Public Libraries — How to Save Them
Libraries need to change, in order to compete with — among other things like an evolving electronic environment and attention spans — other local services paid for by tax revenue, like schools, public works, fire and police protection. Libraries know this, and they are taking action. Many libraries now have computers, bulletin boards, lecture and demonstration events, art displays, performances, maybe a café, game nights, young people’s programs, and so on. Some libraries are trying other approaches: Virtual Bowling Tournament (Olin Public Library, Indiana); Atlanta Braves partnering with the Georgia Public Library to offer “Home Run Readers;” World Book Night (DC Public Libraries) giving books away once a year; “Hunger Games, nonviolent activities,” based on the book, and presented by the Easton, PA library’s Teen Advisory Board; and Sweet Talk with Chef Hobbs, at the Roanoke City Library — “Make easy truffles, try some chocolate bacon, and some tips and tricks…”
Events like these may increase participation. The problem is, it’s still thinking inside the box because they’re grabbing at straws, adding what they will, willy-nilly. There’s no real direction, no comprehensive plan they can clearly communicate to the (tax) paying public, no structure to direct them into the years ahead. From a marketing standpoint, having little clear direction or compelling message means they can blend in with all the media noise directing everyone to everything all the time, submerged in the fog of persistent offerings. What’s needed is a unifying sign that makes clear to all, that — fundamentally — what the library offers is relevant and is needed.
Today’s limited funding environment wants to see substance and action directed at specific needs. This is as true for public libraries as it is for not-for-profit organizations. Fun and interesting as they may be, “Virtual Bowling Tournaments,” and “Home Run Readers,” and for that matter, lending books, are not as necessary as other community services like health, education, and public works. It is understandable that libraries are feeling pressures to change: the public library once had a standing comparable to other municipal services — now, not so much.
This is not a call to abandon the service of providing books. It is a call to address new and serious problems impacting our communities and society as a whole, and to find ways to continue offering books and other reference information when many forces are placing this in jeopardy. This is a large task with honorable goals and awful consequences if we fail; saving libraries and saving books is in a race against time.
Acknowledging the serious position libraries are in today is a first step. The next one is what many libraries have already been doing: identifying needs, and trying new ideas. But what needs? How are they identified, and how are new ideas arrived at? Additionally, how is this collected information communicated, and for what purpose? The library needs a direction –can this information help the community and the public library? Ultimately, the library is faced with creating a plan (and mission statement) that answers these questions.
The guide. Public libraries often perform assessments of needs — that is, they ask citizens to rate the effectiveness of staff, the popularity of library services, and to suggest new or modified services. Some of these efforts are sophisticated, offering analysis that includes weighted relationships of services to demographic trends. Data like hours of operation, number of DVDs and downloads provided, and frequency of use of public computers can offer insights into various social and cultural biases. Perhaps they are useful in justifying continued funding, but how accurate a picture is this of what the community wants and needs? Also, how interested do you think the average patron would be in reading these reports? After all, these are the people the library is trying to serve, and the ones paying taxes.
For the most part, assessments of this type look at community needs in relation to what libraries currently understand their service options to be — media loans, age-related programs, internet access, meeting and event space — rather than first researching and recording community needs, and then determining what the library can reasonably address. By limiting the scope of assessments to how libraries see their current functions, libraries limit what they will consider now, and what they might consider planning for in the future.
It is the business of public libraries to provide information services to their communities — and it is in the community’s best interest to support services that address community needs. When book lending was the main information service that was needed, it was necessary for libraries to stay focused on that important and sizable job. Today, information services are not that simple. Nothing is simple, including the cultural, economic, environmental, and demographic changes impacting both communities and libraries.
Of course, public libraries cannot directly address all community needs but they can provide a sort of “Catalog of Needs and Services.”
One service libraries can provide is to list, or catalog, individual and community needs. Some of these needs are satisfied by library services, some by government and non-government organizations, while other needs are not addressed. But all can be identified and made visible.
This is Reference Desk work, just of another kind. If you remember “Miracle On 34th Street,” Macy’s Santa referred some customers to Gimbels to locate products not in Macy’s — Libraries, the new Santa — referring patrons to services within the community, also logging those needs not yet provided for, plus helping library workgroups to take on projects of their own.
This needs and resource reference could take the simple form of a loose leaf-binder, or be as complex as a Wiki- like web-based database, updatable by logged-in users. Either way, consider what this reference could mean to local communities if residents could have access to information regarding services, all services, including those presented by other groups and residents. And the results of this monitoring offered in many different forms, such as discussion forums, electronic and marker-board displays, and front-desk hand-outs. Not only would this activity facilitate assistance on different levels of need, but the monitoring results could act as a historical record, a measurement of successes, failures, and the measured effects of changes in various services. Now THAT kind of assessment would make interesting and useful reading, for patrons, administrators, and even social researchers trying to understand how communities succeed, or fail, in helping themselves.
What all this means is that the notions of “assessment,” “needs,” and “services,” must change if libraries are to allow the greatest input into the process of change — change that can create a path the library and other community groups can follow. This process might also include areas of need stemming from a more global perspective — for example, resource depletion, a changing climate, increased energy needs and costs, population shifts, changing information technologies, and changes in demographics. This may fall under the category of long-range planning, but for certain of our populations, the time for this planning may be sooner than later.
Address individual and community needs.
Needs assessment might include noting increased populations of elders. The Santa Monica Public Library is assessing and documenting needs with their “Senior Services, Community Connections.” It’s essentially a reference guide to “assist in finding services for older adults.” It lists, in their own words, issues elders may face, like “can’t go out — homebound”, and provides suggestions, and resources that might help. This is one example but it addresses a group (Baby Boomers) that could become among a library’s most frequent (retired) users. The library needs to go where community residents are headed. We could say that preparing for the future today means managing the process of engaging change as much as managing the effects of change; it means looking at process as program. There are 9,000 public libraries in the U.S. today — more if you count branch buildings. What a fantastic resource this represents.
Public libraries are the main local information resource. They can and should commit now to serving communities in ways that directly address ongoing social and environmental issues, issues like: job retraining, utilizing healthcare systems, social isolation, aging, youth career displacement, personal finances, housing, and so on. Some of the tools that libraries can use in addressing these concerns are already familiar to them (reference desk, career table, exhibit/presentation space, bulletin boards). In many cases, minor space changes might address needed changes. Social spaces can combine uses to offer greater potential benefit than each standing alone — for example, a social or café space that includes bulletin boards where people can mill about discussing postings. Bulletin boards can be enhanced by organizing them for clarity and offering categories to suggest uses like job and volunteer listings, perhaps a tool and resource exchange, entrepreneur and small business assistance, in addition to the more familiar service and for-sale notices.
A space will be well utilized if people can easily see that it is available for them, that they can use it to present a range of information, whether it’s career, creative, health, or literary — whatever is relevant to individual and community needs. This requires effective signage as well as meaningful outreach, outreach that should become a hallmark of the institution so that even the socially shy individual can feel comfortable when approaching to share something of value to themselves, and possibly to others. The real challenge, and the real work for libraries, is to make it easier for new uses to emerge, and that means the process must be easy to see and understand. The more the door is open, welcoming, clear, and easy to understand, the greater the individual interaction — the greater the interaction, the more information is exchanged, and the more essential the library is to the community.
Accessing information is not the same as sharing information. Collaboration — human-to-human connecting — is the new goal. Libraries are in the best position to bring the internet, local businesses, neighbors, and educators together in a space where increased interaction can bring creative results. Whether or not a “Catalog of Needs and Services” is utilized, addressing community needs should be as apparent as it is systematic — showing the community that this library is a facilitator of new ideas is the kind of transparency that will be seen and appreciated.
Show the community that their library is here to enliven, enlighten, and help.
“It’s the environment, stupid.” No offense. During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, a campaign strategist (presumably intending to highlight a significant current issue) hung a sign on his door that read, “The Economy, Stupid.” Public libraries should do the same in emphasizing current issues that impact their communities. But theirs would be a much longer sign: The — Economy, Energy Resources, Climate, Changing and Aging Populations, Education and Career Limitations, Media and Technology Integration, Social Isolation — Stupid.”
The community should steer the library’s ship, and the library should let the community know where it’s headed. Like the campaign strategist, libraries should take every opportunity to demonstrate a revitalized statement of purpose and clarity of mission. New signage throughout a facility — beginning with a poster at the front desk — can declare new purposes for the library as a whole, and for dedicated areas within the library. A suggestion box with a feedback mechanism can add confidence that someone is actually listening. Simplified processes for space reservation can impart a caring concern for the individual: it’s not programs that bring life to the library, but the life behind programs.
The future may require those living within a community to work and live more closely and more effectively with each other. Within this environment, it’s how we share material resources (which may become increasingly scarce), how we make a living (relying on fewer employee benefits), where and how we can live (in a changing climate), and how we help each other (including the aged) that will represent critical change — not so much how we read text, whether on paper or an e-reader.
As film became transferable to new formats, tapes and DVDs were added to library collections, and in the “age of information,” libraries responded by installing computers. Though still utilized, centralized cataloging and storage of information is no longer the critical service that is needed. It is no longer just the book, journal, or film we need centralized; it is the interaction of residents within a flexible information and community-oriented environment. The public library is the one community space that is designed, built, and paid for specifically to bring people and information together. We just need to make a few modifications in order to meet the future.
