PVLD Director's Blog

End- of-Year Refresh

As 2010 draws to a close I am looking ahead to a 2011 that promises to be even more busy and eventful than this year has been, which is saying something.  The past few months my daily life has much-too-closely resembled the one described in this post from Execupundit.

While the library remains busy, the few days before the Christmas holiday are fairly slow for me as the many holiday events draw to a close and the flow of emails slows to a trickle.  Motivated by my new, extremely organized, Executive Assistant Nicole I have been going through my office drawers and files and getting rid of old stuff from files that were out-dated or duplciated inour library master files to the miscellaneous condiments packets that were littering the drawer where I keep my teabags and lunch supplies.  I even vacuumed out my drawers and keyboard tray!

I haven't quite gotten it all done, but my office is looking much tidier and I am feeling much more prepared to face the New Year.

Next week I'll be on vacation and doing the same thing at home.

While it won't be as much fun as being with family in Canada or flying off to some exotic location, I actually find vacations like this extremely satisfying.  There is something about a clean and orderly spaces that satisfies my soul. 

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday and a chance to do what satisfies your soul, and best wishes for a happy and healthy 2011.

Best-loved childhood books

This afternoon PVLD Adult Services Department Manager Sylvia Richardson sent an email to our Librarians encouraging us to quickly jot down and share lists of books that "made a lasting impression, or were best-beloved, when we were young" and several of us spent a pleasant 20 minutes or so doing just that.

We've had fun seeing what childhood books our colleagues found most memorable and each person's list sparked memories for the rest of us, and I thought others would enjoy seeing the consolidated list too.

Here it is - unexpurgated, and with titles for all ages from toddlers to precocious teens! If it sparks memories for you, or you want to add a best-loved book from your own childhood please post a comment and share with the rest of us.

Taylor, Sydney – All-of-a-Kind Family series

Gilbreth, Frank Bunker Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey – Cheaper By the Dozen, Belles on Their Toes

Alcott, Louisa May – Little Women and subsequent books (Little Men, Jo’s Boys, etc.)

Lindgren, Astrid – The Children of Noisy Village, Pippi Longstocking

The Bobbsey Twins books

Webster, Jean - Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy

Cleary, Beverly – the Ramona books, Otis Spofford, also her memoirs

Johnston, Norma – the Keeping Days series

Smith, Betty – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

O’Dell, Scott – Island of the Blue Dolphins

Levitin, Sonia – all of her books, especially Journey to America

Frank, Anne – The Diary of Anne Frank

Ji-Li Jiang – Red Scarf Girl

Dahl, Roald – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches

Blume, Judy – all of her books

Hyman, Trina Schart – Self-Portrait

Anderson, Hans Christian – fairy tales

Zwerger, Lisbeth – anything illustrated by her

Avi – The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Cricket Magazine

Konigsburg, E.L. – anything by her, especially From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and About the B’nai Bagels

Lowry, Lois – Number the Stars and The Giver

Dodge, Mary Mapes – Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates

Lowrey, Janette Sebring – The Pokey Little Puppy

Potter, Beatrix – Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin

Holling, Holling C. – Pagoo

White, E.B. – Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Trumpet of the Swan

Kipling, Rudyard – Just So Stories, Jungle Book

Henry, Marguerite – all of her horse books

Sewell, Anna – Black Beauty

O’Hara, Mary – My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead

Gipson, Fred – Old Yeller

King Arthur – Howard Pyle edition

Robin Hood – Howard Pyle edition

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan – The Yearling

Spyri, Johanna – Heidi (also Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children by Charles Tritten)

Graham, Kenneth – The Wind in the Willows

Twain, Mark – Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island, Kidnapped, A Child’s Garden of Verses (illustrated by Tasha Tudor)

Verne, Jules – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Sperry, Armstrong – Call It Courage

Michener, James – Hawaii, The Drifters, The Source (for teens!)

Nordhoff, Charles – the Bounty trilogy

Heyerdahl, Thor – Kon Tiki

Doyle, Arthur Conan – the Sherlock Holmes series

Buck, Pearl – The Good Earth

Burroughs, Edgar Rice – Tarzan, the Mars books

Puzo, Mario – The Godfather

Kjelgaard, Jim – Big Red books

London, Jack – Call of the Wild, White Fang

Burton, Virginia Lee – Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Landmark Books biographies of Washington, Jefferson, Stonewall Jackson, U.S. Grant

Kessler, Leonard – Mr. Pine’s Purple House

Dr. Seuss – Horton Hears A Who, Horton Hatches An Egg, Hop On Pop, Ten Apples Up On Top

Piper, Watty – The Little Engine That Could

The Nancy Drew series

L’Engle, Madeline – anything she wrote!

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley – Black and Blue Magic, The Velvet Room

Burnett, Mary Hodgson – The Secret Garden, A Little Princess

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de – The Little Prince

Cameron, Eleanor – the Mushroom Planet books

Rawls, Wilson – Where the Red Fern Grows

Streatfield, Noel – the “Shoes” series (Movie Shoes, Ballet Shoes, etc.)

Sidney, Margaret – The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew

George, Jean Craighead – My Side of the Mountain

Kroeber, Theodora – Ishi:  Last of His Tribe

Jackson, Helen Hunt – Ramona

Edwards, Julie Andrews – Mandy, The Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles

The Tom Swift series

The Hardy Boys series

LeGuin, Ursula – Wizard of Earthsea series

Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings

Godden, Rumer – anything she wrote!

“Miss Read” – Chronicles of Fairacre and other books about English Village Life

Lewis, C.S. – The Chronicles of Narnia

Rey, H.A. – Curious George

Bemelman, Ludwig – Madeline

Joslyn, Sesyle – What Do You Say Dear

Eastman, P.D. – Go Dog Go

Lang, Andrew – The Violet Fairy and all of his other books

MacDonald, Betty – Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

Baum, L. Frank – the Oz books

Sachs, Marilyn – Amy Moves In (and her other books)

The Happy Hollisters series

The Trixie Belden series

Travers, P.L.  – the Mary Poppins series

Richardson, Grace – Apples Every Day

Hawthorne, Nathaniel – Tanglewood Tales

Mazer, Norma Fox – The Solid Gold Kid

Du Jardin, Rosamond -  Pam and Penny series

Lee, Harper – To Kill A Mockingbird

Wilder, Laura Ingalls – Little House in the Big Woods and all of her books

Smith, Dodie – 101 Dalmations

Brink, Carol Ryrie – Caddie Woodlawn

Barrie, J.M. – Peter Pan

Brooks, Walter – Freddy the Pig books

Lofting, Hugh – Dr. Doolittle

Haywood, Carolyn- the Eddie books

McCloskey, Robert – Centerburg Tales, Homer Price, Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal

Robertson, Keith – Henry Reed books 

Juster, Norton – The Phantom Tollbooth

Local librarian in the news!

Last week Melissa McCollum, a colleague of my husband's at the County of Los Angeles Public Library, won one of four Carnegie Corporation/New York Times "I Love My Librarian" awards nationwide.

Today the Daily Breeze had this great story - front page, above the fold, color picture. 

In a time when libraries are most often in the news because of cuts to budgets and hours it is great to see articles like this that recognize a wonderful, up-and-coming library manager and at the same time highlight all of the ways her library is making a difference in the community it serves.

The list of innovative programs that Melissa has put in place would be impressive in any circumstance.  Knowing she accomplished this while balancing the demands of work and a young family and in an environment where resources are stretched much thinner than they are at PVLD (I am pretty sure she has been spending several hours a day just covering the reference desk) makes it that much more impressive.

Great work Melissa!

The Road to Bell

Execupundit pointed me to this very interesting article by William Voegeli about how the professionalization of local government administration over 100 years ago may have contributed to the compensation scandal in the nearby city of Bell and other violations of the public trust.

As a professional public administrator myself I am aware every day of my need to provide the best possible stewardship of the resources the public has entrusted to me and my organization.  I hope that the citizens who fund and are served by PVLD consider me among what what Mr. Voegeli describes as "professionals in the best sense, motivated by a sense of duty and a desire to serve the public honorably."

At the same time I am also accutely aware of how easy it is to slide into Mr. Voegeli's "group in the middle':

"They may employ their professional training and specialized technical knowledge to solve problems, but they’re not above using such know-how to stifle criticism or impede scrutiny. Having chosen careers devoted to the public welfare, they lose the ability to distinguish what’s good for the public from what’s good for their own careers. They’re not necessarily cynical when they insist that it’s for the sake of schoolchildren that teachers must receive virtually automatic tenure after three years on the job. They may mean it when they say that the public sector cannot attract and retain the personnel it needs without offering health, retirement, and job-security benefits found nowhere else in the American economy. But being sincere isn’t the same as being right."

With every report that I make to the publicly-elected Board of Trustees that are my bosses there is the opportunity to choose my words so that attention is directed towards what I want to showcase and away from what I might not want scrutinized.

With every budget that I prepare and every union negotiation that I lead there are opportunities to tip the allocation of resources towards employee compensation and benefits that outstrip those in the private sector or even other local government bodies (and that benefit me too) and away from programs and activities that would benefit the community as a whole, and to rationalize that this is necessary in order to attract and retain talented employees.

As the Management Team and I plan and go about our work we make choices about whether to invite and embrace the input and involvement of citizens or to use our status as paid professionals and the guise of our professional expertise to keep them at bay.

When the Board of Trustees plans a special meeting they can follow the letter of the Brown Act but hold the meeting at a time or place that does not facilitate public participation, or they can put aside their personal preferences and plan their meetings to increase the chances that interested members of the public can take part. 

I could go on, but suffice it to say that nearly every action I take as the leader of this organization has the potential to be a step on the road to Bell.  I want to believe I have the strength of character and intestinal fortitude to steer away from that road, but I also hope that if it starts to look like I am veering in that direction someone calls me on it....

More on Wikileaks

I don't normally post twice in one day, but somehow I had missed this excellent contribution to the discussion from Clay Shirky that my friend Genesis passed on via a comment on my post earlier today and thought it was worth sharing.

Definitely worth a read.

Wikileaks and Democracy

Like Hugh McGuire I have had a persistent, gut-level concern about all of the arm-waving and outcry about Wikileaks and my instinct has been to support them, but apart from wondering what law they have actually broken have found it hard to articulate why I think what they have done is ok.  Thank you Hugh for saying it better than I could.

As Hugh notes, trying to stop the flow of leaked information is a pointless exercise, and trying to do so requires suspension of due process.  It also flies in the face of a free and open press, which is a cornerstone of a democratic society:

If you say that the government can prosecute people for publishing information that the government doesn’t want published – for “national security” or any other reason – then you no longer have a free press or free speech. If the government has the ability to outlaw public discussions on whatever topics they please, based on national security, the government then can control the speech of the press, private citizens, and any other kind of mixture of the two. This is what Lieberman’s SHIELD law proposes.

Leaks have always been with us - all the Internet does is accelerate and magnify how they get distributed.  It's hard to imagine a way that the U.S. government could control the flow of information it views as a security risk without starting to look a lot like China or a number of other countries around the world.  Not exactly  the group of nations we usually aspire to emulate.

Does the widespread distribution of the kind of information Wikileaks is making so readily available pose a threat to our national security?  Maybe.  Does suppressing it pose a different kind of threat to our national interests?  I think it does.

What do you think?

 

Book Christmas Tree

Too busy to write due to an overly-long "to do" list and a calendar full of holiday events, but thought I would share this great Christmas image from the University of San Francisco's Gleeson Library via the Laughing Squid blog, sent to me from community member Ellen November who against the odds is making headway in her quest to have a skate park built on the Peninsula:

 

Next year we'll have to try this with some of the items we weed from the collection!

The Battle

Between lingering jetlag, catching up after our vacation (which while wonderful was not really restful!), competing demands between my work at the library and my involvement with the Chamber of Commers, and the general holiday rush it has been hard to find time to blog or the mental energy to write anything meaningful. Kurt J. Harden of Cultural Offering  aptly calls this

The battle. . .

. . .between that which constantly presents itself and that which truly needs to be addressed is relentless.

Emails, phone calls and drop-by discussions are among the heavily-trafficked avenues to our attention.

We don't want to appear unhelpful or rigid so we divert our resources to the newest priority streaming by. . .and then the next and the next.

The key to victory in this battle, it seems, is the right combination of prioritization, discipline and discernment - knowing what needs to be done, having the focus to do it, all the while being equipped with the tools to notice when an item attempting to portray itself as important may actually be just that.

 

Over 20 years ago Stephen Covey' expressed a similar idea in this helpful matrix from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and it has stuck with me ever since although I am better at talking/writing about it than applying it:

 

 
Right now I seem to be doing OK at recognizing and dealing with the things that are both important and urgent, but not so great at finding time for the things that are important but not urgent....like doing the kind of reading and thinking that enables me to write meaningful blog posts.

I know that tide will turn again as I come back from a few days off to "sharpen the saw" (another wonderful Covey concept) over the holiday period and things settle down in the New Year.

IUntil I get through the current battle you can expect posts to be less frequent, and probably shorter, than has been my habit...

Books as Reassurance

As e-readers become more ubiquitous one of the most common questions I get when I am out and about in the community is about the future of books.  My response is always that while digital technology is going to grow in importance, I think physical books will still be with us for the foreseeable future.

I do sometimes struggle, however, to articulate why I think this is so.  Today Nicholas Bate, in his inimitable style, put his finger on it:

Most of us discovered long ago that we buy books (especially in a 1-click world) at a greater rate than we are able to read them; and so the book pile grows. And it does so until it becomes so alarming that we stop purchasing for a while or are saved by a vacation which allows us to increase our consumption of sentences. What stops us being entirely systematic and matching purchase to reading time? Or switching to an e-reader where the back-log is not a physical thing? Or simply using the wish list that the nice people at amazon kindly provide? Because any serious book-reader knows that the simple presence of a book pile makes him feel more secure and knowledgeable. Sure there is money and floor space tied up in that pile. But what price reassurance?

Maybe it is not just about the content, it is about the package.  I know that I sure derive a certain sense of security from the teetering pile of books on my nightstand....