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Here’s a message to elected leaders as they balance budgets: Today’s libraries are an essential service and provide resources to ensure a competitive workforce.
In an editorial in Monday’s Washington Post, ALA President Roberta Stevens speaks confidently and persuasively about the value of libraries. Here’s what makes this commentary work:
It is brief, well-written and packs a punch. From its opening line, we know Ms. Stevens means business: “Today’s challenging economy demands strategic investments.”
Stevens addresses a priority concern of people who fund libraries. By framing library value in terms of U.S. competitiveness, she speaks to an important issue for lawmakers, employers, people who are currently employed or unemployed and for parents whose children will one day enter the workforce.
She focuses on adult business services. Library advocacy typically foregrounds children and senior services, and most recently assistance for people who need help with basic computer skills for job search. These themes have not seemed to resonate strongly for municipal officials, lawmakers and increasingly overburdened taxpayers. So Stevens shifts the focus by highlighting different resources and users: “online business and investing resources such as RefUSA, Morningstar and the Wall Street Journal” and “entrepreneurs, small-business people, travelers“.
The pitch is simultaneously local and national, public and private. Details about Maryland, Virginia and D.C. will appeal to many local readers of the Washington Post and also lay out criteria for readers from other areas to examine their own situations. Using local information signals that Ms. Stevens has done her homework and is not churning out copy from an ivory tower that could be printed anywhere. And while the commentary is about a public resource and matters of public concern, it also speaks specifically to those who run private businesses — and have the ear of local lawmakers, pay local taxes and employ taxpayers who fund libraries. Smart, smart, smart.
Lastly, the article exudes confidence. Roberta Stevens clearly believes she’s promoting a good product and isn’t shy about saying so. Good for her and good for public libraries.
For more than 30 years, children in Dyersburg Tennessee have enjoyed reading from the comfort of brightly painted cast iron bathtubs in the school library. A creative librarian installed the first one and “the original tub was so popular that three more were added over the years.” Students have found lasting value in the tubs and reportedly speak of them and visit the school to see them long after graduating. Others, however, see them as part of a bygone era and so the reading tubs will be auctioned off today to benefit a newly constructed library.
This makes me so sad. The tubs created an enduring, positive experience around one of life’s greatest skills and pleasures. Is Dyersburg school library auctioning off some of its heritage and authenticity? Would it have been possible to incorporate the tubs into the new library plan as a way of building upon past successes while articulating its vision for the future?
It would be interesting to see what the new library is like, and what will replace the tubs as something people might return to decades later as a fond memory of their early reading experience.
