The wrong conversation

I think we library professionals have been having the wrong conversation for the past few decades.

We struggle to fund, deliver and market the content and technology we think our users want. We forget that what makes libraries unique among public agencies is the specialized research skills and service orientation of our professional staff.

Granted, libraries are masters at delivering content, and they have always been early adapters of new technologies. We were among the first to explore how computers could be used to label, store and retrieve information in practical and powerful ways for the public. As mobile digital content has become delinked from containers and locations, we have continued to keep up with the changes.

However, library folk tend not to think in terms of owning information, much less marketing it. More to the point, we know that what the public needs from us is not so much the information itself. Libraries provide that no other public agency does, the expertise of professional searchers, human specialists who can do intelligent, probing interviews, determine what the deeper information needs are, and then provide that information, regardless of format, in the ways which best suit the users’ situations.

Public service or marketplace

Our greatest disadvantage is that libraries are usually not profit-making entities. Precisely because we are not, we tend to be at the mercy of funders who have other priorities. This has always been true, of course. In recent decades, though, governments have replaced the public service needs-assessment model for justifying funding with the retail world's narrower, consumer-driven marketing model.

At first glance this seems to make sense. Given the steady decline of public revenue, it is plausible to assume that taxpayers will be more willing to pay for what they believe they want. That notion has led libraries and our public funders to skew our choices more and more in the direction of constantly shifting and difficult to measure "customer satisfaction."

The rationale given for this shift is that libraries are increasingly “in competition” with retail providers of the same “products” we offer. We have, in effect, been reengineering libraries into “free stores,” trying to stock whatever the most savvy—or at least the most demanding—consumers feel they are entitled to.

The “taxpayer revolt”

However, there are some fallacies hidden behind this shift in funding rationale. The first fallacy is that the decline of public funding is recent, due to national economic troubles. In fact, this decline did not begin with the crash of 2008 or the federal tax cuts of 2001. It has actually been accelerating ever since the early 1980s.

Historical reality suggests that the shift is due not simply to a decline in available revenue but to a broad decline in public and political willingness to fund public social services. Beneath the so-called “taxpayer revolt” of recent decades is a drastic change in core national values.

Many Americans seem to have lost their sense of civic responsibility, the conviction that those with at least basic material stability ought to contribute to the welfare of the whole community, regardless of what they need or want personally. This conviction was undergirded in earlier times by an awareness that such civic benevolence helped the givers as much as the receivers.

We now struggle instead under the illusory metaphor of the marketplace, the dystopian notion that we should only have to pay the government for what we want for ourselves. Even those of us who pay little or nothing in taxes tend to believe that any agency which the public funds should deliver whatever we imagine we are “entitled” to get from it, regardless of what that agency’s actual mandate and resources are.

People, not information

The sad truth is that now we are in a drastic, long-term economic decline. It becomes increasingly difficult to convince the public and the politicians to fund services which they were already defunding in boom times. That makes it all the more important to expose the second fallacy about library funding. That fallacy is that libraries can (and should) find ways to provide comparable goods and services with fewer staff people.

In the private sector it is gospel that, when you need to reduce the bottom line, you cut payroll, the most expensive budget category. Since the corporate world is where our culture “learns” about budgetary efficiency, this notion has been imported into the public sector. The key problem is that, in social services, the key ingredient is not “goods and services” but human interaction.

As I suggested at the start, my contention is that libraries are social services. What makes us unique is not information or access to information but, rather, human specialists who can interact professionally yet compassionately with their users, determine what those people’s needs are, and guide them to the information and to effective ways to use it.

People frequently come to us with ill-formed notions about what information will serve their needs, and with ill-informed notions about how to get that information. Human library specialists are essential intermediaries between these users and the whole dizzying 21st century array of “containers” and “media” for information storage and retrieval.

It is not information which we give away at public expense, so much as it is our expert interviews, searches, coaching, instruction—and, most important, human understanding.

The Surly Librarian post to which I linked earlier in this piece was called “It’s the infrastructure, stupid!” My argument here—my argument with both library administrators and with public funders—is that it’s the people, stupid!

Libraries cannot compete with Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Verizon and Google, etc., etc., etc.... I contend that we shouldn’t have to. What we give away that those commercial enterprises cannot sell is quality human interaction.

Interaction between expertly trained, caring, patient professionals, people willing to puzzle out—sometimes at great length and in the face of customer frustration and annoyance—what each person who comes to us really needs, and what path to satisfaction of that need she should take, either through our own collections or through the myriad publications, corporations, agencies and online archives to which we can lead them.

I’m not advocating that libraries should stop trying to keep up with the mobile digital revolution.

I am advocating that we should insist—demand—that our public funders recognize that our staff are our product.

If we had no collection at all but still had our staff, we could continue to be a public social service.

Am I crazy, or am I onto something?

Countering ideology with information

In several recent posts (April 7, April 12, May 5, May 5 and June 2) I have written about the funding crisis faced by public libraries in Jacksonville, in the state of Florida, and across the country.

For my colleagues, and even more so for those citizens who don't have the inside story, the fragmentary, headline-oriented reportage of the story tends to stir up angers and fears without giving a complete picture. We are left with little sense that we can respond constructively, either to the real fiscal challenges, or to the reigning ideological antipathy toward funding public services which stands in the way of real solutions.

It is helpful to recognize, as Kim Stanley Robinson once paraphrased Louis Althusser, that

Ideology is an imaginary relationship to a real situation.

Last year, the Administration and Board of Trustees of Jacksonville Public Library (JPL) decided to counter ideology with real information. They hired Godfrey’s Associates, Inc., to do an extensive Capacity Plan investigation, analysis and report.

The first site visits were in July of 2010. In November, the consultants released their analysis of JPL's Information Technology Capacity. In February, they released an initial presentation of their findings. The final report, Past, Present, Future: A Library for the Future of Jacksonville, was released in May.

In their Introduction, the consulting team keyed in on this sentence from our RFP:

JPL continues to provide current level services and maintain hours at all twenty-one locations with fewer staff than five years ago, and in the face of reductions to overall funding including facilities and IT.

To this they added their own commentary on the role of public libraries:

Public library services have traditionally been provided without fees or user charges, because of the accepted notion that such services benefit the community more than they benefit the individual user. In other words, public library services are viewed as a public good, meaning the services are not always but “usually provided by government for consumption by the general public.” Public goods have two defining aspects:

• Public goods possess a “non-rival consumption” aspect, i.e., the availability of the good to all is not reduced by any one person’s consumption of the good


• Public goods have a “non-excludability” aspect in that there is no way to effectively restrict the benefits of public goods to those who directly pay for them.

The Report lists the following as Five Major Issues Facing Jacksonville Public Library:

• Information Technology: JPL does not have it's own dedicated IT staff. All IT needs are managed externally by the City. "Without a sound [internal] IT structure that is reliable, cost-effective, and kept current, there is little reason to believe that the JPL will be able to deliver future services in an expanding, increasingly diverse, and information hungry community."


• Staffing: All but 12 library positions are civil service rather than appointed, which means that JPL can only recruit for those 12 positions. "This hamstrings the Library from being in a position to fill middle and upper management positions with the most qualified applicants."


• Earned Income: "Aside from the Main Library Conference Center, there is no incentive for the JPL to become enterprising, because all monies received go directly to the City. The JPL should have more than one enterprise account, and should retain all of the income it earns via fines on overdue books, and other possible sources."


• Capital Budget: "The JPL has zero dollars for capital expenditures. All capital budgets are the responsibility of another City department. This situation leads to unnecessary delays in making needed changes."


• Building Mainenance: Centralized maintenance is not working for the JPL, in our opinion. Buildings are not adequately maintained. The Main Library is showing more than five years worth of wear and tear. The Library should have it own maintenance staff and budget."

The Report concludes with extensive documentation in support of Recommendations, Implementation and Sustainable Funding, .

We are now waiting for the Library Board to decide which portions of the recommendations it will pass along to the City's newly elected Mayor and City Council.

There are numerous controversial recommendations—problematic either for various staff or for the public or both.

Nonetheless, there is empowerment in having a thorough, competently done analysis of JPL's present resources, of the public's desires, and of "best practice" comparisons with other comparable multi-branch library systems.

The Library can now go to the public with facts and tell them:

Here is what you say you want and need. Think about it seriously, because here is want you must tell your City government that you are willing to pay for.

It comes down to that.

We shall see....

"A Country without Libraries"

"A Country without Libraries" is an important new article by Charles Simic, posted on the NYR Blog (New York Review of Books) on May 18, 2011.

Here is the opening text:

All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations.

Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work.

When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire.

People everywhere are unhappy about these closings, and so are mayors making the hard decisions. But with roads and streets left in disrepair, teachers, policemen and firemen being laid off, and politicians in both parties pledging never to raise taxes, no matter what happens to our quality of life, the outlook is bleak.

“The greatest nation on earth,” as we still call ourselves, no longer has the political will to arrest its visible and precipitous decline and save the institutions on which the workings of our democracy depend.

I urge you to read and share the whole blog post.

Draconian budget cuts

We have now watched a decade of ill-informed and resentful rebellion by voters against supposedly outrageous and ever-increasing taxes.

This is even though, in fact, tax rates and revenues have been decreasing throughout that same time.

Even though Americans are taxed less that citizens of other developed nations, and corporations and the wealthy pay far less of their income than workers on the street.

Even though Floridians don't pay state income tax, keep voting to reduce property tax further, and pay less of their income in tax than residents of almost any other state.

The result is that national and state and municipal governments can no longer provide essential services. (See further comment below.)

Jacksonville's Fiscal Year 2012 budget takes effect on October 1st. The City Administration required that all departments present proposals for 15% budget cuts by last week, as the first step in the budget process. (This follows 10% cuts in each of the last two fiscal years.)

The following is the proposal from Jacksonville Public Library's Board of Trustees:

Jacksonville Public Library
FY 2012 Budget Submission
Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the library budget being cut again?

• City Administration requested departments under the purview of the mayor reduce their budgets.
• The reduction target for JPL is $5,940,414.
• The reduction must come from salary, benefits and expendable accounts including library materials. This amount comes to $25,524,985.

How did the Board decide what to cut?
Reductions were based on clear messages from the community and City Council over the past two budget cycles:

• Keep libraries open
• Treat all neighborhoods the same way.

What was cut?
To keep as many libraries open as possible while trimming nearly $6 million, we had to reduce the following:

• Hours at all locations (30% reduction)
• 103 staff FTE positions cut (78 full-time + 25 FTE part-time) (23% reduction)
• Materials budget (24% reduction)
• The Maxville Branch Library would be closed (the location with lowest overall activity level)

What are the specifics behind the cuts?
Hours

• Main Library open 40 hours per week, Tuesday – Saturday (closed Sunday – Monday). Main Library is currently open 67 hours per week.
• 19 branch libraries open 40 hours per week, Tuesday – Saturday (closed Sunday – Monday). Hours per week currently range from 40-65.
• Schedule would be a mix of morning and evening hours at all libraries
• Total hours libraries are open would be reduced by 335 hours per week
• Service hours per week in FY 06 were 1177; service hours per week in FY 12 would be 800

Staff positions

• Management of libraries restructured to flatten the organization
  103 staff FTE positions (78 full-time + 25 FTE part-time) cut
• The reduction in positions from FY 11 to FY 12 represent a 23% cut
• The reduction in positions from FY 06 to FY 12 represent a 31% cut

Materials budget

• $879,500 cut from the materials budget (24% reduction)
• Materials budget in FY 05 was $5.3 million; materials budget in FY 12 would be $2.8 million (48% reduction)
• Library circulation has increased 14% since FY 06.

What are the impacts of this budget cut?

• Reduced access to libraries
• Reduced access to information, collections and technology
• Significantly fewer new materials
• Increased wait time for popular materials
• Reduction in services and programs
• Increase in use of electronic materials, resources and holds service
• We will lose some customers; other customers will adjust to the changes.

So here's my question.

In the depths of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, one which was caused by the combination of huge tax cuts and irresponsible financial market speculation on a mammoth scale, why are voters fantasizing that the way to fix things for ourselves, our children and our children's children is to slash education, libraries and healthcare?

Increasingly I am reminded of George Stewart's 1949 science fiction novel, Earth Abides.

In Stewart's dystopian vision, his protagonist is one of the few survivors of a global plague. He finds the local library and, even though there is no power, he recovers there the information which might allow those few people who are left to maintain some of their technology, healthcare and other life-sustaining resources.

However, as the decades continue, he cannot convince any of the surviving parents that they should still teach their children reading, math and science.

Am I being too pessimistic?

Market Fundamentalism

Quite a few readers have probably already seen the text of British author Philip Pullman's January 20th speech, "Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their value." It was co-published on two blogs, False Economy: Why the cuts are the wrong cure and openDemocracy: Free thinking for the world.

This passage gets to the heart of it:

What I personally hate about this bidding culture is that it sets one community, one group, one school, against another. If one wins, the other loses. I’ve always hated it. It started coming in when I left the teaching profession 25 years ago, and I could see the way things were going then.

In a way it’s an abdication of responsibility. We elect people to decide things, and they don’t really want to decide, so they set up this bidding nonsense and then they aren’t really responsible for the outcome....

And it always results in victory for one side and defeat for the other. It’s imported the worst excesses of market fundamentalism into the one arena that used to be safe from them, the one part of our public and social life that used to be free of the commercial pressure to win or to lose, to survive or to die, which is the very essence of the religion of the market.

Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of political power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life.

I think that little by little we’re waking up to the truth about the market fanatics and their creed. We’re coming to see that old Karl Marx had his finger on the heart of the matter when he pointed out that the market in the end will destroy everything we know, everything we thought was safe and solid. It is the most powerful solvent known to history.

"Everything solid melts into air," he said. "All that is holy is profaned."

Market fundamentalism.

I have been required to spend the last ten years calling the folks who walk into the library "customers." Much of what the library administration talks about, most of what the City government measures and what City Council says in its debates is couched in consumer-oriented rhetoric.

Nothing is considered valuable now unless it sells.

We are all starving while the market rules.

My brother, who has been teaching theater at college level for a couple decades, puts it very well:

I sometimes imagine a parallel with the "dark ages" when the Church aligned with Power forbade many kinds of knowledge by condemning modes of learning, teaching, experiencing - such things went "underground."

Maybe today Market Fundamentalism is this same Church, of course still aligned with Power. But instead of a Dark Age, we are in an Age of Glare - instead of restriction of information, literacy, books to the monks and the supervision of the Church, we are immersed and bombarded with information of all sorts from every digital option possible.

But the Channels of information providers and the devices themselves stimulate and feed the neurological stimulation paths of "fight or flight" and avarice, while starving the real organs of understanding.

Breathing, self-observation, watching one's step, traveling within one's experience, stepping aside from the crowd, remembering one's experience, staying watchful for the harmonious and meaningful, restraint, stopping.

These are the ancient tools that still need to be studied, practiced, applied.

Many children experience these modes of being first in a public library. I will never forget the children's room of Boston Public Library, with its [Holy Grail Murals by Edwin Austin Abbey], and the worlds of books, such as Doctor Dolittle, that we traveled in, discovering and practicing these necessary tools of experience.

What are we to do?

Poor Richard Redux: A Manifesto

Note: I originally posted this essay in October of 2006, on Destination NEXT on the General Discussion board. Since you have to be at a staff workstation or logged into the City's remote link to get access to Destination NEXT, I'm reproducing the essay here.

I want to propose something far more radical than the "get with the future," market-driven message we library professionals are hearing these days. The focus of that message is almost wholly on competing for consumers who expect the latest in automated and online delivery of public library services. I did hear that warning and take it to heart in library school seven years ago. However, I joined and remain in the profession because of a more sacred set of librarianship values.

The roots of the American public library lie with Benjamin Franklin and his peers, who believed that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" depended upon free and equal access to information. They thought it important that information and the ability to search for, have access to and use it should not be solely the province of those privileged by prosperity or status.

Franklin himself began as an apprentice tradesman and built his career from scratch. He wanted to be sure that any other American had the means—underwritten at public expense, if necessary—to do the same. He knew that he had made his success through his own literacy, through his access to information, and through his freedom to use it, independent of the mediation or control of others.

We now have a culture in which only those with the advantage of computer and Internet access and the knowledge of how to use these tools can even get to much of the daily information which is most important for living successfully in American society. Even many basic government and commercial services are now almost inaccessible without the ability to connect to and use websites, online forms, email, office software, etc.

I’m sure that others of my colleagues have had the experience of trying to help someone who was told by an employee of the unemployment service, “Go to the public library, get on our website, and fill out the application.” Likely others have had to help a middle-aged or immigrant job hunter, possibly one with a lifetime of competence in his or her trade, now trying to find and complete the mandatory online application for a new job. You all have your own examples.

The new jargon refers to those who have grown up in the online world as “digital natives.” Those of us who entered the work world before PCs, but who have had the privilege of learning to use and perhaps of owning them, are “digital immigrants.” We somehow manage to keep up—sometimes holding on by our fingernails—as e-technology speeds away from us.

My concern here is for the very large population of immigrant and native residents who are “digital refugees.” Whether or not they know how to use these new technologies, our culture now expects them to join the “wired world” if they want access to the benefits and prosperity America has claimed for its successful citizens.

As our library system leaps ahead toward a 21st century refit, which will increasingly automate basic circulation and search services, I believe it is essential that the staff thus freed from mundane tasks be redirected with all deliberateness into what used to be called “library instruction.”

Every branch should have staff with the training, the resources and—especially—the dedicated time to teach people computer and Internet literacy. It should become a core service, developed and coordinated system-wide, for us to seek out and assist those who are struggling or being left behind in this digital age. It could be part of every public service staff person’s job description and performance plan to create, contribute to or participate in such instructional activities.

We library staff all have the advantage—the privilege—of having built successful careers in this new world. Yet if our library’s mandate is only to satisfy the consumer wishes of people who are already “on the cutting edge,” then we are failing the basic purpose of the public library: to make certain that everyone has free and equal access to what we provide at public expense.