PVLD Director's Blog

Statistics

I just received my copy of the State Library Statistical Report and always find it interesting to compare PVLD to other local libraries:

Measure	PVLD	Redondo Beach	Torrance	Beverly Hills	Newport Beach	Yorba Linda	Cerritos	Statewide Aggregate
Population Served	67,200	67,112	147,108	35,813	83,361	66,794	54,834	n/a
Number of Branches	3	2	6	2	4	1	1	n/a
Expenditures per capita	$75.04	$55.30	$46.15	$261.44	$68.48	$61.51	$104.19	n/a
Expenditure on materials per capita	$8.99	$5.45	$5.03	$23.47	$9.90	$5.95	$10.19	n/a
Book volumes held per capita	3.42	2.76	3.59	7.74	3.18	1.8	4.02	n/a
Circulation per capita	12.64	12.71	7.8	14.7	17.31	9.74	17.71	5.3
Visits per capita	9.3	6.54	5.07	12.91	10.49	4.0	21.38	4.09
# of Children's programs	788	173	2,164	543	736	397	495	n/a
Attendance at Children's programs	32,781	6,829	56,432	17,305	35,833	26,937	25,558	n/a
Reference transactions per capita	1.55	0.84	2.03	4.15	2.05	1.22	2.64	0.86
Public Internet Computers per 1000 population	0.43	0.25	0.48	0.34	1.19	0.30	2.97	0.41
Hours open per 100 population	10.8	7.6	9.65	9.11	14.58	4.98	6.11
Population served per FTE staff	1,284	2,139	1,904	465	1,313	2,295	800

As I expected we look pretty good in some areas (especially compared to the statewide data), and not as strong in others. Some of the numbers seem a bit "off", so I do wonder whether there are differences in how libraries collect and report the data. More importantly, some key areas where I think PVLD excels are not reported at all – for example adult programs, volunteer support, database availability and usage, website usage, etc. Food for thought, though…

I'm taking tomorrow off – I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend!

Reading

I'm a reader - one of those kids whose mother read to her early and often, who was able to read by myself before I went to kindergarten, and who has many memories of trying to sneak more reading time by reading with a flashlight under the covers or by taking a book into the bathroom and pretending I really "had to go".  For me working in a library is like the proverbial "kid in the candy store" - one of the biggest perks of my job is that I can cruise through the library almost every day and bring home the books that catch my eye.  Despite the fact that I read and write a lot about how we can use technology to deliver library services, I firmly believe that books and reading are at the heart of the public library's mission.

I live and work surrounded by readers, so I experienced real dissonance when I saw last week's news about American reading habits -

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/08/21/reading.ap/index.html

This morning as I was reviewing some of the snippets I had tucked away for use in future blog postings, I came across a couple of items that made me feel better. 

Back in July when the last Harry Potter book was being released marketing consultant, writer and blogger Seth Godin had this to say about why books still have value in a digital age -

"Books are souvenirs. No one is going to read Potter online, even if it's free. Holding and owning the book, remembering when and how you got it... that's what you're paying for. Books are great at holding memories. They're lousy at keeping secrets."

And then there was this from Charlie Munger, Warren's Buffet's partner and Co-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, arguably one of the most successful investment companies ever -

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren [Buffett] reads -- at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out."  (from the Motley Fool website)

Amen!

Annex video contest

This summer we had our first ever Annex video contest. Despite fairly light Annex door count over the summer we had five entries – and anticipate an even better response if we re-run the contest during the school year. The five entries can be viewed below – congratulations to Melissa Klose for her winning entry "Where's Your Head At" and to Annex regular Andrew Sibner for the second place "Annex Hell".

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=943CA4C10B379F5D

PVLD State of the District 2006/2007

Every year I give a report to our Board of Trustees and staff on how PVLD performed against our Strategic Plan goals and objectives.  Here is this year's report, which I will be presenting to staff tomorrow.  We set STRETCH goals, and while we fell short on some of them I continue to be amazed at what our staff and volunteers achieve!

State Of The District 2006 2007

From: kgould, 9 minutes ago

Great service pays off!

After ending last week with the sad news about the State budget, I thought I'd start this week with a pat on the back for the PVLD staff.

Executive Assistant Merna Marshall devoted quite a bit of time helping a customer who had spent nearly half an hour completing the long version of our online customer survey, only to "lose" it at the very end.  Merna was not only able to verify that the survey data had not been lost, she was also able to direct the customer to our online Inter-Library Loan service and put into action the customer's recommendation that we provide better descriptive information about the service.

Merna's efforts were rewarded by this email from the customer -

"Thank you so much for following up on my survey and for telling me about WorldCat and interlibrary loan.

Palos Verdes Library District is the best library that I have ever used!

You can quote me on that!"

Kudos to Merna, and to all of the employees who help make PVLD great!

State Budget Disappointment

This afternoon I received the following message from the California Library Association's lobbyists:

Last year, the Governor, in his May Revise and subsequent Budget, approved a

$7 million augmentation to the Public Library Foundation, bringing the total baseline figure to $21.3 million This year, the Budget Conference Committee approved a $1 million augmentation to the fund. However, the Governor has chosen to slash not only the $1 million augmentation for 2007-08, but in addition, he is taking away the $7 million augmentation he provided last year. In his veto message he states:

"I am deleting the discretionary $1,000,000 legislative augmentation to the Public Library Foundation. This reduction is necessary to limit program expansions and help bring ongoing General Fund expenditures in line with existing resources. In addition, I am deleting $7,000,000 in order to further build a prudent reserve in light of the various uncertainties in revenues and spending that we face this year."

The Governor's reduction today brings the new PLF baseline down to $14.3 million.

Similarly, you may recall that the Governor, in his May Revise and subsequent Budget last year approved a $7 million augmentation to the Transaction Based Reimbursement program. Today, the Governor inexplicably cut $7 million from that program as well. His veto message states:

"I am deleting $7,000,000 for Direct Loan and Interlibrary Loan services.

This reduction is necessary in order to further build a prudent reserve in light of the various uncertainties in revenues and spending that we face this year."

We do not know how this reduction will now affect the federal match component for this program, and we will be working with the State Library.

The Governor's reduction brings the new TBR baseline down to $11.6 million.

We are deeply disappointed in the Governor's actions today, particularly in light of the inconsistent message, wherein he funded both of these programs last year in the approximate same amounts that he cut this year. These programs were just beginning to recover from the devastating cuts that were made to the PLF and TBR under the previous Governor, Gray Davis. One Budget staff member, who we worked with throughout the year, called immediately after seeing the major cuts and commented, "You have my anger, empathy, and sympathy."

The Public Library Foundation (PLF) provides every public library jurisdiction with funding on a per capita basis to be used for library services. Transaction-based Reimbursement (TBR) helps offset the cost of providing library services to residents of other jurisdictions either through Inter-Library Loan (i.e. when we loan a book to another library for use by their customer) or "over the counter" service (when someone who is resident in another jurisdiction comes into one of our libraries and checks out an item). Neither program has ever been fully funded to the level authorized by law, and both were cut drastically several years ago and have never really recovered.

PLF and TBR make up a relatively small portion of the PVLD budget (about $40,000) but these cuts will still hurt. They will hurt libraries in other jurisdictions even more. PLF is the only source of library funding that can't be re-deployed by a city or county for other purposes, and in many "poorer" libraries it is a major source of funding for books. Full funding for PLF this year would have equated to $2.49 per capita. At its 1999/2000 peak PLF was funded at $1.68 per capita. This fell to a low of $0.39 per capita in 2004/2005 and was clawed back to $0.57 per capita last year. The Governor's last-minute cut will bring it back to close to $0.39 per capita. That doesn't buy a lot of library books!

TBR only partially offsets the cost of resource sharing between libraries, and cuts will particularly hurt libraries whose location or collections mean that they serve lots of non-residents.

As a member of the CLA Legislative Committee I am particularly disappointed that all of our hard work over the past couple of years, which led to the modest funding increases noted above, has been undone with a single stroke of the Governor's pen.

Fundraising

I've been thinking a lot about fundraising as PVLD moves towards its first multi-million dollar ($11.5 million to be more precise!) campaign. We have big plans – to restore and improve the Malaga Cove Library, expand and remodel the Miraleste Library, and build an endowment of at least $5 million. It's a pretty scary process to someone like me who has never done any significant fundraising before so I've been reading everything I can get my hands on and talking to as many people as possible. The other day I came across the Donor Power blog - http://www.donorpowerblog.com/donor_power_blog/ which has great advice on donor-centered fundraising.

Today the blog had a great post on why the idea that you need to "give donors a rest" is wrong. The whole post is interesting, but the following statement really resonated with me. I don't think I am alone in feeling like asking people to support our cause is somehow a negative thing to do…and this made me feel much better!

 

Giving begets giving. Here's why: Giving feels good. Donors know this. But many nonprofits work from the belief that giving feels bad.

If you want to be successful in fundraising, be confident, be joyful. Your mission is important, and your donors agree. They love to support you. They want to be asked; they don't need to rest.

Are we “Dumbing Down” Libraries?

I had a bit of time to catch up on some professional reading and listening this morning, so finally heard the first of the Joan Frye Williams and George Needham "Thinking Out Loud" podcasts – this one on the question of whether new library service models are really "dumbing down" the library. The topic was provoked by one of our PVLD Trustees, who asked that very question at a workshop featuring Joan and George a few months ago…so I was particularly interested in their response!

At ½ hour long this podcast is a bit longer than the one I posted yesterday - http://infoblog.infopeople.org/2007/07/george_and_joan_thinking_out_l.php

A couple of things toward the end jumped out at me –

1. The assertion that only about 15% of the people who come to the library come with a firm and clear idea of what they are looking for – for the remaining 85% discovery and serendipity have a lot to do with how satisfied they are. This begs the question – the subject of previous posts of mine – of whether we have organized the library to enable the 85% to make those serendipitous discoveries, or to support the 15% who know exactly what they want and need a system to point them precisely to those items. Is it better to have all of the items by and about Shakespeare together - whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry, audio book, DVD, or large print item – or to keep each of these types of materials together with other items of their type? A provocative question – and one that I'm sure we are going to continue to debate here at PVLD.
   
2. George asked the question "How can we arrange our libraries and services to accommodate more of the people who are 'not like us'?" Implicit in the question were some assumptions about what "we " are like – biased towards learning via the written word, eager to get the "right" answer, introverted – that I'm sure many would challenge…but I think it is legitimate to ask whether we are set up to accommodate different learning styles (e.g. kinesthetic, visual, or auditory) or other diverse attributes.

Having heard George and Joan before I was not surprised at their view that to claim new service models "dumb down" libraries is to take an elitist view that they feel will not serve librarians well as we continue our perpetual battle to maintain relevant. The fact that I tend to agree with them would not surprise anyone who knows me. That said, whether you agree with us or not, they touch on a number of interesting and thought-provoking questions during their dialogue – it's well worth taking the time to listen.

Why can't we do this?

We just completed a successful trial of a mail delivery service to the homebound and are working on the launch of the service "for real".  I told the team that I really see the homebound service as the first step to a fee-based mail delivery service for all customers whether "homebound" or not.  Our new ILS has a module that will support this...but someone beat us to it!

http://lifehacker.com/software/books/rent-books-netflix+style-with-bookswim-292305.php

I still think it is something we will want to do - and maybe we can do it cheaper!

What libraries are doing right

Infopeople, California's library training organization, has started a great series of podcasts featuring library consultant and futurist Joan Frye Williams and OCLC's George Needham "Thinking Out Loud". This one on "libraries that are getting it right" both reaffirmed for me that PVLD is on the right path when it comes to our efforts to make our libraries a vital part of our community, and gave me some great ideas of things we could explore. It's well worth 15 minutes of your time!

http://infoblog.infopeople.org/2007/08/george_and_joan_thinking_out_l_1.php

As an aside – it also reminded me that with the summer ending we are heading into a season with many opportunities to make PVLD more visible in our community – especially the Rolling Hills Estates Holiday parade! Any staff members or volunteers who are interested in helping plan our entry in the parade please shoot me an email….