so we can allow anyone to walk into one of our libraries and use our online resources. This isn’t without its problem–the database vendors hate this, and are always trying to get us to limit access. B/c we get public funding, we have a leg to stand on. But a private college/univ. may not be able to allow that sort of access, even though they may want to.
	Jean: Hi Erika – I worked part-time at an academic library from 2002-2005 and understand some of the limitations. I’ve also done loads of backoffice volunteer work for public libraries and that has also helped me interpret my experiences. I’d argue that our existing library governance and management systems are hurting patrons and libraries themselves. A far better approach, I think, are more open systems like the “OneCard” program pioneered by the Whatcom County Library System in Washington State that provides seamless access to area academic and public libraries. They describe it as an initiative “spearheaded by Whatcom Libraries Collaborate, a group of library directors and deans dedicated to expanding library access for better stewardship of resources and greater community impact.” I’d love to think about how fruitful my reference experiences might be if I could easily leverage the resources of the 26 libraries in my immediate area.

Reader response to a National Public Library Corporation

RP — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:00:11 +0000

A kind reader has shared questions and concerns about a National Public Library Corporation via comments to Tuesday’s post. Others within the library community probably have similar reactions and so I wanted to give the discussion visibility by publishing it as a post. Please join the conversation!

An anonymous commenter wrote:

… in the current political climate an “NPL” campaign would just be an excuse to cut public library funding further since we wouldn’t “need the public dollars”. I think that the kind of project you envision could be accomplished through IMLS …

And I replied:

… I’m convinced that without fresh thinking and bold leadership our public libraries will wither in all but the most affluent communities. ALA, OCLC and IMLS cannot effectively provide what’s needed; they would have done it already if they could.

A key strength of the NPL model is that it is well-established with a successful track record. PBS and NPR continue to make great strides in content & delivery and seem to be holding their own on the funding side. Rather than put local public stations out of business, they’ve helped sustain and nurture them through an array of good programming to draw listeners and funding support to draw contributors. (For some examples of how public radio is expanding, see last week’s article by Outsell news analyst, Ken Doctor.) I believe an NPL would do the same for local libraries.

The commenter responded:

I just can’t see it…it seems to me that only affluent communities would support this model, and it sure wouldn’t be in my urban rust belt community! And the other issue is basing public libraries on a national model of content and programming. Libraries are not one size fits all. I don’t want a national consortium telling me what topics my community should have or what programming we can offer. Not trying to be difficult here…honest!

And here is where I’d like to pick up the conversation …

Looking at public TV and radio can provide info and insights about how an NPL might work.

Evidence suggests people will support quality programming and services, even in areas with less affluent communities. U.S. Census data for 2007 lists West Virginia residents with the lowest level of personal income in the nation, yet they seem to support a healthy public broadcasting system. Its 14 radio stations and TV station attract 500,000 viewers weekly and produce 1,600 hours of content locally per year.

This model helps reduce inequities between income levels by creating resources that can be shared by all. In West Virginia, 30% of their public broadcasting operating budget comes from community support. Over 12,000 individuals and 100 businesses contribute to a resource used by half a million people each week. The poorest person in West Virginia can turn on the TV or radio and get the same programming as the richest. This isn’t true for libraries where differences in income levels result in significant disparities in facilities, collections and programming. Which is a nice seque into your concern about programming …

Public broadcasting makes good content available for local stations to choose for their individual communities. Some is produced by the broadcasting networks and some by local stations. Consider a few of the most popular programs on public radio. Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me is produced by NPR, This American Life by Chicago Public Media, WBUR of Boston produces Car Talk and Philadelphia’s WHYY produces Fresh Air. Though these programs are produced by four different entities, stations all across the country position them alongside their own local news and programming. Each station picks and chooses what best suits its needs. Sometimes the local stations are the consumer and other times they are the producer.

I envision things working this way with public libraries. Let’s say you needed content for an early literacy program at your library. Today you might create your own, or use something you got from a neighboring library, or you might trawl the web to see if any other libraries posted their materials. Wouldn’t it be great if you could access a nation-wide library intranet and easily get the info you needed? You could use it as-is or modify it — and upload your changes so other libraries could benefit. The NPL infrastructre I envision would make this internal sharing possible and provide tools so you could easily share information with the public. So let’s say PBS was running a documentary and your library wanted to host a discussion group about it. You could easily find materials other libraries had compiled and quickly post them to your website or pop them into your newsletter (also using tools provided by the NPL).

And this brings me back to the point about smoothing out inequities. A key reason public libraries struggle and the quality of their output is low is because their staffs are spread too thin, recreating the wheel over and over again. Having an efficient, shared resource pool would make content created by the wealthiest communities available to the poorest. Top-notch information tools would mean every library could have a good website, an electronic newsletter, etc. The availability of these resources would free up staff in the overburdened libraries to do what they cannot do today … so we might find them creating materials of value to the better funded libraries. The sharing would go both ways and everybody in the system would benefit.

Lastly, the NPL would help recruit funding for itself and also to local libraries. It would provide visibility and ROI for large donors and turn those funds into services for the public and local libraries, just as the public broadcasters do today. ALA & OCLC currently receive large donations on behalf of libraries and are unable to put them to widespread good use. They fund useless studies or create new library holidays or launch high cost projects with meager impact such as Privacy Revolution and GeektheLibrary. On the other hand, donations to PBS and NPR bring us things like documentaries and news reporting that contribute to the public good. As is true of PBS and NPR, the NPL would be staffed with professional fundraisers who would structure local funding campaigns that would augment local book sales, bake sales and raffles.

Two key points about the NPL: it is additive. Nothing is taken away from your library; you’d still have your local funding and your local autonomy. There would also not be competition for donations within your community. Like NPR, the National Public Library Corp would not accept individual donations but rather would direct contributors back to their local libraries. (I know, because I’ve tried to contribute directly to NPR and been forwarded to my local station.)

Participation in the NPL would also by voluntary. You could choose to become a member or not — and if your library was a member, you would choose which technology tools, content and fund-raising campaigns you wanted to use.

On measuring nonprofit value

RP — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:00:32 +0000

The Scholarly Kitchen has served up an interesting article for libraries this morning. In, Tackling the Data-Driven Funding Challenge — a New Skill for Nonprofit Managers, Alix Vance reviews initiatives to address one of the key challenges for libraries and other nonprofit organizations:

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?

On getting patrons to use the databases

RP — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:11 +0000

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?

FOX News: best info & context about public library issues

RP — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:00:13 +0000

On June 28, FOX News affiliates in Boston, New York and Chicago each ran 5-7 minute segments on public libraries. Though I never imagined myself endorsing content distributed by FOX, these news clips have provided the best coverage I’ve seen of our public library dilemmas. They did a good job highlighting the value delivered by public libraries and articulated questions many reasonable people ask about them. In fact, the segments closely parallel discussions I’ve had with library professionals, users and non-users over the past year.

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?

Libraries as hubs of civic discourse

RP — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:00:55 +0000

Oleg Kagan’s comments to my July 7 post and another librarian’s comment on the Lead Pipe blog suggest the idea of public libraries becoming hubs of civic discourse is worth exploring.

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. Participants would also 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.

Thinking ’bout library card statistics

RP — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:00:35 +0000

I often see statistics on the number of card holders referenced in library materials. For example, in its recent promotional flyer How Libraries Stack Up: 2010, the OCLC compared the number of public library card holders to the number of credit card holders.

I’m curious to know how this statistic is compiled and what it’s meant to convey. Does it reflect library cards issued or library card users? 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.

Thinking ’bout library gate count statistics

RP — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:00:15 +0000

On May 11, Jay Leno quipped “People here in Los Angeles are upset at the mayor’s proposed plan to cut the budget of libraries… they want to cut library budgets and this could affect as many as nine people.” City Librarian Martin Gómez responded to Leno “… these cuts are no laughing matter to the 17 million people who use the city’s libraries each year.”

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

Libraries, help lighten our ecological footprint

RP — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:00:10 +0000

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, Daniel Goleman refuted the widely accepted notion that eReaders are more eco-friendly than books in a recent interview on public radio. 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:

Educate myself; there’s lots of bogus information out there.
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.
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.

What’s my social contract with public libraries?

RP — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:30:05 +0000

In a recent discussion with a librarian I shared the dissonance I feel about whether it makes sense to fund public libraries in their current form. A spirited discussion ensued and caused me to articulate some familiar thoughts in a new way.

“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.