PVLD Director's Blog

Go Library! Visiting the libraries in the Los Angeles area

Ellen November, a PVLD volunteer and community activist, has begun a mission to visit and blog about libraries across Los Angeles County. She got the idea from Oleg Kagan, a Librarian at the County of Los Angeles Public Library's West Hollywood Library and husband of PVLD's own Ashley Kagan.

I'm looking forward to this virtual library tour! If you want to join along click here to view Ellen's Go Library blog..and share it with your friends.

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 Yes, the "accession book" has been replaced by the Integrated Library System and the typewriter by the computer, but I bet there is not a library out there that has enough trash cans or has not dealt with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...

A hopeful view of the future of libraries

My friends Rosario and Carolyn shared this of Facebook, and it is too good not to pass along. It's a great description of what libraries are and can be...as the author puts it places of new ideas, not old books. Happy reading, and happy New Year!

http://toptrends.nowandnext.com/2011/12/28/in-praise-of-libraries-and-librarians/

Like Google...with Judgement

I LOVED this description of the value of librarians from the Net Cotton Content blog via one of my daily must-reads Cultural Offering -

"I love to go in and ask the librarians questions. They often know the answers. If not, they know where to turn.

They are like Google. But with judgement.

They face disintermediation. As in: we might stop realizing we need librarians and libraries because everything is Googlable. But, you know and I know: the Internet isn't the same thing as a Masters in Library Science. It isn't the same thing as knowing what information is trustworthy and what is just Net Cotton Content.

Don't disintermediate. Talk to a librarian today."

Hard Choices

Like libraries everywhere PVLD has limited physical space and a myriad of demands for that space...with one of the biggest demands being the need to house all of the books, magazines, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, and even audio- and video-tape items in our collection.

With limited space and a constant influx of newly purchased items, the librarians are constantly "weeding" the collection of older items to make space for new ones.

We, like many other libraries, are also finding that in this era of downloadable and streaming e-books, audio, and video the demand for physical items is trending downwards, while the demand for space for people in the library is growing.

Taken together, these factors mean that each month we remove a large number of items from the library collection - over 5,000 in September alone. The decision to remove a book is never easy and we take a number of factors into consideration including its age, how recently it has circulated, whether it is a "classic" or the only available copy in ourlibrary or in our region, its condition, etc.

Once a book is removed we make every effort to dispose of it responsibly. Those that are in very bad condition sent straight to the recycle bin, but most are sent to the Peninsula Friends of the Library for their book sales. Those that can't be sold individually (and the market for used library books with their stickers, labels, and stamps isn't as big as you might think!) may be sold in bulk to the film industry for movie sets, to interior decorators seeking books with a certain "look", or to dealers. The remainder are often donated - they have gone to schools in needy areas, shelters for the homeless or battered women, the county jail, military hospitals, the local Boys and Girls Club, and many other places. After all of these avenues are exhausted a book in reasonable condition still may end up in the recycle bin...and when a member of the public discovers that we are "throwing away books" all h&*!&@ can break loose!

Deciding which books get removed from the library, and then deciding how to dispose of them, is one of those aspects of library operations that most people don't think about, so it was refreshing to find this article on the National Public Radio blog. It's a pretty good overview of the process many libraries go through in managing their collections.

The NPR post makes reference to this article from Cracked.com which is a bit more pointed and a bit less representative of how PVLD handles disposing of books, but is a succinct articulation of the challenges nonetheless.

I think most librarians feel that every book has value, and "getting rid of" any book is not easy, but making those hard choices is part of keeping our libraries and what they contain relevent to our communities...so we do the best we can to keep the things that should be kept, responsibly dispose of those that can't, and balance all of the competing needs for our physical spaces. In the process do some books get destroyed forever? The answer is yes....but what is the alternative? To become a mausoleum for books? I doubt our comunities will continue to invest in public libraries if that is what we are.

How would you handle this dilemma?

Reading - the first freedom

My friend Eileen, owner of the fabulous White Square Fine Books and Art in Easthampton, MA, shared this blog post via Facebook today.

It's  a salutory reminder to librarians of the unintended consequences of policies that we might implement with the best of intentions, like requiring a child to be able to print their name before they can get a library card (which I should stress is not PVLD's policy), but more importantly it is a beautiful description of the tension between the adult responsibility to protect young people, and the joy that comes from  "reading - the careful selection of books and being given enough privacy to quietly read them myself" which is, as the author points out one of a child's "first freedoms".

I can so vividly remember getting my first library card, and the joy of picking out a big stack of books to take home...books that I chose my very self.  Can you?

 

 

 

 

PVLD recommends?

Last week I had the privilege of spending some time with Joan Frye Williams and George Needham.  One of the things we talked about was whether librarians' strongly-held professional values of patron privacy and confidentiality are causing us to miss an opportunity to use the data we have collected in our computer systems to deliver better and more focused services.

The very next day the Travelin' Librarian psoted this picture on his blog:

 

Since I work in a library and have access to the fabulous book sales organized by our Friends of the Library I haven't been inside a Barnes and Noble in years, so maybe this is old news, but my first thought was "Wouldn't it be cool ifthe library could deliver this kind of personalized recommendation to our patrons?"

Right now we simply don't have access to the kind of algorithms that would make this possible, but even if we did I suspect many librarians would shy away from this kind of personalized recommendation as compromising patron confidentiality.

Personally I love getting these kinds of recommendations from businesses that I frequent.  Sometimes the algorithm is a bit off and the suggestions aren't really a propos for me, but even then often they lead me down a new path of discovery.   

I'd love to know what the readers of this blog think.  What if the library could offer you personalized reading suggestions based on your checkout history?  Would that be of interest?  Would you worry about your privacy?  If privacy is a concern would being able to "opt out" address it?  Comments, please!

What is the life expectancy of the public library?

Later this week our PVLD management team and all of our full-time librarians are gathering for a discussion, facilitiated by Joan Frye Williams and George Needham, on the topic of what it means to be a professional in the 21st century.

As so often happens in the serendipitous world of the blogosphere, this morning I happened across a guest post on Tame the Web that pointed me to this challenging blog post predicting that public libraries will be dead within 15 years by Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company from a few months ago.  It's a response to media reports about a comment he made in a speech at the private Atwater Library in Montreal, and makes compelling argument that e-books will essentially kill the public library (what he calls the consumer library...as opposed to academic and other libraries with a more specialized purpose), and that all of the things our profession talks about as reasons for continued existance - unique local content, programs and activites, access for the underserved - will not be sufficient to justify the investment in our infrastruture, or alternatively will so fundamentally change what we are that the term "library" will no longer apply.

In his post Shatzkin systematically debunks many of the most cherished arguments of public librarians, as articulated very clearly by Gary Price, but agrees with Price on an important and intriguing point - "that  librarianship will be needed by people long after buildings full of books are not", requiring a whole new and as yet unimagined business model.

If Shatzkin is right and we need a new business model that is not about delivery of content in the form of books, or about bridging the digital divide, or about offering programs in a community center model,  or reliant on the creation, preservation and distribution of local content....what is it?

I'm looking forward to hearing what ideas our supervisors and librarians have when we get together later this week, and wish I had a clearer vision myself!

 

 

A librarian's influence

Nearly two years ago I wrote this post about my elementary school librarian and the influence she had on my life.  Today, that post received a comment from another student whose life Mrs. DeFirmian touched.  And in response to the commenter's question, since I also went to elementary school in Santa Barbara it must be the same Charlotte DeFirmian. 

Although she hasn't confirmed it, my guess is that the commenter found my blog by Googling "Charlotte DeFirmian" because when you do that post is one of the first hits.  If so, just the fact that she was actively seeking Mrs. DeFirmian, as well as her comments, are indicators that what I wrote in 2009  about both Mrs. DeFirmian and the impact a gifted teacher can have on a child's life. 

A timely reminder as school districts continue to lay off librarians and other teaching staff....

What Big Media Can Learn from the New York Public Library

Just came across this fabulous article (thanks Execupundit!) from The Atlantic.  It's about what traditional media companies can learn from how the New York Public Library is leveraging digital and social media, but it is rich with tips for other libraries, too...like these (emphasis mine):

• The days when libraries could base their mission and activities on the concept that "Information was not just an idea, but the set of physical objects that contained it" are long gone.  "Everywhere you look within the New York Public Library, it's clear that the institution has realized that its mission has changed. It's no longer only a place where people take out books and scholars dig through archives. The library has become a social network with physical and digital nodes."
  
• Success depends on the energy and enthusiasm of the employees who can do amazing things if supported.  "...the NYPL is succeeding online because of desire. The library's employees give a shit about the digital aspects of their institution, and they are supported in that shit giving. I mean this in the most fundamental way possible and as a damning critique for media companies. Second, the library sees its users as collaborators in improving the collections the library already has. While serving them online costs the library some money, they are creating value, too, by opening up conduits into the library for superusers."
  
• Driving the transformation of libraries isn't just the purview of the Librarians.   Biblion, an amazing Ipad app about the 1939-40 World's Fair, was developed by Donna Lee, head of the Communications Department and a former television producer who created it in the face of resistance from what she refers to as the "curators" who ".....had to give up control of the collections to outsiders, outsiders who would put something out in months, not the years that they themselves might spend creating a similar project." - but on the positive side had already created the basis for the app in a 700 page "finding aid".  In other words Ms. Lee took a typical "librarian" work product and turned it into what the article calls a internal "hot date"...and now everyone wants "their" collection to get the Biblion treatment.
• Amazing things can be accomplished when we turn let our users play too.  "A library is not just a place that collects information and processes information," May said. "We create the tools and structure the information so that others can enhance the collections." Another NYPLer, Doug Reside, Digital Curator of Performing Arts, put it even more simply, "The public library can be used to organize people to organize information....That is to say, the NYPL's collections can become more valuable to all of its users by tapping into the energy and expertise of some of its users. The role of the library is to create the right kinds of conduits for superusers to get involved....When you put information in the hands of people, they come up with all kinds of stuff that people within an institution might not think about."

It's tempting to thing that some of the projects described in the article are possible only in an institution as rich (in content, staff, and community resources as well as dollars) as NYPL, and some of them (like Biblion) surely cost a fair amount.  On the other hand, how hard would it be to replicate NYPL Wire, which uses the free Tumblr application to push out "a flow of tiny stories from and about their collections"? Initiative, storytelling ability, and a bit of time.

Lastly, but perhaps most importanty, the physical collections and spaces still matter. 

Of course, the thick library buildings will remain rooted in the streets of New York. Many collections, mostly because of copyright issues, will remain locked in basements and available only to pro researchers. But that probably won't be the only use for these beautiful, expensive buildings. Rather, the library would like to see them become hubs of conversation and collection improvement. Some of the Internet-sparked thinking about community building and the value of users is rubbing off on the physical space of the library. The New York Public Library is getting webbier by the day. Institutions famous for wanting people to be quiet now want you to speak up.

"I think we can become places of conversation," the curator Reside said, "Places where information is not only pulled off the shelf, but conversations can also happen around the contents of the library."

Users, even in a library, can no longer be shushed.

Want some inspiration about what is possible for libraries?  Read the article!