PVLD Director's Blog

Like Riding a Bike

PVLD operates on a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year, so about now is when we start seriously thinking about what we want to achieve next year and beyond and how those goals will affect our budget.  For many years this has meant reviewing and updating, and periodically re-writing, our Strategic Plan.

Back in November I wrote this post about my growing feeling that PVLD may have evolved to a point where a highly structured strategic planning process resulting in a formal Strategic Plan is not only un-necessary, but possibly counter-productive. 

As the end point of our most recent three-year Strategic Plan draws ever closer I have been reflecting on how dated it already seems,how little it really guided our decision-making, and how badly we missed the mark on most of the quantitative measures.  I don't think that is because it was a bad piece of work.  It was written by smart people guided by an excellent consultant based on our best knowledge at the time.  I think the problem is that the environment is so turbulent and the pace of change so great (and getting greater) that any attempt to set objectives and goals for anything other than the very near term future (measured in weeks and months, not years) is doomed.

 A couple of weeks ago I came across this excellent post on the "Obituary of the 5 Year Strategic Plan" by Lea Blair (via Michael Bungay Stanier's Box of Crayons) and loved her idea that what we really need to to is equip people to run our organization as if they were riding a bike:

"In order to ride a bike you do the following:
1. You pack what you think (best guess) you will need for your bike ride.
2. You know your destination – or at least what you want to see when you get there.
3. You start pedaling in that direction.
4. Most important…You have a short window of time to make a decision on how to successfully navigate what comes in front of you. Especially the surprises. And surprises are one thing we can count on in ever increasing number. Whether it is a child running in front of your bike, or a turn in the road that you didn’t expect, or an oncoming biker. Only at the time when you see the actual change can you make the best decision as to how to navigate your bike."

 Let us learn what we can about the future (and pack our bags well). And, if your rider – manager or executive, has the awareness and skills necessary to be able to make those quick navigation decisions with agility and flexibility, your company will wind up at its destination… no matter what changes and surprises happen along the way."

The challenge for libraries (and, I would venture to guess, for almost every type of organization) is that  the accelerating pace of change and the unkown but surely profound outcomes of the current technological revolution make it very hard (maybe impossible?) to envision our ultimate destination. 

I'm thinking that right now maybe the best we can do is hold on tight to the handlebars, pedal like crazy, and make navigation decisions based on some core touchstone principles like whether a given course of action enhances access to information or restricts it, or whether it makes the library more connected to the community or less so, or whether it meets the test of good stewardship of the public's money.

And maybe the most recent PVLD Strategic Plan will be the last...at least for this Library Director.

 

 

The more things change....remembering PVLD's first Librarian

Miss Agnes McMillan served as PVLD's first (and for the time of her tenure only) Librarian from 1930 to her death in 1956.  During the course of my 8 years at PVLD I have heard snippets about her, but really didn't know much.  I have always, for example, loved the story told by one of our book sale volunteers about what a momentous occasion it was for her when Miss McMillan allowed her to go into the "adult" stacks at a younger age than was generally permitted, giving rise to questions from her mother when she came home with a stack of books from the adult collection.  The mother's concerns were allayed when she learned that "Miss McMillan said I could read these".

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet a lifelong Peninsula resident, Mrs. Jane Armstrong Eubank Hall, aged 90, who back in the early 1930's was a "library kid".  The family, which for a time had no father, lived near the Malaga Cove Library.  Mrs. Hall's mother was a businesswoman who founded an insurance agency in the Malaga Cove Plaza and, distracted by the demands of business and the demands of single parenthood, allowed Jane to spend many hours at the Malaga Cove Library where she came to view Miss McMillan as a second mother.

Local History Librarian Marjeanne Blinn and Librarian Dennis Piotrowski have been gathering information and documentation about Miss McMillan to share with Mrs. Hall, and came across this 1930 letterfrom her to Mr. Charles Cheney, then-Secretary of the Board of Library Trustees - Download Miss McMillan letter in which she reports on, and gently educates him about, library operations.

While the letter certainly gives a glimpse into library operations in an earlier time, much of what she wrote made me realize how little things some things have changed. Yes, the "accession book" has been replaced by the Integrated Library System and the typewriter by the computer, but I bet there is not a library out there that has enough trash cans or has not dealt with the plumbing problems caused by inappropriate waste disposal.  We still spend a lot of time trying to get high school reading lists and visiting school classrooms, librarian still go out of their way to give the kind of service Miss McMillan provided to the "boy at the plunge", our meeting rooms are still heavily used by community groups, Library Directors still wrestle with budgets, and we still value and rely on community donations like that from the Friends of Art.

At the time when changing technology makes the future of libraries seem cloudy I found it reassuring to know that much of what we do is at its heart unchanged from 80+ years ago...

23 Reasons Why The Library Is the Most Important Place In Town

Great article from Public Libraries magazine - Community Centered:  23 Reasons Why the Library is the Most Important Place in Town - but as Patrick Sweeney pointed out when he shared it on Facebook it is really too bad it was printed in a library magazine that is read by "the choir" rather than a mainstream publication.

...Which is why it was nice to see this article by Susan Hildreth, Director of the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services  and former California State Librarian, in the Huffington Post today.

Bottom line...libraries are still relevant, and we do matter.

 

Reading Is Not Optional

Great interview with author Walter Dean Myers, the new Ambassador for Youth Literature, on Morning Edition this morning.  Click here to listen to compelling story about why reading is important to success in life, the importance of reading to kids early, and why gritty realism is an important element of Young Adult fiction.  Good luck in your new post Mr. Myers!

Will libraries go out of business...gradually?

As expected, this holiday season saw an explosion in the sale of tablet computers and e-readers.  According to this article from MSNBC (shared by our Facilities Manager Charles Crouse), during December Amazon.com sold over 1 million Kindles of various types each week, and during the week between Christmas and New Years Eve over 20 million Adroid and Apple IOS mobile devices were activated and over 1 billion mobile apps were downloaded. 

We are certainly seeing the effects of this in the library, as patrons come in with their new devices seeking help with everything from connecting to our WiFi network to downloading e-books.  As I wrote in my earlier post, the staff is doing its best to help - our "Getting Started With E-Books" guide is prominantly featured on our website, we have invested in a selection of devices for staff training, and we will soon begin to offer small group (2-3 people) hand-on training to the public by appointment.  We also continue to beef up our e-book collection, which now has over 1,000 titles.

I'm sure we will make it through this wave in decent shape, but I am less confident about our institutional ability to respond to the tectonic shifts that are generating these waves.

 My friend Derek Wolfgram posted this article ("Why Best Buy Is Going Out of Business...Gradually") from Forbes on Facebook this morning.  It's about Best Buy's failures during the holiday season just past and what they say about the company's ability to survive in the digital age but, as Derek pointed out, the issues identified are as relevent to libraries as they are to retailers:

"Moving online required new thinking, new management structures, and new strategies.  It would also require integrated front and back-end information systems.  Customers would expect inventory to be transparent between the web and the stores, and that specials and “exclusives” would be consistent across all channels.  Whatever attributes they associated with a retailer’s brand—whether price, quality, convenience, expertise, service—would need to be translated to the online experience and enhanced.

To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed with the online experience.

...Amazon neither invented nor appropriated its basic strategies from Best Buy or anyone else.  It simply does what consumers want.  Best Buy does what would be most convenient for the company for consumers to want but don’t, then crosses its fingers and prays."

Antiquated back-end inventory and database systems that do not integrate seamlessly with the online experience, expensive physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs, inability to carry sufficient inventory to fulfill customer expectations, systems that are based on what we think the customer should need....sounds eerily familiar.

I know libraries and librarians across the country and around the world, and certainly here at PVLD, are working hard to fundamentally change our operating models so that we can surf the waves of technological change rather than being crushed as they crash over our heads...but I do worry that the changes are not as fast, or as fundamental, as they need to be.