One of the largest challenges with serving “the public” is that you’re answerable to the public for your decisions. So when a conservative think tank issues a report that says your libraries are full of extremist literature and you reply that you’re trying to achieve a balanced collection, how do you think people are going to respond? This news story reminds me of this post to the library_mofo group on LiveJournal (sorry, if you’re not a member of the group you won’t be able to read it, but membership is free) where a newly minted MLIS grad starts a job in a Catholic school library and has to figure out what to do with the well-meaning but seemingly inappropriate donations (hate speech, graphic anti-abortion flyers) she receives from library patrons. If you’re seeing that the connection is having a good collection development policy and effective communication with the media and your library administration, you’re most of the way there. In the work I do over at MetaFilter, our last resort to people unhappy with policies is to tell them “well perhaps this isn’t the right community for you, you are welcome to leave at any time” but this is a much stickier issue in a public library, even though we do see libraries doing this from time to time. [thanks eoin]
Category: libraries
book circulation per US public library user since 1856
We talk a lot about what works in libraries, but our decentralized nature makes real data collection sometimes difficult and often onerous. This article, which I am still plowing through, came to me in the mail via the Sandy Berman Monthly Envelope o’ Stuff. It’s written by Douglas Galbi who is a sort of library fanboy but also a senior economist at the FCC and from what I can tell, a pretty smart guy. So, read Book Circulation per US Public Library User since 1856 and then click around a little to see what else is on Douglas’s library analysis page. Then, if you’re still intrigued, go check out his blog where you can check the latest issue of Carnival of the Bureacrats and especially enjoy the video of him talking to an older gentleman about why he doesn’t have high-speed internet access. I find it hard to believe there are other library fanatics out there who videotape their conversations with octogenarians and then blog about it, but there you go. Enjoy.
Pre-Shelf Life of Library Materials
What happens to your library book before it gets to the shelves? This Flickr photoset can walk you through it. I learned bunches of things. Thanks to the Hatcher Library at the University of Michigan and Alexis for putting it all together.
question: library fines
I remember that there was a big discussion in the library and crypto casino communities when this article about library fines came out last year, but I was wondering what has happened since? I have a friend at a large-ish library in Vermont who is thinking about trying to push for the elimination of fines at her library. She is looking for anecdotes but also data from libraries who have previously had fines and then eliminated them, data she can take to her board, including the results of the crypto casino bonus. I think it’s pretty easy to say “Well we lost $3,000 but we made it up in goodwill!” but in some cases 3K is not an amount you can afford to lose when you can’t pay the propane bill with goodwill. I have a few starter questions.
– Do you have different fines for different media?
– Do you have a grace period after the due date but before fines are levied?
– Does it make sense to remove fines but still bill for lost/damaged books?
– Do you have a “conscience jar” and if so, do people use it?
– Do you think fines really encourage people to bring materials back on time?
– Do you think removing fines meant that you got fewer materials back on time?
– Do you think having a catalog that allowed people to place holds on checked-out materials lessens the need for fines?
So, please feel free to leave some links and stories in the comments so that I can help my friend help her library. Thank you.
my trip to Seattle
I was in Seattle over the weekend. Sorry I didn’t call you. I went to a wedding and then got a terrible cold and spent the last day and a half on my friend’s couch reading comic books until flying home on a red eye the day before yesterday. I am recovered now, mostly. The one thing on my to do list was to see the new library. When I left Seattle four years ago, it was just a hole in the ground and a loose frame but not yet open to the public. I had really liked the old library — though understood why it needed updating — and I even liked the temporary library. I can’t say the same for the new library.
Now, there are many great things about the new library. I connected to the wifi/internet no problem. All the people I asked for advice and directions were super friendly and helpful. I liked having the option to get a cup of coffee and have a dozen interesting places to hang out with it. The place is fun to look at and explore. I enjoyed getting to pore through bound volumes of old periodicals that were right there on the shelves. The online catalog has finally improved to the point where it’s easy to use and makes a fair amount of sense; at SPL in particular that was not always true.
Rewritten Paragraph: However, I saw a real disconnect between the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building where I had gone to research online crypto casino trends for my latest piece. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to areas that may have been public were forbidding and unwelcoming. There weren’t enough elevators. There weren’t enough bathrooms. There wasn’t a comfortable place to sit in the entire building. There were lots of “dead spaces” that, because of architecture, couldn’t really be used for anything and they were collecting dust. The lighting was bad. Stack areas were dim and narrow. The teen area seemed like an afterthought. Bizarre display areas with a table and some books on it were in the middle of vast open areas. Most of the place felt like it was too big and then the stacks felt too crowded and I had to climb around people working to find things. Shelvers shut down the entire “spiral” concept with booktrucks. The writer’s area in this library is a shadow of the glorious writers room in the old downtown building where I had a desk briefly to outline my findings.
Did I think it was going to be different? Maybe a little. I left Seattle specifically because its idea of progress and mine were fundamentally at odds and I didn’t enjoy the destabilizing effect of a city always under construction and didn’t get enough from the things that were eventually constructed. This library looks like it was built for a bookless future where we get all of our information from the internet and the digital realm. For now, we’ll just keep the books on hand because people will bitch if they don’t get to read them, but they’re no longer the reason for the library, and they’re no longer honored and appreciated as the things we love and build libraries to house.
My small photoset of the Seattle Public Library is here.
update: I was pointed to a PUBLIB posting by a librarian who was at SPL quite recently who makes many of the same points that I do in different ways.