Public Libraries and Library Boards:

Where are the Librarians on Public Library Boards?

I have been employed at a fairly large public library for more than ten years. For the past three of those years I have worked as a librarian in the Adult Services and Reference Department. While I plan to pursue hard research in this area, actual experience has shown me that this library’s board as well as a number of public library boards in the surrounding area and beyond, remain comprised of prominent members of the community, none of whom are librarians. Yet, the Library Director must address the Board in nearly all aspects of governing the library. I am honestly perplexed and taken aback at the thought that individuals who are non-librarians play such a large part in determining the direction a public library will take in meeting the needs for items and services of that community’s demographic. Who better than librarians who are charged with knowing the realities of a community’s demographics, and in turn that community’s needs and desires from their public libraries, than librarians themselves? In matters ranging from drafting a feasible budget which will serve as the understructure in requesting referenda, through the selection of items which will comprise the collection, though a continuously open line of communication between patrons and librarians, to the most appropriate design of the library building itself, again, who better to serve in this capacity than librarians who will address these matters from a professional’s realistic and workable perspective? For these are the matters which will form the substance that will shape the library into the type of entity that best serves the needs of the community at this point in history and beyond.

With all due respect to those library boards which are comprised of individuals who strive to best meet the library needs of their respective communities, could it be that the matter of having at least one-third of a six panel library board for example, consisting of librarians, is an idea that needs to be thoroughly investigated and ultimately implemented as a long overdue standard in public librarianship in the twenty-first century?

(rsav72 – May 23, 2011)

Who Will Mind the Memory?

Digital Memory and Hot Chocolate
for Us All

Do you remember? It is a question as vital as our name and address, social security number, favorite food; the one thing that never fails to comfort during a storm…Memory is a very abstract thing in of itself. In the mind we have pictures from childhood, occasions seemingly unimportant that bring back the sense of harmony and peace.

At this moment I have the memory of a rainy afternoon at a lakeside cabin playing a board game with my brother and sisters as my mother heated hot chocolates for us. A fire roared in the background. We had played all day, swam, went fishing, and explored the island on the lake when it began to rain. We came in cold. My father started a fire; my mother towel dried my hair and scolded me as she searched for marshmallows in the cupboard above the sink. It was a feeling of being attached to time and place.

In another memory I am finishing my last class in library school. It is a warm spring day. I walk out sensing the transition. I am a librarian. I am part of the world around me and have a purpose, a calling, a job, and can place myself in the world as part of it. Again that I am here, I was there, and that feeling of being comes into focus…

Last month I read an interesting article in Scientific American in their Tech Files. In the article David Pogue writes about the uncertainty of digital formats and the records it will leave behind. Most storage formats do not last even into double digits. Hard drives crash, flash drives get lost, cell phones are trashed for the newest and better. Storage space in the virtual world is even more uncertain. There are businesses that specialize in storing valuable data for nominal fees. They can go out of business. Poof! It’s all gone. You can email your important files to yourself. But your account can be erased in a micro second or when you cancel that account with your Internet provider you lose all of it.

In the old days of the analogue world we had printed hard copies of everything produced because that was the only way to display your holiday snaps or whatever it was you were documenting. It’s not that people set out to keep an accurate record. Things just had a better chance of showing up as an accidental record. From the yard sale and grandma’s basement come a trunk of old snaps. We may not even know the name of whom or what we are looking at. Yet it is some kind of record. People don’t print as many photos now as they did in the past. Photos go from cell phone or digital camera to computer, and that is if the person remembers to do so.

The issue at hand would seem to be not of just the odds of a digital file making it past its origins, but the question of its format. Well, what is to be done? Human habit is to take the easy route. No one is going to expect people to find ways to preserve our social history. It would be of interest to librarians, or rather should be to a certain extent. It must be something that supports the needs of our collection as it serves our patronage. The digital format is as abstract as any memory in our head. It needs remembering. It needs reinvestment and attention as only caretakers are able to give to such issues.

Right now Google is attempting to digitize it all, all of our recorded knowledge in print formats. The altruism of such an endeavor has its appeal to open source advocates like myself. The practicality of it is daunting, however. Is Google going to be around 500 years later like the plays of Shakespeare are to us now, and if not, who will be minding the billions of files so painstakingly recorded?

What exactly is our stake in this game?

Any thoughts?

Check this out:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation

http://easydigitalpreservation.wordpress.com/

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/guidelines.html

http://www.archives.gov/ncast/

http://www.case.edu/its/archives/Records/digipres.htm

http://agogified.com/tools-and-services

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners/pioneers/detail_spencer.html

http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/technical/technicalC-01.html

(Dhvibe-May 14, 2011)

Guess who is back?!!

As it happened I let my blog go quiet for a long time. I can’t think of who was reading it. But I have reason to post today and hopefully more often.

I am posting to announce that I am opening my blog to some of my colleagues who will be posting on the blog too.

I think it will really make it a better blog, and I hope that WE can create a dialogue in the future.

Stay tuned….

Any thoughts?

Please comment below.