PLA Blog

Listening to Senator Barack Obama speak last night, I heard a call to arms for libraries to continue to exist for the benefit of humanity and for the sake of America. And between the lines, I heard a call to arms for librarians to do much of the same for ourselves and for our institution of librarianship.

Obama spoke about how “literacy is the most basic currency of the information economy that we live in today”, and how the literacy levels necessary to be employed in the 21st century will grow by 11%. In my mind, this means the literacy levels for serving our changing patron populations, who operate in a job market where “innovative thinking, detailed comprehension, and superior communication” are *basic* skills sought by employers, must also grow by at least 11%, if not double that.

“All of us have to be engaged”, he said, and “we’re gonna have to start in libraries”, especially since teachers continue to be underpaid, and the proper resources aren’t there for kids. Mr. Obama reminds us that “we have a lot to do to make sure we have a first class educational system”.

In order for librarians to heed this call, we need more core requirements on the same thinking, comprehension, and communication skills, as well as the management skills and flexibility techniques, from within library schools and through *continuing education*, in order to continue to change with and for our patrons. The same way Barack Obama says we need to “change our whole mindset” of education in order to grow “into the 21st century economy and out of 19th and 20th century concepts”, his speech made me think that librarianship must strive to do the same, in order to help our profession as well as to help American education evolve.

This isn’t just about technology. It isn’t even just about books. This is about enabling libraries to be Ray Oldenburg’s “the third place” (a buzzing concept at this year’s conference), and enabling librarians to make that happen, through technology, and literacy programs, and movie nights, and providing space for groups, and more. Everyone needs to “dream big, think outside the box”, for the sake of our children, our country, and our libraries.

Some nifty quotes from the Barack Obama Speech:

“Truth is not about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.”

“Our faith is not in contradiction with fact, and our liberty depends up on our ability to access the truth.”

“Literacy is the most basic currency of the information economy that we live in today.”

I don’t have the exact quote, but when asked by a reporter he believes in heaven, and what his conception of heave looks like, he replied that sitting with his 3-year old and 6-year old every night to read a book is a little piece of heaven.

When I think of extreme library makeovers, I think of doing away with service desks, creating a YA space as large as the Children’s room and offering X-Box consoles in the computer area. This program would have been better titled “Marketing and Merchandising: Stealing from the Bookstore Model.” Of the seven panelists, two were librarians, one was a bookseller, two represented jobbers and two represented publishers.

Cheryl Scheer from the Denver Public Library talked about why purchasing and displaying multiple copies is a great idea, and to be honest, it is an outside of the box concept - buy 25 copies of those in-demand titles. When she asked kids why they preferred bookstores, “no boogers on the books” was the first answer - bookstores have new, untorn, clean copies. And, when a child goes into a library with a specific title in mind, more often than not, the book isn’t there, whereas in a bookstore, it’s always there. Cheryl promoted providing “snotless, multiple copies,” to accomplish three goals:

• Level the playing field and allow equal access to books in spite of diverse economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds (wealthy kids parents will buy them the new Harry Potter - why should poorer kids have to wait for 6 weeks, or longer?)
• Eliminate visual clutter with uniformity and allow for placing titles face out. Kids can’t read! Why do we shelve books so that all that’s visible are the skinny labeled spines?
• Address the imbalance of boy books vs. girl books - a recent glance through a major publisher’s catalog revealed books with girl appeal beat out books with boy appeal by about a 5 to 1 ratio! Make boy-friendly titles more obvious with displays.

Cheryl expressed concern about losing boy readers and not seeing enough materials for a rapidly growing Latino population - 22% of children under 5 are born to Latino families - and recommended reading Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life (University of CA Press, 2003) for a glimpse at socio-economic issues, like the fact that children born to affluent parents are much more likely to speak to strange adults because they are used to interacting with adults they don’t know well (I assume from lessons, nannies, services, etc) and asked us to think about what this means in terms of customer service to our monetarily challenged clientele.

Caroline Ward from the Ferguson Public Library in Stamford, CT encouraged librarians to ask permission for and to use artwork in children’s literature to promote services and programs. As long as proper credit is given and you aren’t making money from it, permission is usually granted - all you have to do is ask.

Distributors talked about how they can provide displays, booklists, and value added services to libraries. Again, I was hoping for remodelling success stories, not being told what jobbers can do for me - for a price. They are providing displays in smaller quantities, so if you can’t quite wrap your head around 25 multiple copies yet, you can start small - 6, 9, 12 - and the displays are fairly sturdy and reusable.

Publishers seem a more likely partner to me. They offer displays, signage, and swag of all kind - all you have to do is ask and then give feedback. Author visits and videos, book discussion resources and galley editions are other publisher services.

Other tips:

• Market to parents, last time I checked babies needed someone to bring them to the library
• Get the kids involved
• Do cross promotion, i.e. “not just for kids”
• Invite publishers to do a book gossip night to promote new titles
• Put live readers in a window
• Use non-book props (everything I ever put out got stolen or broken, so I’d only do this in a locked case)
• Start a customer-recommends shelf
• Tie into movies (graphic novels are a natural for this)
• Host a blood drive and promote the vampire books
• Police tape for Banned Books Week

The Q&A at the conclusion of the program reflected that other librarians attending thought this was a remake your space program:
Q. Can you suggest a cool name for the teen area?
A. Ask the teens to come up with one

Q. How do I promote non-fiction?
A. Have a well-selected and maintained browsing collection (apply the same rules - face out, props, tie in

Q. Help! The middle school fiction is next to the picture books - what can I do?
A. Move it!

Q. How do I prevent my school library media center from becoming an online video game arcade?
A. Give kids books they are dying to read, promote with booklists

Thank goodness someone in the audience raised their hand to ask but what about the popularity of games? I jumped in and said if 80% of the population born after 1970 was playing games perhaps we should consider giving them what they want? One way around monopolizing computers for games is to designate times for games and times for research. I am starting to feel like a rabble rouser.

This morning, the Public and Culture Programs Advisory committee (as part of the Public Programs Office) was treated to a wonderful anecdotal institutional history of public programming within ALA by National Endowment of the Humanities Director, Tom Phelps. NEH is the godparent of cultural programs in ALA, having funded the first Let’s Talk About It book discussion series in the mid-80s. Last year, ALA was awarded its very first challenge grant from the NEH to help establish and endow the Cultural Communities Fund. The purpose of CCF is to help individual libraries establish cultural and community programs and to provide them with training and support. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s been poor response to the CCF, so much so that the challenge grant is in danger of not being met.

Cultural and community programming has been traditionally seen as an add-on or something extra, and often not given a line item in library budgets. As an experienced programmer, I understand the value of adult cultural programming in libraries and have witnessed its community-building power. Mayor Richard J Daley and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in their addresses at the opening general session yesterday, both went beyond the usual “libraries are great” messages, but talked about how libraries are (or should be) an integral part of ensuring a literate, engaged and informed populace. Adult cultural programming, where attendees are active participants, is one way to continue this mission throughout life. After story hour or, if they’re lucky, a youth advisory board, there has not been widespread programming opportunity for adult library users.

ALA’s Public Programs Office offers several opportunties for libraries to offer high-value programming to their patrons, and librarians are starting to catch on. This sort of high-value programming includes book and film discussion programs, traveling exhibits and topical, salon-type groups developed by trained librarians, led by local experts and scholars, and supported by local partners. Phelps related that several librarians stopped by the NEH booth to complain about not being awarded a grant for their latest traveling exhibit. It’s a nice problem to have, and ALA and NEH would like to be able to offer opportunties to more applicants.

Cutting to the chase: the Public and Culture Program Advisory Committee will be kicking up their fundraising a notch to help support its mission to provide programming opportunities for libraries of all types, all over the US. If you see us coming–don’t run and hide. We know you have a checkbook on you.

These are all 80 second clips from the Barack Obama speech on Saturday night, in two formats:

• .avi: ~10MB each, see How to play AVI files
• .wmv: ~3.8MB each, Windows Media Player, great for low bandwith

Please pardon any shakiness, and the sound issues (the echoing of the presentation hall couldn’t be helped on my little Fuji Finepix), but luckily there are (sometimes *misspelled*) subtitles.

Introduction: “That was a lot of librarians!”
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“In the beginning was the word”
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“If we can control the word”
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“We don’t like federal agents poking around”
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“I hope we can pass or provision”
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“A concern that applies to all of America”
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“Help our children love reading”
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“Portable libraries that rolled through parks”
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“Thank you very much, American Library Association”
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“My favorite book” (from the Q&A session)
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Download all 10 clips
| .avi format ZIP file (~90MB) | .wmv format ZIP file (~37MB) |

Dance Dance Revolution
Monday night
8-10
UIC’s Chicago Circle Center Bowling Alley
750 S. Halsted (Yahoo! maps)
Chicago, IL 60607
(312) 413-5170

http://www.ddrfreak.com/locations/locations.php?action=displayLocation&locationID=8878

Take the blue line to UIC-Halstead, and walk east to the street, and south until you hit the university center. Meet by 8 PM at the station and we can walk down together. Bring friends!

A library can be a core institution of an economy.

As I was looking over my notes from yesterday, the two quotes that I wrote down resonated through me again. The first was from Leslie Burger, President-elect-elect. At the NMRT Orientation session, she said “be central to the communities that you serve.” The second was from Barak Obama at the General Opening Session. “Literacy is the currency of a knowledge economy.” I think that libraries are really doing a lot in order to be a central instution in their community and to also encourage and support literacy. Mayor Richard M. Daley talked about how in Chicago, new or renovated libraries are serving as the anchors of economic redevelopment in a lot of neighborhoods. How many communities realize the importance of a library as a part of its economy? It’s very easy to lose sight of the big picture when you’re helping someone track down the book that they heard about on some radio show in another city ten years ago or troubleshooting the same computer problem for the fifth time that day, but if we don’t ensure our communities’ understanding of the importance of the library to their economic base, we won’t be around to find that book or fix that computer.

Due to a few issues I’m having with my wifi connection in my hotel, I haven’t been able to post nearly as often as I’d intended. Ah, technology. It is wonderful and blissful, and then it doesn’t work. But then it does so here we go now. Friday night, the librarians from the Chattylibrarians list gathered at the Rock Bottom Brewery. Some of us were meeting in person for the first time; it is always fun to meet people in person that you have only known as an online personna before. We took up five (or six?) tables at one point. The most fun was the fact that not only did some Nexgen and LU members join us, but a few people arrived having seen the event posted on the Chicago ALA Wiki. Its an amazing feeling to be a librarian on the forefront of these new ways of sharing information… and for getting in touch with other librarians, in order to share thoughts and ideas. Or just a pint or two.

When I arrived 30 minutes before the start of the program, at least a third of the seats were already occupied. I was helping the speakers with handouts at the front door and they just wouldn’t stop coming! Soon enough, there were no chairs left and services had to bring over more (they did a great job!). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to listen to a lot of the program because I had to make sure people weren’t blocking the doors (fire safety) and I was also answering questions people had who weren’t able to get into the room. I’m sure at least 250-275 people were in attendance along with an additional 50 I had to turn away because it was just too full. Although it got pretty busy, I was happy to see so many attendees who were interested in ways to redesign their libraries.

I was able to catch some of Joan Bernstein’s presentation of the Mt. Laurel library. Her presentation was very well done and the changes that were made to the library were amazing to see. She filled her presentation with before and after pictures which I thought were the most valuable because it showed everyone how much of a difference some paint, furniture, and merchandising can do for a library.

Some of the ways Joan redesigned her library include:

• Using a variety of display cases (CD racks, slat wall, gondolas)
• Merchandising (and getting all staff to participate in displays)
• Using natural light, scenery, and making the unique characteristics of the Mt. Laurel Library stand out
• Comfortable furniture
• A teen zone that wasn’t close to the children’s section
• An Internet cafe with wireless access
• Vending machines
• Painting the walls
• Arranging furniture so it was more welcoming to groups of people

It was one of the best presentations I’ve been to so far and I hope to bring many of these ideas to my own library.

For more information about the Mt. Laurel Library Trading Spaces Project go to: http://www.sjrlc.org/tradingspaces/index.shtml

Barack Obama’s speech from last night is written up in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“If the U.S. government resorts to rifling through library records without a search warrant, libraries will no longer be sanctuaries of learning where people can freely think and read, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama told the American Library Association Saturday.”

The Associated Press was there last night as well.

It WAS a lot of librarians. A large representation of our 65,000 members, I’d say.

Carol Brey-Casiano was gracious and continued her grassroots advocacy theme as she ran through the year’s highlights - threatened closings of whole library systems, salary issues, the Freedom to Read Act, funding. Even the awards of ALA honorary member and trustee citations were for advocacy: for Native American Indians, for library funding and cooperation, for visibility in the community.

Mayor Daley of Chicago was very passionate about libraries as part of the education experience. To him they are just as vital as fire stations and police stations and schools; they are community anchors. In this town, people move to neighborhoods where new libraries are being built. The mayor has built or renovated 45 libraries in Chicago, and another 7 will open next year. Most importantly, those libraries are being staffed with trained librarians. The citizens have allowed him to invest in libraries by voting for tax increases to fund libraries. I was disappointed that he left teenagers out of the list when he talked about libraries as places for access for ALL: “new immigrants, senior citizens, children, and families.”

The stage was cleared of all but the sign language interpreter as Senator Barack Obama took the stage in a lightning storm of flash bulbs, beginning with a shout out to a co-worker’s librarian mom, and a public apology to the librarians who gave him time out from the library nearly every day in junior high.

I was moved and impressed by his remarks, much of which focused on the need for a literate population and the need to preserve our fundamental civil liberties. He said “Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible,” and had great suggestions for reducing the number of adults that cannot read a bedtime story to their children (currently, 1 in 5), such as handing out library cards to every newborn’s parents, replacing the toy surprise in a fast food meal with a book, creating mobile libraries to roll through parks, and encouraging parents to step in and turn off the TV.

These are all wonderful ideas, and we clapped and cheered and nodded - but how many of us are going to return home and send letters to burger joints advocating for copies of Goodnight Moon instead of Beanie Babies as junk food prizes? I can only hope we can sustain the passion and enthusiasm we raised in North Hall B on Saturday evening. Just as the Senator made a case for the need to move away from 19th and 20th century ideas about education because we aren’t an agricultural/industrial society anymore, so do we need to move forward with our libraries. I could write for the rest of the night about how we need to try new ideas and have pilot projects and reinvent ourselves and stop judging what we fear, but it’s 2 AM and I was planning on an 8 AM program. Plus, no one wants to read another video game rant And, one of our blogger’s draft is shaping up better than my nearly incoherent thoughts, so watch for more articulate comments soon.