I renewed the visitor library cards of a woman and her 9- or 10-year old son who are staying in an emergency shelter right now. It was Valentine's Day, and the lady had a heart sticker on her cheek, which the boy told me he gave her. "Happy Valentine's Day!" he said, brightly, smiling genuinely. I asked if he gave his mom a valentine, and he said he'd given her a special one, homemade. "The best kind," she said, putting her arm around him. They spent an hour or so choosing books and talking quietly, and I marveled (silently) at their close relationship in what is surely a difficult situation. I'm so glad they could have the library not just to get books and use computers but to be in a place of peace, of quiet and (I hope) kindness.
Laura, associate librarian
I haven't seen this mother and son in about a month, and I hope that's because they are in a permanent location now and using one of our other libraries. I think about them often, however, because they are so unlike what most people think of when they hear the label "homeless."
Soon, the Central Library will be closing for a complete, two-year renovation. It needs it. The plumbing, heating, and electricity are all about 20 years out of date. We're spending insane amounts of money just heating and cooling it, more each month as the systems break down. It's been remarkably well-kept, but even remarkably well-kept buildings -- particularly ones used as much as the Central Library has been -- start to fall apart.
Despite this, and despite the fact that the renovated library will be for ALL of the citizens of Tulsa and Tulsa County, we've all heard complaints from people who sneer at "giving the homeless their own library." (Of course they have the right to say this, though it's difficult to support the free speech of others when that speech is so hateful and ignorant, isn't it?)
I want to introduce them to this woman and her son and then ask, "So, do you think they don't deserve a place of learning and peace?"
Of course, the happy, loving, clean, and "normal"-looking mother and son are easy to get behind, will serve as great billboards and faces of my imagined PR campaign. In contrast, many homeless people are the opposite of my Valentine's Day visitors: unhappy, angry, dirty, mentally ill, and with a tendency to display a host of un-social behaviors.
But here is what I, and most public librarians, believe with every fiber of our people-loving beings: these people are also equal citizens of our city, and as such, they also deserve a place of learning and peace.
In The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes writes:
"The power of librarians is not just about an 'A' student, a suburban family, a trial attorney, or a doctor. It is also about the failing student, the battered wife, the pro bono client, and the indigent patient. That is what makes librarians powerful AND noble."
This profession I've chosen to invest my life and being in IS noble, and sacred, and pretty amazing, all things considered.
I end the library-class portion of this project with the written suggestion from a nearly-homeless library customer about the name of our temporary library as the Central Library is renovated.
He wrote a beautiful, page-long description of how, as a veteran with very little money but a desire to still live a meaningful life, he "was searching for a place to land... I utilized the one place that disseminated information perpetually... the Library."
He continued: "I met perhaps thousands of people in my lifetime... spanning half the globe... and while I am not monetarily well-off, I am well-read... I'm sure that there are many people to whom the new temporary library could be dedicated to, but it is my suggestion that it be named for all of those seekers of answers... to those who have a need in their lives for solutions... for those who will endlessly pursue a better way.
"I think that you should consider a name something like 'The Library for the Lost'.... while I've never been good at putting a title upon a particular thing, I think that consideration should be given to those who will utilize the facility more so than anyone else."
This letter hit me in my soul's center. It reminded me what we're all about, who we're all about. Our people, all of them, laywers AND pro bono clients, homeless AND not, are people. Some are lost, some stay lost, some get found, some are already found but get more found. The library is for all of them. What a library does matters, but who we do it for matters even more.
I think the stories in this "One Small Good Thing" collection show this. I hope my reflections honor the good people who kept track of their stories, and Connie Van Fleet, the public librarian extraordinaire who inspired the entire enterprise.
Ray Bradbury said "I found me in the library," but he's not the only one.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Pop! goes the library
Staff person volunteered to serve as Buddy Bookworm at unveiling of the Pop Up Library at MTTA Denver Bus Station. A Pop Up Library is a small collection of children's books that appears in an unexpected location.
Lynn, department manager
Have you ever stuck your head in the old sneaker of a 14-year-old boy? After he's worn it all day? When it's 100 degrees outside?
Then you have some notion of what it's like to put the big old bulky and less-than-fresh mascot suit of the library's Buddy Bookworm, which various people wear at community events like this one.
In other words, it ain't all that great. At first. But then you're at the event, and children come running up to you, their faces full of joy and excitement, and they're hugging you like you're a combination Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse, and you wave at them with your four-fingered foam hands and hug them back and bounce around... and yeah, then it's pretty great.
The "pop up library" at the bus station was an awesome idea, and while of course I'm pretty stoked that TCCL is sharing literacy in unexpected places, what I like the most about this story is that someone volunteered to put on the Buddy Bookworm suit, with all of its negatives -- because the positives, the smiling children and joy and hugs and fun, completely buried everything else.
Lynn, department manager
Have you ever stuck your head in the old sneaker of a 14-year-old boy? After he's worn it all day? When it's 100 degrees outside?
Then you have some notion of what it's like to put the big old bulky and less-than-fresh mascot suit of the library's Buddy Bookworm, which various people wear at community events like this one.
In other words, it ain't all that great. At first. But then you're at the event, and children come running up to you, their faces full of joy and excitement, and they're hugging you like you're a combination Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse, and you wave at them with your four-fingered foam hands and hug them back and bounce around... and yeah, then it's pretty great.
The "pop up library" at the bus station was an awesome idea, and while of course I'm pretty stoked that TCCL is sharing literacy in unexpected places, what I like the most about this story is that someone volunteered to put on the Buddy Bookworm suit, with all of its negatives -- because the positives, the smiling children and joy and hugs and fun, completely buried everything else.
The end of technology?
Worked on creating meaningful but manageable weeding lists to send to branches. Decided lists with more than five but less than 50 titles should work. Ran high circulation weeding lists for each branch in Decision Center [a software program] for adult fiction items that had circulated more than 100 times. I was pleased that I had to lower the number to 75 or 50 for a few branches in order to get more than five items on the list. I plan to run similar lists regularly so that branches can stay on top of weeding but not feel overwhelmed by huge lists with thousands of items on them. Also, I want to find more creative ways to look at weeding beyond the traditional low circulation dusty book lists. Decision Center has several reports to help with this such as High Circ Weeding, Supply/Demand Weeding, and Age of Collection Weeding.
Gayle, support services librarian
Although it may sound like doth protesting too much et cetera, I really have nothing against technology. My household boasts 3 eReaders/tablets, I watch entirely too much cable TV, our microwave is a blessing, and I like breakfast smoothies and occasionally curly hair, thanks the blender and the curling iron, respectively.
My problem comes when we conflate the positive results of technology -- the curly hair, the mid-afternoon popcorn -- with the tools used to reach these ends. In education, this often means rhapsodizing over a school simply having an iPad or a Smart Board... regardless of whether these technology tools help students learn any more or better than they would with chalk on a board or a printed book (also technology tools, of course). Sometimes they do, but it's in the using and the user that determines the results, not the tool itself that magically makes good thing happen.
Neil Postman said all of this better in The End of Education about 15 years ago, though his distaste of electronic technology (specifically television) was much higher than mine.
BUT.
What Gayle has done in this example is use the technology tools available to her brilliantly.
Weeding -- the professional librarian task of evaluating a collection, whether print or electronic resources, and determining what should go and what should stay -- is frequently a difficult and painful process, but Gayle has harnessed the power of creating lists with the Decision Center technology that will be extraordinarily helpful to our branch libraries in the process.
I'm in awe. Not of the technology (though it does sound pretty nifty) so much as the efficient USE of the technology by a human being who knows how to use it.
Color me impressed. Just don't use Photoshop if a crayon works just as well.
Gayle, support services librarian
Although it may sound like doth protesting too much et cetera, I really have nothing against technology. My household boasts 3 eReaders/tablets, I watch entirely too much cable TV, our microwave is a blessing, and I like breakfast smoothies and occasionally curly hair, thanks the blender and the curling iron, respectively.
My problem comes when we conflate the positive results of technology -- the curly hair, the mid-afternoon popcorn -- with the tools used to reach these ends. In education, this often means rhapsodizing over a school simply having an iPad or a Smart Board... regardless of whether these technology tools help students learn any more or better than they would with chalk on a board or a printed book (also technology tools, of course). Sometimes they do, but it's in the using and the user that determines the results, not the tool itself that magically makes good thing happen.
Neil Postman said all of this better in The End of Education about 15 years ago, though his distaste of electronic technology (specifically television) was much higher than mine.
BUT.
What Gayle has done in this example is use the technology tools available to her brilliantly.
Weeding -- the professional librarian task of evaluating a collection, whether print or electronic resources, and determining what should go and what should stay -- is frequently a difficult and painful process, but Gayle has harnessed the power of creating lists with the Decision Center technology that will be extraordinarily helpful to our branch libraries in the process.
I'm in awe. Not of the technology (though it does sound pretty nifty) so much as the efficient USE of the technology by a human being who knows how to use it.
Color me impressed. Just don't use Photoshop if a crayon works just as well.
Monday, May 6, 2013
The student is the teacher.
People often assume that you develop closer relationships with readers working in smaller branch. The likelihood of this happening is probably higher at neighborhood libraries where the staff tends to know more people on a first-name basis. Still, I really enjoy the avid readers who visit the Central Library. One gentleman who comes in frequently reads a lot of gay literary fiction, and I usually make a few comments about what he's returning or checking in. We've had so many great, impromptu discussions about books over the past year or so. This morning, he returned By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham. As he handed me the book, I immediately started gushing. He had never read read anything by Michael Cunningham and was blown away. This opened the door to discussing Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel (and one of my all-time favorites), The Hours.
Hillary, librarian
I don't have much to say, except that I love this story not, surprisingly, because of its emphasis on books (and not just books, but literary fiction, which I heart!), but because of the metaphors Hillary uses to describe this interaction: it's a conversation between two passionate readers, and it's also a door onto future and further conversations.
Double-Heart!
Do you know those horrible Lifetime kinds of movies about teaching where the tag line is something like "She was the teacher, but her students taught her as much as she taught them"? (Cue massive eye-rolling.) The idea, if not the expression of the idea, is valid. In the best educational interactions, teachers are also students and students are teachers, and, labels aside, everybody comes out ahead.
Well, librarians are also readers and, sometimes, readers act as librarians, and the sharing that happens is priceless.
Hillary, librarian
I don't have much to say, except that I love this story not, surprisingly, because of its emphasis on books (and not just books, but literary fiction, which I heart!), but because of the metaphors Hillary uses to describe this interaction: it's a conversation between two passionate readers, and it's also a door onto future and further conversations.
Double-Heart!
Do you know those horrible Lifetime kinds of movies about teaching where the tag line is something like "She was the teacher, but her students taught her as much as she taught them"? (Cue massive eye-rolling.) The idea, if not the expression of the idea, is valid. In the best educational interactions, teachers are also students and students are teachers, and, labels aside, everybody comes out ahead.
Well, librarians are also readers and, sometimes, readers act as librarians, and the sharing that happens is priceless.
Don't read this!
We received an email from a person in another state who was dismayed that there was a list on our catalog named "Books parents should not let their children read". The email-er even copied and pasted the American Library Association (ALA)'s Bill of Rights to support her dismay. The response from one of our librarians was, in my opinion, a master class in kindness and restraint, especially given that keeping the list (which was created by an individual, not a librarian) available, as abhorrent as it may have been to us personally, was exactly the kind of intellectual freedom that the ALA Library Bill of Rights upholds. The librarian thanked the person for her concern and then patiently explained:
"The list to which you are referring is a user-generated list, which was created by an individual. Bibliocommons (the library catalog that we use) allows individuals to create and share lists. You will find lists, tags, and reviews from a multitude of library users throughout the country and Canada. (This particularly list was created in 2011 before the Tulsa City-County Library used Bibliocommons.) ... Of course, we embrace intellectual freedom and encourage families to make their own, personal decisions about materials they select. This list is the opinion of a library customer, not an official library bibliography."
Laura, associate librarian
Have you ever noticed that your most vehement disagreements are often with people who generally agree with you, and vice versa?
It's true for me, at least. The person I probably argue with the most is my own father, and we are pretty much in sync in our opinions about politics, books, movies, and Bob Dylan. It doesn't stop us from bickering about all of those things -- until someone else in our family (usually my sister) says, "Hey, you're actually both saying the same thing!"
I think there was something of this too-close-for-peace going on in this particular interaction. The email-er was actually a teen librarian, and she was rightly horrified to think that a library would create such a list as "Books parents should not let their children read."That misunderstanding, coupled with an attempt to tell us about something we already knew (that the ALA Bill of Rights condemns censorship and supports the right to a variety of expressed opinions), created a friction that would probably not have existed had we received an email from someone completely opposed to intellectual freedom -- a parent wanting us to withdraw certain books from our collection, for example.
Why do I include this as a small good thing?
Because the Tulsa librarian's response could have easily been righteously cutting and curt (is there anything more annoying than someone telling you something you know good and well?!!??), but she took the high road in such a way that the response back was positive and supportive. No feelings were hurt, and the end result was two librarians supporting each other in the fight for free and equal access to all ideas and opinions, including ones that call for, ironically, silencing other ideas and opinions.
"The list to which you are referring is a user-generated list, which was created by an individual. Bibliocommons (the library catalog that we use) allows individuals to create and share lists. You will find lists, tags, and reviews from a multitude of library users throughout the country and Canada. (This particularly list was created in 2011 before the Tulsa City-County Library used Bibliocommons.) ... Of course, we embrace intellectual freedom and encourage families to make their own, personal decisions about materials they select. This list is the opinion of a library customer, not an official library bibliography."
Laura, associate librarian
Have you ever noticed that your most vehement disagreements are often with people who generally agree with you, and vice versa?
It's true for me, at least. The person I probably argue with the most is my own father, and we are pretty much in sync in our opinions about politics, books, movies, and Bob Dylan. It doesn't stop us from bickering about all of those things -- until someone else in our family (usually my sister) says, "Hey, you're actually both saying the same thing!"
I think there was something of this too-close-for-peace going on in this particular interaction. The email-er was actually a teen librarian, and she was rightly horrified to think that a library would create such a list as "Books parents should not let their children read."That misunderstanding, coupled with an attempt to tell us about something we already knew (that the ALA Bill of Rights condemns censorship and supports the right to a variety of expressed opinions), created a friction that would probably not have existed had we received an email from someone completely opposed to intellectual freedom -- a parent wanting us to withdraw certain books from our collection, for example.
Why do I include this as a small good thing?
Because the Tulsa librarian's response could have easily been righteously cutting and curt (is there anything more annoying than someone telling you something you know good and well?!!??), but she took the high road in such a way that the response back was positive and supportive. No feelings were hurt, and the end result was two librarians supporting each other in the fight for free and equal access to all ideas and opinions, including ones that call for, ironically, silencing other ideas and opinions.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Child's play
A little guy in our library knocked his head on the shelving and started crying -- and Mom was nowhere around. So I sat with him and we read a book until Mom returned from the bathroom. He was happy to see her again.
Bob, branch library manager
I had a call in the Hotline from a mother wanting books at a particular library about spaceships and the moon. I walked her through searching the catalog and using the limiters to select the library location. She was very happy for the tutorial, and explained why she put items on hold in advance. "I have a 1 1/2 year old who will pull more books down in two minutes than we can put back up in two hours, so I need to do as much as I can beforehand as possible!" We had a chuckle and I assured her that one day she would be able to actually come in to the library and not just run to the holds shelf, but for now, that was perfectly acceptable!
Laura, associate librarian
Every field has its giants, its intellectual leaders and early thought-creators. Melvil Dewey, he of the magical mystery cataloging system, is a big one for libraries (obviously), but there was also S.A. Ranganathan, who culled library thought into five simple "laws" that all libraries should strive to uphold. One of the laws -- still revered today -- is "Save the time of the reader."
Libraries do all kinds of things, from having the newest books on one shelf to making self-checkout machines available, to accommodate this law.
Michael Gorman is a latter-day library leader who has proposed a few supplemental laws to Ranganathan's. The Gorman law that resonates most deeply for me is "Libraries serve humanity."
These two stories, while sharing mothers and small children in common, are also perfect examples of a combination of these two laws.
When libraries serve children, we are also serving busy parents -- and an easy-to-navigate catalog and ability to place items on hold in advance are great ways to help parents save time (and the hassle of re-shelving books their little ones may pull down).
But what Bob demonstrated is that we also serve humanity in the form of little boys who bang their heads and need some comfort in the form of a warm lap and a story until Mom gets back from the bathroom.
Technology can be wonderful -- in the service to real people -- but kindness will never go out of style.
Bob, branch library manager
I had a call in the Hotline from a mother wanting books at a particular library about spaceships and the moon. I walked her through searching the catalog and using the limiters to select the library location. She was very happy for the tutorial, and explained why she put items on hold in advance. "I have a 1 1/2 year old who will pull more books down in two minutes than we can put back up in two hours, so I need to do as much as I can beforehand as possible!" We had a chuckle and I assured her that one day she would be able to actually come in to the library and not just run to the holds shelf, but for now, that was perfectly acceptable!
Laura, associate librarian
Every field has its giants, its intellectual leaders and early thought-creators. Melvil Dewey, he of the magical mystery cataloging system, is a big one for libraries (obviously), but there was also S.A. Ranganathan, who culled library thought into five simple "laws" that all libraries should strive to uphold. One of the laws -- still revered today -- is "Save the time of the reader."
Libraries do all kinds of things, from having the newest books on one shelf to making self-checkout machines available, to accommodate this law.
Michael Gorman is a latter-day library leader who has proposed a few supplemental laws to Ranganathan's. The Gorman law that resonates most deeply for me is "Libraries serve humanity."
These two stories, while sharing mothers and small children in common, are also perfect examples of a combination of these two laws.
When libraries serve children, we are also serving busy parents -- and an easy-to-navigate catalog and ability to place items on hold in advance are great ways to help parents save time (and the hassle of re-shelving books their little ones may pull down).
But what Bob demonstrated is that we also serve humanity in the form of little boys who bang their heads and need some comfort in the form of a warm lap and a story until Mom gets back from the bathroom.
Technology can be wonderful -- in the service to real people -- but kindness will never go out of style.
Citizen ceremony? Go north. Jury duty? To the south.
I learned today that the person who maintains our Tulsa Organizations and Services database is developing a new LibGuide to help customers navigate the various courts near the Central Library -- city, county, and federal. We often get questions from people about which place they need to go for various services. She decided to do this based on input from a coworker. This is a perfect example of how astute librarians are in tune with the needs of our community and collaborate to fulfill those needs.
Sheena, library manager
The downtown library in Tulsa is sandwiched between a federal courthouse (and post office) to the north and a county courthouse to the south. The city court where you contest parking tickets is in a weird little pocket nearby. Naturally, that means we often have court-users of all types, from lawyers and judges to jury members to defendants.
It's fairly common to get a family, dressed to the nines and carrying American flags, coming into the library and asking at the desk where the courthouse is. We point to the north and wish them a hearty welcome as new U.S. citizens.
They're the easy ones to direct. (And really gratifying. If you're ever in need of a shot of enthusiastic-but-not-jingo-ist patriotism, you can't do much better than a citizenship ceremony. Those smiles are genuine, and the flag-waving signifies real joy for the opportunities this country gives its people, homegrown or transplanted.)
But then there are the others that are more difficult to help -- frantic people with a court date, but not much of an idea of which court they need. They often thrust crumpled documents at you, confusion and panic marking their faces.
The new LibGuide Sheena refers to will help librarians help folks clear the confusion and get to the right court. It's an amazing piece of work, and I agree with Sheena: it's a great example of librarians (and libraries) responding to the community. (In case you're curious, here's the link to the "Navigating Courts in Tulsa" LibGuide itself: http://guides.tulsalibrary.org/CourtsFAQ)
What is a "LibGuide"? It's a web-based collection of resources on a particular topic or collection of topics. As I see it, a LibGuide is a kind of museum populated with information resources, and librarians are the curators, deciding what books, articles, videos, web sites, basic questions and answers will best help a curious person explore a topic better. In the earlier "Web 1.0" world, they were known as "pathfinders", and this term is still used, but the "Web 2.0" versions promise more multimedia and interactive content.
To get even more specific, "LibGuide" refers to the particular software used to create these collections. For the Tulsa City-County Library, the company is Springshare, and "LibGuides" are what their software helps librarians create.
But that's shoptalk that's interesting only inasmuch as... well, in no way. It's a tool, and only as good as the people who use it. In this case, it's a pretty great tool, and I imagine I will be using it a lot.
Sheena, library manager
The downtown library in Tulsa is sandwiched between a federal courthouse (and post office) to the north and a county courthouse to the south. The city court where you contest parking tickets is in a weird little pocket nearby. Naturally, that means we often have court-users of all types, from lawyers and judges to jury members to defendants.
It's fairly common to get a family, dressed to the nines and carrying American flags, coming into the library and asking at the desk where the courthouse is. We point to the north and wish them a hearty welcome as new U.S. citizens.
They're the easy ones to direct. (And really gratifying. If you're ever in need of a shot of enthusiastic-but-not-jingo-ist patriotism, you can't do much better than a citizenship ceremony. Those smiles are genuine, and the flag-waving signifies real joy for the opportunities this country gives its people, homegrown or transplanted.)
But then there are the others that are more difficult to help -- frantic people with a court date, but not much of an idea of which court they need. They often thrust crumpled documents at you, confusion and panic marking their faces.
The new LibGuide Sheena refers to will help librarians help folks clear the confusion and get to the right court. It's an amazing piece of work, and I agree with Sheena: it's a great example of librarians (and libraries) responding to the community. (In case you're curious, here's the link to the "Navigating Courts in Tulsa" LibGuide itself: http://guides.tulsalibrary.org/CourtsFAQ)
What is a "LibGuide"? It's a web-based collection of resources on a particular topic or collection of topics. As I see it, a LibGuide is a kind of museum populated with information resources, and librarians are the curators, deciding what books, articles, videos, web sites, basic questions and answers will best help a curious person explore a topic better. In the earlier "Web 1.0" world, they were known as "pathfinders", and this term is still used, but the "Web 2.0" versions promise more multimedia and interactive content.
To get even more specific, "LibGuide" refers to the particular software used to create these collections. For the Tulsa City-County Library, the company is Springshare, and "LibGuides" are what their software helps librarians create.
But that's shoptalk that's interesting only inasmuch as... well, in no way. It's a tool, and only as good as the people who use it. In this case, it's a pretty great tool, and I imagine I will be using it a lot.
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