blyberg.net » Buzzkill 2.0

Way to go, Poindexters:

The dissenting librarians plan to present the petition with 600 signatures from staff, former staff and patrons to the library’s board at a Thursday meeting. It asks leaders to reconsider modeling library branches after a popular book or music store while casting off books with lasting value.

So we’re in the business of placing value on content, now. Great, I love the idea of telling our patrons what they want. That way, we don’t have to change at all.

In all seriousness, I wonder if the Sacramento situation may be a harbinger of more backlash against the new library model that they are trying to move toward there. Also, not to harp on unions again, but is it really their place to tell a library what material it should be ordering? I find this to be a perverted use of the union’s mandate. Here’s what they’re doing:

Sacramento library staffers are circulating a petition of no-confidence in management, decrying what they view as a departure from amassing a rich research collection to pandering to the whims of the YouTube generation.

Let’s forget for a moment that “YouTube” didn’t spawn a generation–it was actually the other way around. Let’s just simply look at this and this. Actually, that’s fine, because this is on the shelf, and it’s supposed to be a romp. I’m sure these are highly intelligent librarians that mean well and wish only the best for themselves and their denomination, but in this case, their actions are truly unencumbered by the thought process.

Really though, these guys say it best:

(link)

UPDATE - 6-1-2007

You can hear a California Public Radio broadcast about the issue here.

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Oh, I’m thrilled to hear your comments on this, John. I’ve seen other posts on the article, but none that mentioned the union involvement. I shan’t comment on that myself! I’ll just smile and nod, having seen similar activity closer to home.

“That way, we don’t have to change at all.”

And really, this is all about change and the fear of it. Sometimes letting go of control is a Good Thing. We can give people what they want AND still be a library.

Well said.

I am mortified. Thank you for sharing this… your comments are spot-on… I am curling up inside.

[…] at the eponymous Blyberg.net, John reports that librarians in Sacramento have bees in their bustles over the promulgation of popular […]

The union isn’t actually calling for anyone to resign over this. They wanted to, and tempered their approach, and good for them. According to the Sacramento Bee,

“Librarians began circulating their petition with the intention of calling for the library’s board — comprising members of the Sacramento City Council and county Board of Supervisors — to oust library director Anne Marie Gold.

But [Library empolyee and union steward Diane] Boerman said library staff softened their approach and plan to ask the library board for an independent review of their claims at a 3 p.m. meeting at Board of Supervisors chambers, 700 H St.”

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/190564.html
(see http://www.bugmenot.com for login info).

I do think your comments are spot on in regards to collection development and the library’s role, and it’s clear the library Strategic Services Plan supports buying popular materials:

“The community’s diverse reading interests and curriculum support needs are satisfied through the materials and formats provided by the Sacramento Public Library.”

http://www.saclib.org/about_lib/ssp_collection.html

But according to the article, staff are also complaining about branches being decorated in themes of private corporate sponsors (in this case, the Sacramento Kings), and while union action sounds like an extreme response, I have to say I agree with them.

A public library model where reading and inquiry are done under the watchful eye of corporations (or their mascots) is worth resisting.

Call me an ideologue, but open inquiry means no advertising, not on our websites, our subscription databases and certainly not painted on the library walls.

Without seeing the schlock on the walls, it’s hard to make a determination on that, but I tend to agree that it would be inappropriate to place marketing material permanently in the library. (Of course, I just blogged about partnering with marketers).

But to tell you the truth, it sounds like Dickinson’s assessment of the situation is spot-on, except that he has to be civil. The “grievances” really do sound incredibly petty. The way this group of librarians has dealt with this situation leads me to believe that they started with the worst approach possible and are working their way up the list.

For the record, I am a Sacramentan but I am not an employee of SPL. While I find it embarassing how this was handled—I don’t think this is about Librarians telling readers what they “should” be reading. Librarians in the community know what their customers want—being on the reference desk you are aware of your collection’s weaknesses. It’s a bad idea to have the administration at the central branch make all the collection development decisions–and it takes away one of the more pleasurable aspects of librarianship. I bet many Sacramento librarians like trash novels as much as anybody else–and I disagree with bloggers who are reading into this and are saying “I told you–these Librarians will never change. They are not responding to what people really want.” Aw come on–life ain’t that easily explained.

Joel, I don’t think anyone but these librarians can speak to whether they can or will change. But they are discounting what their users want if part of their grievance includes a disdain for the popular material.

There is something to be said for building top-notch reference and literature collections, and that can be a challenge when a sizable portion of the budget goes toward CDs, DVDs, and best sellers. But there is a reason for that (particularly in public libraries) and it’s customer service. It’s fundamentally an issue of supply and demand. Decrease the supply and you skim off the customers who are willing to go elsewhere rather than wait X number of days for the material. Do we care about those people, are they just bourgeois rabble who should have to buy or rent the material simply because they can afford to?

Or maybe it’s a far more arrogant attitude. The other element to this that I find particularly troubling is that the two titles in question (which are supposed to be representative of this horrible debasement), “Jackass 2″ and “Confessions of an Heiress,” do indeed have a high demand. But by making an example of them, these librarians have basically insulted the very users who want the material.

So, this group of librarians come along and decide they want to purchase less of this type of “unsophisticated” material, despite the demand posed by their own constituency. So they are either too concerned with their own agendas to care about what their users want, or they’re trying to change their users’ sensibilities, ie. tell them what they want. Does that sound like a group responding to what people really want?

But the issue is who knows what the user wants—some committee that is off site or the library staff who interacts with their customers? I worked at a school library–and I would know what our students wanted from their requests–and if they were researching something and we didn’t have it, I knew it meant we needed to do something about it—-If my Principal or a committee wanted to take that decision away from me, I would find that insulting. I know SPL is trying to keep up with the radical changes that have occurred the last 10 year or so—but they need to do a better job of listening to their library staff.

Quite simply, if you want to know what your users want, look at your hold and circulation statistics. That’s an empirical indication of what they’re checking out and what they’re willing to wait for. The reason I linked to both titles in question was to illustrate that, right now, they are not on the shelf–they’re circulating.

I can completely understand the logic behind centralizing these purchasing decisions because they are largely based upon statistical analysis of raw data. We can also anticipate how popular an item is going to be before we even order material because, by and large, the marketplace will almost always betray its anticipation–think Harry Potter, for example. Purchasing in reaction to what is guaranteed to circulate is a smart move and it’s a business strategy not intended to insult the librarian, but instead benefit the patron–which it does.

But you do make a good point, which is, how can a collection be further enriched by the input of the librarians on staff? There is an intrinsic value to knowing your collection has it’s own unique fingerprint. So librarian input is critical and libraries much facilitate that. But there needs to be an understanding that librarian input supplements the core purchasing strategy and isn’t the strategy itself.

That’s ridiculous. And yet, I know plenty of librarians who resent being told what materials and services they should provide by mere patrons. There are some people who are so threatened by the idea of change that they never will. I’ve come to terms with that… I hope they can come to terms with the fact that in a few years I’ll still have a job and they won’t.

[…] “I am *so* not in the same profession as these librarians,” and John Blyberg writes, in a post tagged with idiocy, “So we’re in the business of placing value on content, now. Great, I love the idea of […]

This is so clearly not about collections but about management, yet the dispute leverages most folks’ unfamiliarity with how collections are built in the first place. it’s a debate by proxy.

John, I think you’re mistaken in suggesting that collecting popular materials is primarily about serving user needs. I think it has more to do with a business-centered model of public librarianship, that sees high circulation counts as a mark of success.

Charlie Robinson, who directed the Baltimore County Public Library in the 90s, and who was one of the fiercest proponents of this model (he called it “Give ‘Em What They Want!”), didn’t care all that much about lofty things like getting materials to those who couldn’t afford them; he called the public library an “almost exclusively middle class” institution.

The model of centralized collection management, and collection-building based on user requests, is one that is focused on saving money, not on best serving users, and it looks good because the circulation numbers are high. But it’s a strategy that’s bereft of any sort of principle–Robinson, in fact, derided librarians who cared about “doing good,” and wrote that it was “damaging to…the institution of truly cost-effective services.”

It also completely denies librarians the ability to make suggestions and give advice to lead users to different material from what they come in for, which, despite your unwillingness to “place value on content,” is an important job that librarians are charged with. This, I think, is what the librarians in Sacramento are most upset about–the denigration of them as professionals who might be able to use their professional skills and knowledge to help create a quality collection.

[…] because their shelves contain 10 copies of Jackass 2 and 6 of the Paris Hilton biography. But, as John Blyburg points out, all those copies are either checked out, on order or missing, meaning that they don’t have […]

2 holds on the Paris Hilton book is your definition of popular? Also - is it a good use of taxpayers money to purchase items that will be immediately stolen? How cost effective is that?
Libraries do not have the resources to be solely popular collections - we cannot meet the demand. Also, bookstores have the luxury of returning titles that don’t sell back to publishers. We need to redefine ourselves for the future, not fall on the tired “be more like a bookstore” canard. The issues here are complicated. Simply labeling staff “idiots” adds nothing to the debate.

I am also from sacramento, and an elementary school teacher. I feel, unfortunately, the media once again jumped on one hot button issue in a much bigger problem. I was at the board meeting and was able to read, and sign, the petition, and the collection development part was only the tip of the iceberg. No, the staff and community presenting the petition didn’t want Anne Marie to resign over 10 Jackass videos or Paris Hilton books. There were MANY other issues involved, including a massive amount of money (500,000) spent on consultants, primarily used in administration, while the central library reference budget gets cut to 25,000 for the WHOLE FISCAL YEAR. Hundreds of popular magazine and newspaper subscriptions were cut system wide, again. Security issues, overly high vacancy rate among all staff classifications, friends of the library money misused, etc…. All issues that were raised many times, and ignored in the past by Management. The “no confidence” goes much deeper. This is not about stuffy librarians that fear or fight change, it’s about simple balance. If the public wants popular Barnes and Noble / Blockbuster type things, go for it. But if it interferes with my students getting their homework assignments done because of weak research materials, then yes, it’s a problem.

I was also surprised to see that after the community addressed these issues, the next agenda item was a closed room meeting about adminstration’s raises. This board obviously has no clue.

Books by and about Paris Hilton belong on the shelves of every library. No doubt some faculty member at Stanford is contemplating a course like, “Paris Hilton, a new paradigm for American Culture.” For that matter, I have been very frustrated that I can’t find newspapers like the Weekly World News, or the National Enquirer at my local public library. I mean, if you are going to give the people what they want, why not lounge chairs, beer and pretzels and big screen TVs.

What does it all comes down to…namely, the top library administrator reports to bean counters. The higher the bean count, the more the Board or governing agency appreciates the library administrator. If the bean count is on the rise, the Board is happy, and the administrator gets a raise. So, ultimately, who suffers…

We’re already planning to have many large plasma displays in our new library in Darien. And I really like the idea of lounge chairs and pretzels–really I do. Beer and wine should be an option as well, for a number of high-end functions held at the library.

Yes, let’s be a place people want to go to.

Let’s try to keep in mind that some number (perhaps a significant portion) of the persons who signed the petition were patrons. And as a librarian I tend to agree with the comment about librarians knowing the deficiencies in their collections and knowing what materials patrons consistently ask for that we do not have. Let’s try to remember that another perfectly valid portion of the public is not the vocal majority but perhaps a more cerebral, and less vocal, minority. I’m not insinuating that cerebral patrons have more right to use the library - I only suggest that they have as much right. Surely they deserve to find some of what they are looking for at the public library even if it means that we can only purchase ten copies of the latest hit films rather than twelve? What’s worse, having to wait a few days for something, or being told that the only option is ILL which often doesn’t work at all for new materials?

[…] fun, then here are my picks for the Carnival. Great post from John Blyberg at Blyberg.net entitled Buzzkill 2.0 - I’ll let you read it to find out more. I loved Karen Schneider’s post at Free Range […]

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