the public library of our hopes and goals
This last week should be a reflective one. I hope you reflect on the topics we have covered during this semester and on the perspectives offered you by both the authors of the readings you had for each week and also by the blog postings made by your peers in this class. You all have had some very thoughtful, very meaningful, very insightful, and, above all, very grounded observations and considerations. You all know what is going on in your libraries; you all are aware of the limits imposed on you by politics and personalities; you all understand the art of the possible. But where do you all want see your libraries going in the future? What are your hopes and goals for your libraries, or for public libraries in the abstract.
In addition to your own perspectives ...
There are some other views. The American Libraries Council in 2006 released a report entitled Long Overdue: A Fresh Look at Public and Leadership Attitudes About Libraries in the 21st Century. In it they made a statement worth reading again.
Libraries cannot survive on accolades alone. If public libraries are to compete successfully for dwindling public dollars, they will need to look at opportunities to showcase and strengthen their role in addressing serious problems in their own communities.
And a system doesn't have to be big or rich to do this (though it helps). Consider the Milanof-Schock Library in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It was named the Best Small Library in America in 2006. Their annual operating income was $226,700 in 2005 (according to one source). That would have placed it second to the bottom among North Carolina libraries in that year (Cooley Library in Nashville, Nash County was at the bottom of the list with an operating income of $172,562 and Farmville in Pitt County was next in line with an operating income of $263,895). But the Milanof-Schock Library got a rating of 494 in Hennen's American Public Library Ratings which is above average for both Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
What are they doing right and could it be done in your system as well?
As you think about your response to the question, keep in mind the specifics of the task at hand. If you want to modify your paper in ways not considered in the task, just let me know so I won't be surprised.
Some final thoughts
Yes, you can do things that haven't been done before
don't be constrained by preconceived ideas about what is or what should be
Yes, the best things can sometimes come from the unlikeliest sources
things aren't always how they seem, but sometimes they are
Yes, just because no one has done it this way, you can still improvise
... if you understand the underlying structure
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