One library's story: Who we are and what we do
From PLN
One library's story: Who we are and what we do
LaRue's Views by Jamie LaRue, Douglas County Libraries
- Editor's note: I've put together this combination of three LaRue's Views, edited slightly for this purpose (mostly by adding subheadings), because it provides an excellent example of telling the library story--in this case, a library district serving 300,000 people. Other examples from different kinds of libraries would be useful; send me suggestions or note them on the Talk page for this article.
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- By Jamie LaRue. Adapted from "Who are we?", "Where are we going?" and "We're building (virtual) communities", LaRue's newspaper columns for January 10, 2008, January 17, 2008, and April 3, 2008 respectively.
Who are we?
Every now and then, I think it prudent to let the readers of this column know what the library is and what it stands for.
The facts
The Douglas County Libraries is an independent library district, established by the voters of Douglas County (Colorado) in 1990. Its boundaries are identical to those of the county itself. The vast majority of library funding comes from a property tax (of four mills per year), also established by county voters. In 2008, annual library revenues will be just over $21 million.
The library is governed by a 7 member Board of Trustees, who are appointed by the County Commissioners to represent the three commissioner districts. Beyond that appointment, however, the County has no other say in the funding or operation of the library.
We have the following service locations: the Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock, the Highlands Ranch Library, the Lone Tree Library, the Louviers Library, the Parker Library and the Roxborough Library. We also have a bookmobile that visits Castle Pines North and a sprinkling of other neighborhoods.
We have a pick-up point through the good graces of the Cherry Valley Elementary School. Thanks to generous underwriting by IREA, we also offer a books by mail program to our patrons in Deckers.
These facilities house our ever-expanding collection of materials (books, magazines, movies and music). At this writing, all of our libraries together own 729,981 items--a little over two per county resident.
The services
Our facilities also provide for a jam-packed schedule of library programs, including everything from storytimes for very young children, to book discussion groups for grown-ups, and everything in between. The library also hosts literally hundreds of free community meetings every month.
In addition to these bricks and mortar locations, we have an impressive online presence. With your Douglas County Libraries card you can manage your library account, and unlock a host of powerful databases. Those databases allow you either to do your homework online or conduct surprisingly in-depth community or business research, all 24/7. If you get stuck, we offer online reference assistance, where you can ask for help from real live humans.
The purpose
What is our purpose? The job of the modern public library is simply expressed: we gather, organize, and present to the public the intellectual resources of our culture.
"Intellectual resources" means all of those books, magazines, movies, music, and electronic resources I mentioned above--but not just that. It includes our smart, capable staff, whose combined expertise is staggering. We employ a little over 330 people, and their service ethic and intelligence is the foundation of our reputation and effectiveness.
The glory of the public library--and along with Denmark and Finland, nobody does it better than the United States--is that we are highly optimized to respond to individual inquiry. We don't push any agenda. We don't have a curriculum. We reflect the chaos and contradictory perspectives of (mainly) the nation--but with enough information from and about the rest of the world to remind us that we are not alone.
At the public library, even the youngest and the poorest have equal access to the great conversation of the human species. Knowledge is indeed power, and the library--as the premiere advocate for literacy in our society--is the bootstrap we use individually and collectively to lift ourselves from ignorance.
Where are we going?
Despite the hysterical predictions of pundits that the book is dead, that public places are obsolete and that everything can be found for free through Google, the plain truth is this:
- According to the numbers, the main thing we do here at the Douglas County Libraries is check stuff out, and most of that stuff is print. Last year, we checked out almost a million more items than the year before. Call me crazy, but a growth rate of 18% seems pretty lively.
- The next thing we do is welcome visitors. Our gate counters approached 2 million in 2007. I wonder how busy we'd be if we weren't obsolete?
- Tthe third most popular use of the library is online. The library spends over a quarter of a million dollars annually for topnotch commercial information. These sources were used hundreds of thousands of times last year by Douglas County home schoolers , entrepreneurs, family historians, car mechanics, hobbyists, and our own reference librarians.
Did I mention that none of those data conduits is tapped by Google? The choice isn't print or electronic , free or commercial. It's both.
So I'm not just making things up here: the future of the public library looks bright to me.
The same and the new
But where, specifically, is the library going? What stays the same? What's new?
- The same: books. Well, let me rephrase that. Once upon a time, we bought books. Now, we've learned to buy books that get used. A lot. We've also gotten pretty sharp about using displays to push those books. There was a time that we could keep things on the shelf that went out just once every couple of years. We don't have room for that any more. Two years ago maybe 25% of our collection was checked out at any given moment. In 2007, some of our libraries hit 50%.
- The same: smart staff. No, it's better than that. Even smarter staff. We've put machines in the back room so we can put our people out front, people who really know what we've got, and have the time to help you find it.
- The same: music and movies.
- New: as time goes on, you'll see more downloadable or streaming options.
- The same: free community meeting space.
- New: more tools to search and book that space.
- Also new: displays of materials that follow you into those meetings, and directly relate to your interests.
- The same: a rich electronic catalog.
- New: a catalog that does a better job of integrating dissimilar kinds of data. For instance, if you search for the subject of "autism" you should get not only all the things we can check out to you (books, movies, and music), and not only articles from our electronic medical journals, but also programs or meetings on the topic--and maybe contact information for local speakers or experts.
I have two more ideas that I'll take up in the next couple of weeks: tools for would-be authors, and the importance of the library in something that needs a whole lot more attention in Douglas County--civic engagement.
- Editor's note: You'll find LaRue's followup column tools for authors here and on civic engagement here. A little later--in his April 3, 2008 column--he describes another new service that involves both community engagement and authorship:
Building (virtual) communities
There was a time when people wrote letters to their friends and families, providing a highly detailed record of people's lives and times. Those letters are archived in libraries and museums today.
But historians are worried about something you may not be: how do we preserve the record of our own times? How do you archive a phone call? Who saves email?
Enter the "blog." The blog, or "web log," is an online journal, available for perusal and commentary by the public.
You might be thinking: okay, I can see why someone might want to keep a journal. But why on earth would you want to put it out on the World Wide Web? Come to that, who would want to read someone else's journal?
Well, people can post responses to blog entries, or even subscribe to a "feed" to keep up with events in the lives of friends and family. Moreover, blogs let you link to other interesting things on the Web.
But there's more to it than that. For one thing, there's a lot of interesting reporting and commentary going on out there--outside of the control of the corporate media giants.
For another, there's that issue of gathering and preserving information about our own life and times.
Recently, I spent some time with a demo of our utterly redesigned website. Our staff will get to see it first (in April); we have some testing and tweaking to do.
But when we roll it out for the public (in May, we hope), you'll see a site that is very like a blog.
By that, I mean several things:
- It will look fresher, more modern, and be much easier to navigate and search through.
- People can gather in small groups and interact using web tools and space that the library provides. Think of it as a virtual community center.
We're calling this part of our new website "Community Groups." The idea is to provide people a place to organize and interact around a hobby, event, or topic of interest.
One person from each group will be the moderator and will be authorized to "approve" all other group members. Groups will be provided a blog, wiki, poll, calendar and a small upload space for images--the tools of Web 2.0.
Who are we welcoming into our virtual community?
The list includes soccer groups, carpooling moms, play date groups, the Downtown Parker Development group, the church choir, the cub scouts, the quilters, the recyclers--the familiar people that we see in our library meeting rooms everyday.
Take the parents of the Barracuda swim team. They would join the group and logon to post information such as swim meet locations and times, contact numbers, snack schedules, images of the last swim meet and a poll for end-of-the season coach gift ideas. The parents can sign up for RSS and receive new posts through e-mail.
With the addition of these blog-like features, the library website becomes something new: a library branch, open 24 hours a day, and run by the community itself. And in the process, it writes its own history.
Related articles
- Libraries build brains and community - A related piece from Jamie LaRue
- Let's grow authors - Some ideas for providing tools for authors as a library service.
- Citizens, engage! - Another piece of this story, on encouraging citizen engagement.
- Telling your community's stories - Walt Crawford's commentary on creating and publishing the stories of the community.
