Building Burrillville
By howard | April 30, 2008
Few circumstances are so conducive to humility as sharing the podium with Senator Jack Reed. Yet, there I was last Sunday, April 27, 2008 under a tent in front of over 100 Burrillvilleans and friends celebrating the Grand Opening of the new Jesse M. Smith Library sitting next to the Senator awaiting my turn to speak. Also at the top of the tent were Congressman Patrick Kennedy and Nancy Binns, Burrillville Council president. The speechifying itself was a treat. Every speaker made it clear that he or she “got it;” i.e., understands the library’s importance. All spoke of the library as a place, as a collection, as a gateway to the online world, as a staff of helpful guides. The Congressman was full of fire for the library’s role as bastion of democracy. Nancy Binns alluded to a number of illustrative tales proclaiming the library’s role in the lives of people of all ages and stations.
David Ketcham, Chair of the building committee and the day’s MC told us that the most used word in the visitor sign-in book since the library’s “soft opening” at the beginning of the month was “awesome.” Upon that basis, he suggested the library’s name be changed to the “Awesome Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library.”
That provided the Senator with a segue to his invocation of the significance of the role of librarians in lthe library, counter-proposing as a new name the “Sandra Mundy Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library” to honor the incredible efforts of the library director.
I thanked Burrillville on behalf of Rhode Islanders everywhere, noting that every LORI library was an asset to all.
We often hear that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link but are rarely challenged to consider the obverse: that a chain can grow no stronger than it strongest links. RI libraries are all linked by LORI; linked as places; linked as collections; linked as skilled staff who can guide the members of their discrete communities, who are all members of our aggregate community to each other. We are more of a web than a chain, but the principle is the same. OLIS is proud to have had a part in creating the opportunity for Burrillville’s library service to grow stronger.
Burrillville, thank you and congratulations!
LORI is stronger, too.
Topics: General | No Comments »
Service, Service, Service
By howard | April 21, 2008
At the URI GSLIS annual gathering Friday night Camila Alire reminded the assembled that service is the essence of the library profession. At first I bristled at that (maybe because I could hear in that the voice of one of my first library mentors at the University of Pittsburgh parentally exhorting me “service, service, service”) Isn’t ‘service’ much too broad a term to describe an essence? Sure, we serve our patrons (clients, customers), but doesn’t every store clerk, fire-fighter, dentist, even IRS agent? Certainly a profession devoted to providing access to information, steeped in language could come up with a better description of its essence!
Somehow, though, when I reflected, I kept returning to “service, service, service”. What is the subject of our service? Our product, information, after all is incorporeal; more and more, seeking to serve up our product, we cannot even predict what wrapper we will find it in – parchment? paper? clay tablets? something magnetic? something optical? something online? – let alone describe it in a word.
The essence of that we do is after all, service. On the one hand, it is undoubtably a librarian who serves the noble prize winners with the resources that underpin their achievement. On the other hand, Jimmy Durante found in the library “exactly what I was lookin’ for. It was 4,572 (est.) pages long. . .just the size to fit under the short leg of my pool table. . . .” Service.
Perhaps the most important thing for a librarian to be reading is the patron walking through the door.
Topics: General | No Comments »
GIA 2009
By howard | April 11, 2008
We are all facing another difficult budget year. I know it is of little comfort, but RI is not at all alone. Although there are pockets of better news, many state library agencies across the nation have been reporting reductions in FY2009. Ohio is facing a 10% cut; in New Jersey and in California, local libraries are looking at a 10% cut in state grant-in-aid; The American Library Association’s news reports are also full of dire circumstances. In Rhode Island, flat funding of library grants-in-aid coupled with reductions in other state aid to municipalities and local troubles stemming from the general downturn in our economy have upped the downward pressure on local library budgets. In some cases that downward pressure could lead to loss of the state grant-in-aid. Local budget decisionmakers will need to be careful about ensuring continued eligibility for state grants-in-aid. RIGL Title 29-6 contains the following:
“§ 29-6-3 Eligibility requirements – Municipalities. – (a) To qualify for state aid under § 29-6-2, a city or town shall:
(1) Appropriate from local tax revenues an amount not less than the amount appropriated the previous year from local tax revenues and expended for library operating expenses. The appropriation would exclude any state funds received for public library services. Any funds received from the state shall not be used to supplant funds from local tax revenues;”
Put simply, that means that municipalities that do not provide library services in FY2009 with the same or a higher level of funding than they had in FY2008 will forfeit their FY2009 grant-in-aid.
The governor has recommended grants-in-aid that would fund a projected 22.86% of municipal appropriations and expenditures two years prior, a substantial part of each eligible public library’s library budget. Note that I say “municipal” rather than library appropriations and expenditures. RIGL Title 29-6-3 goes on to say:
“(2) In the case of a city or town having more than one free public library therein, submit or cause to be submitted to the department of state library services a plan for the allotment or division of the proposed state aid among the free public libraries in the city or town. The plan shall be developed by agreement among the free public libraries of the city or town;”
I will have some discretion to cope with desperate cases, but don’t foresee making any exceptions to the maintenance of effort requirement.
Topics: GIA | 1 Comment »
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