It may be impractical, but as someone who loves libraries and has worked in several, it seems like luring people back may be a better solution.How can it be impractical and better at the same time? This library is adapting to survive, so what is wrong with that? They are still talking about using print books even.
Librarians are caught up in two ideas that I believe are counterproductive to the survival of libraries. First, the idea of being everything to everybody. I have discussed this before in an article for LMC, entitled "Have we lost our way? Examining the purpose of libraries in a post-literate society" available in the August/September 2009 issue of Library Media Connection. I really do not think it is enough to get people's bodies in the door. In the end, if they are not there for the right reasons, they will not stay. It is more important that we identify our true mission, stop chasing the Next Big Thing, and go about the business of working on our mission. Different types of libraries, libraries in different places may have slightly different missions. That is OK. The important thing is that they have one. Not just embrace every new fad--gaming, coffee bars, genre shelving**, etc. that comes down the pike in the misguided hope that this will be the thing that saves libraries. It won't. Not even close. Neither will clinging to reading and literacy as our only mission, with print books as our only format. I choose not to enter the fray about e-books and publishers extorting money out of libraries, that is a discussion for another day. What I am saying is that libraries can neither rely on the ways of the past, nor grasp at straws if they want to survive. The Annoyed Librarian, one of my favorite librarian blogs, talks about this a lot and she doesn't mince words. Here is a recent post about the Devolution of Public Libraries. I think many of the same things could be said of school libraries, especially as they try more and more to emulate their public counterparts. Read her, it might open your eyes a little. Will Manley says in the comments to AL's post about Public Library Privilege that libraries may have to become extinct because they have given up their educational and literacy missions for "infotainment." I tend to agree.
The second fallacy that librarians have bought hook, line, and sinker is that if they can just get more people in the door, everyone will see how valuable we are and they will never want to be without libraries. Wake up and see the handwriting on the wall. As Seth Godin says in Tribes: we need you to lead us, marketing isn't about pushing a message out any more, it is about people selecting which messages they want to hear and pulling them in. Facebook, iGoogle, and other social sites work by showing you messages for things they know you already like. Amazon shows you things that you might like based on what you have purchased or looked at before. It is a totally different way of looking at things. People don't have to accept the message just because you push it, they have the ability in many cases to turn off those messages they don't want to listen to. What you need is to have a cause you believe in and assemble the people who believe in it with you. Libraries need to look at it this way. There are some people who, are you ready, will NEVER use a library. Why waste your time trying to entice them in the door with wrestling contests, video games, and all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with education or literacy? The Annoyed Librarian discusses this a little in the Devolution post above, when she says that perhaps librarians will move back into a subscription mode, where people who want to use libraries will support them with money, people who don't won't choose to join the library. There are some ways this model can still serve people who cannot afford a subscription. Changing the library's service model to fit the patrons' needs while still fulfilling its mission is a no brainer. Let's get off the treadmill to nowhere, and start working on a real mission with people who also embrace that mission. That is what will save us.
***--People who think that genre shelving is the NBT because is increases circulation stats, have you ever read about the Hawthorne effect? A series of studies on worker productivity showed that any change would increase productivity--even a change back to the original. I will be curious to see if the increases in circulation numbers purportedly due to genre shelving are of any lasting consequence, or if they are, as I suspect, the result of making a change, any change. Even if you can report sustained circulation increases, how can you be certain they are not due, at least in part, to other factors--librarian excitement about the change, a new person who makes the change, the fact that kids see books they may not have seen before. If the latter, the same could be accomplished with good displays or turning some books facing out on the shelves. So far all I have hear is "increased." If you have hard numbers--let me have it. I will be happy to eat my words. While this argument may seem to contradict my embracing the above service model change, let me explain. One of the long standing missions of libraries is to make information available to people--storage and retrieval. Genre shelving makes retrieval of specific items more difficult. The "Netflix type"system in the California article allows ease of retrieval of specific items. But hey, I am always up for a good argument, er, discussion.
Picture from School Clipart
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