Jim Mork wrote:
Wizardmarks:Cities, states and nations own
libraries to have access to certain kinds of
evidence of their own and other civilizations
organized in a useable fashion. Most often we
give more lip service to that than we part with
money for those libraries. Look at how little we
devote to libraries here in Minneapolis, how
little in the state. You cannot say that,
overall, too much money has been devoted to
libraries. You could say, however, that too
little has been invested in libraries.
JM: And you connect that with Cesar Pelli, how?
WM: I'm having trouble figuring out how you made that leap of logic.
WM: For me, the library is about collection and service. The building is someone else's lookout. All I'm interested in for the building is that it be patron friendly (no closed stacks for circulating materials, user-friendly catalog, light), efficient (to make it less expensive by enabling the staff to operate more efficiently), and that it not be ugly. I care not that it is either outre or retro, ornate or plain. You might want to know that libraries are automatically more expensive/sq.ft. because books are heavy.I've read a lot of comments about "moving the library into the 21st century", but I find those to be glittering generalities.
Like it or not,WM: The library of the 21st century will, ideally, serve the information needs of its patrons. That means that it has to house more than books, periodicals, journals, documents, microfiche and microfilm. That means that user-friendly display has to be included for those materials (videos, CDs and DVDs in addition to old-fashioned records and maybe even reel-to-reel film) space on which to place it. I do not imply that the library is now inferior, but that information needs change very swiftly. To make a library usable for enough years to justify it's costs, these are things that have to be taken into account.
we and the library are IN the 21st century. Exactly what are the inferior aspects of the
library that you think need a desperate remedy?
MPL's cataloging system, in my opinion, leaves a lot to be desired. It is not the least bit patron friendly. I think, though I might be wrong, that this situation is a condition resulting from two things: the library's ideas of what should be in the catalog and the difficulties involved in melding a formerly card cataloging system with an online system. (Since I'm an admitted computer illiterate, you'll have to find that technical information elsewhere.) After spending a lot of time in both public and university libraries for fifty years I should not have to ask a librarian for assistance to find subject matter in a public library except on rare occasions. If a librarian can count on it's perennial patrons to find what they need, they can use their time helping those who are new to the system. That is complicated by the addition of new people whose first language is not English. I suppose I could go on, but I'm sure you get the drift.
The new library director will have to be able to think about those questions and what impact they will have on the design of the building. All of those questions impact the cost of building and maintaining a new library. We cannot hire someone who would wind up characterized as another Ethelred the Unready. There are some very serious hoops the new Director of the MPL will have to jump through with grace and style in order to get this big bellied creature to fly. At this juncture, with the money for the library already voted on, and worth less each year we fiddle around, I'm not willing to quibble about a miserable $20,000 a year, or whatever it is.
WM: Yes, it is about how the available money is used. But our laws have so tightly hemmed us round, that the library cannot move money within the system without violating the law. A good Director winds up saving money by knowing what they're doing. Further, the library, being a bureaucracy, has probably the average amount of management deadwood for a bureaucracy of that size. That may be why the board would look outside the present staff for a director as well. If a board wants to re-invigorate the staff and make a corporate cultural shift at the same time, maybe this is a less painful way to do it.Every time I go there, it seems to work just fine. This kind of talk strikes me as the kind of thing corporate boards do to justify writing a huge contract with some prospective CEO. In that case, the stockholders are not allowed to vote down the contract before it is signed and they are on the hook. And we who pay for library costs are in a similar fix. We can vote out all the board members who blow the budget on one human, but that presume we have real alternatives. I'm as big a fan of libraries as anyone out there. But that is NOT the issue here. The issue has to do with HOW the available money is used.
If there is a person at the library who has those qualities, then that person has had her/his light well hidden under a barrel for quite a while. And that could be, I don't know.
If I had my druthers, I'd pay the going rate for the skills I wanted in a library director, and make up for that by trimming elsewhere. The law in Minnesota does not allow the board of MPL that latitude. If I got to choose the library director (dream on, MacDuff) I'd go outside at this point in the life of MPL because I want all the library staff to get a solid grounding in thinking outside their habits and patterns about themselves as staff, the patrons, the atmosphere of the library, children's services, young reader services, technical services, computer services--the whole gamut. It's far easier and less expensive in the long run to do it that way. But I'd probably also make it clear, through contract language, that this job was not a sinecure so that person would be prepared after X number of years to be looking elsewhere for another challenge.
WizardMarks, Central
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