Won the Hugo? Pfft! "The Man in the High Castle"

Our Science Fiction book discussion group met, I suppose appropriately, on May 4th to discuss Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

In general, our assessments of the book were mixed. One member ranked it among her least favorites and another as definitely not a favorite. The rest of us liked the book, with certain reservations. One difficulty, I think, is that The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history science fiction, which is not a popular style with some of our members, myself included. Also, having been written in 1962, the novel very much shows its age. There are strong prejudices evident especially against the Japanese. WWII propaganda against the Japanese was much more virulent and hateful on the whole and I think had a gigantic impact on the way Americans thought and wrote about them for a long time after the war.

Personally, I liked the book mainly because I enjoy Dick's writing style. It just clicks with me, I suppose. The novel is really three main story lines that intertwine in various ways. Overall, Americans are not portrayed in the best light, being shown as opportunists in a world that turned out very differently from ours. Strangely to me at least, the Germans/Nazis are not universally reviled in a way that seems fitting to me considering in Dick's imagining, they were able to put many of their most horrifying and brutal plans into action where as in our world, those plans remained merely plans.

I would recommend the book, especially to those watching the television version. In my opinion, it's always good to see the source material. PKD is responsible for shaping the way we look at science fiction in many ways because of the visual interpretations of his works - Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, etc.

As an aside, we've changed the meeting location of our book group again, this time to Carl's Bar and Grill on Main Street in Hutchinson. We had met a couple of times at the Metropolitan Coffee House, but the acoustics aren't the greatest there for a detailed conversation. Carl's, surprisingly, seemed a little better. Why aren't we meeting in the library? Well frankly, we've met and discussed science fiction there since 2012 and we got tired of looking at the same four walls! Also, it's nice to be able to enjoy a snack or a beverage that someone else has prepared!

In June, we'll be discussing John Wyndham's "Day of the Triffids". We'll be meeting at Carl's Bar again - dutch treat dinner at 6pm and book discussion at 7pm. Hope to see you there!

An interesting year

HPL went through a pretty exciting year of change in 2016. We started off the year by hiring a Marketing expert in anticipation of our spring brand launch. What we didn't anticipate was a small job of repainting the Business Office turning in to a major mold remediation job! Despite that upset, we managed to launch Seemore and the new look for the library. We bid for and hired a contractor to remodel the Main street entrance and a part of the Children's library. We did all of our regular stuff - programming, Summer Reading Program, checked out materials, answered questions, and much, much more all while maneuvering around construction areas and plugging our ears during long days of jack-hammering.

Despite all the chaos, our door counters recorded 252,332 entries in to the building. Our wifi was used 38,850 times by 4,267 different devices and we answered 22,414 reference questions! Amazing! Believe it or not, our circulation of physical items was 369,101. That's real, solid stuff, not digital. And our digital circulation grew as well with over 50,000 checkouts of ebooks, eaudio, music, and emagazines.

We did well. We did amazingly well, I think. I'm looking forward to 2017 and some additional exciting projects we have planned. But right now, I'm just thankful for the great people who make HPL the wonderful resource that it is - the staff and volunteers who work so hard to make it a place for all to come and discover something new, explore, and connect with others.

Finally, thank you Hutchinson for using our great library, and thank you to all who come from farther afield as well. We will continue to serve you to the best of our abilities in 2017 and beyond.

Print or screen?

More evidence that paper books just aren't going away. Data from the Christmas season are being analyzed and this article from the British online newspaper, "The Independent" lends more evidence that paper is still a strong medium.

I haven't looked at any reports for ebook and paper book sales in the US, but I hope that the trends were upward in sales here too. We need more people reading as much as possible!

A Little Breathing Room

The light at the end of the tunnel is bright. We are finally nearing the end of our renovation project that included both entrances to the library, bathrooms, reading spaces, the Friend's Book Store, and the Children's Story Time Room.

I have to say that I am excited, but at the same time a little bit sad because I do love a project.

For the time being though, I think I'll sit down, take a little rest, and enjoy the view...

Interesting NYT article

This article about public libraries illustrates the resilience of our type of library and our type of librarian.

The article is focused on libraries in and around New York City, but it could easily be describing public libraries across the country. Public libraries have shifted their focus from being warehouses and custodians of things to being places that focus on the users and their goals.

The flexibility and innovation shown by public libraries may surprise people, but we've been doing this for decades - adapting to the times. It doesn't always happen all at once, nor does it happen in equal measures everywhere across the country, but it happens. Most importantly, a good public library adapts and changes for the betterment of its community!

The "Plan" is coming together

We have been working through almost 3 months of construction, but we are beginning to see the light - literally - signaling the end of this phase. Here's a pretty good idea of what the Main Street entrance will be like when it reopens in a few weeks:

Those little cleats above the new windows will hold a metal sunshade. There's only a very little that needs finishing on the exterior besides the shade. A little bit of paint work and we're set.

Here's what it looks like from the inside on the second floor - no carpet yet, but the ceiling grid is going in today and you can get a general idea of what the view will be like sitting in what will be a nice new reading area.

Here's another view from inside looking basically straight east.

Downstairs, the Friend's Book Store is getting a remodel. Here's what it looks like at the moment. The new enlarged foyer is visible beyond. The new foyer area will help us keep a more stable temperature in the front area of the library.

It's happening!

Robots will be replacing us in libraries! Sure, this article says the intention is to relieve librarians of "menial" tasks but that's only to get their foot in the door. We all know that our robot overlords are just biding their time, gradually insinuating themselves into our everyday lives. Before you know it, we'll all be scurrying around like rats in the rubble of our meat-bag civilization as the robots take over.

OK, maybe I'm getting a bit carried away. This is actually a really interesting technology. The robot could search the stacks at night, and help us humans find mis-shelved and lost items in our stacks. The Hutchinson Public Library has well over 250,000 physical items. It takes a considerable amount of time to keep the shelves in order. It is also very time consuming to look for items that didn't get checked in properly.

I'm looking forward to this step towards Skynet myself.

Construction update!

The remodeling of the Main Street entrance is coming along roughly on schedule. As is the case with any remodel (versus a new build) there are almost certainly going to be some of those "Hmm...that's not on the drawings" moments. So far, we've really only had one major stumper as the flooring was peeled up across the seam between the northern-most addition and the older part of the building. That problem has been resolved, thankfully.

If you drive by now, you can see a glimpse of what the exterior will look like when it's done. The window frames are in both upstairs and down. Right now they are working on the un-glamorous but VERY necessary changes to the HVAC in that area.

Dust barrier inside the Main Street entrance - it worked great!

North facing wall pre-window frames

Sidewalk view pre-window frame

Library Closures hit Canada

An article from CTV News states that nearly half of all the public libraries in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador will be closed. The provincial budget included a million dollars less for public libraries than in the previous year resulting in mass closures of branches.

So I will leave you with these two quotes to be used alternately:

“When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian.” 
― Joan Bauer

...unless you live in Newfoundland unfortunately.

OR

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” 
― Walter Cronkite

And that is the real danger.

You think data caps won't affect you?

Think again. This article from the website Techspot drives home the real issue with out current FCC / cable industry / Internet provider dynamic.

The data caps are punishing the group of people (of which I am one) called "cord cutters". These are folks who have left their cable TV subscriptions behind for a variety of reasons. There are two major reasons our family cancelled cable TV - cost and lack of use. By lack of use, I mean that we watched a handful of the channels to which we were subscribed and rarely viewed bundled-in channels on the various tiers we had to carry in order to see the few we wanted. That was tied directly to the cost factor. We could not justify $100 per month for the 4 or 5 channels we wanted.

So, we went our merry way with a data plan and Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. We could watch what we wanted when we wanted, so long as we could wait for our shows to appear on the service.

If you are streaming a lot of video though, you can easily hit lower-tier data package caps. I am convinced, as the article above states, that this is intentional with the aim to drive people back to cable TV packages.

What is needed is competition, cafeteria-style cable channel selection, and some governmental and regulatory backbone to make those things happen (in my humble opinion, of course).

The Hero-Librarian

No, I'm not talking about Noah Wylie and that sometimes entertaining but very silly  movie and TV series "The Librarian". I'm talking about a librarian in the real-life struggle of preserving cultural heritage and artifacts from the very real barbarians attacking countries all over north Africa and the Middle East.

Read about Abdel Kader Haidara, a Malian book-seller and librarian from the ancient African city of Timbuktu. This guy is an example of a regular person going about his life, finding himself in an extraordinarily bad situation, and choosing to do something about it. His actions undoubtedly saved an irreplaceable collection of work from the clutches of the barbarians that had invaded his city.

Hard hat area!

Over the next few months, the Hutchinson Public Library (well, parts of it anyway) will be hard hat zones! Watch out for the construction - it starts in the East side or Main Street entrance THIS MONDAY - April 18th!

From Monday the 18th through early August, the Main Street entrance will be closed, so please use the West entrance that goes into the Children's Department.

We are embarking on a remodeling project that, when finished, will leave us with a new Main Street entrance, a new reading/lounge area, new children's restrooms, and a revitalized story time room. I for one am very excited. This is a step in the right direction toward becoming more welcoming and more modern-looking.

You see, we have a bit of an image problem at HPL. I rank us up there with the best of them in the areas of services and tools offered and certainly when comparing staff skills. But we don't necessarily look it.

I think our visible changes will help with the perception that we're the "same old library". We haven't been the library that you knew in the 1980's for, well, decades. Public libraries have been constantly adapting and changing to meet demand and HPL is no different.

A New Brand - A New Image!

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity at the Hutchinson Public Library! We have been working for some time on a fresh new image for the library.

Every once in a while all organizations need to pause and take a look at HOW they look. What does a patron experience when she visits the organization's website? What does the app or apps look like? What does the physical space look like?

Hutchinson Public Library's image was what it has been for many, many, MANY years. It wasn't bad by any stretch, but it wasn't inspiring. It wasn't current. It didn't let people know what our amazing staff had to offer or what tools we had hidden.

So we went big with color, we set our sights high on what we want to say to our users. We want to be the place where patrons can explore an idea or a subject. We want to be the place where patrons can discover a solution, a new passion, or a new course in life. We want to be the place where patrons can connect with one another, with other entities in the community, and with ideas from around the world.

Our new face has a name - Seemore. He will help you (and us) see more of what's around locally and far away. I'm excited to with where the Hutchinson Public Library is going. You will be seeing more of our bright new colors and our smiling helpful nature in the weeks and months to come.

If you haven't visited us recently, stop by virtually or in person and we'll be glad to help you with that next great discovery!

A dream to leave behind

When I was in library school, I always thought it would be a great experience to work in a library in England. I suppose it will have to remain a thought exercise now. British public libraries have closed at an astonishing rate over the past few years. 343 libraries closed since 2010! Not only that, but in many more areas, paid staff are being replaced with volunteers, open hours are reduced, materials budgets slashed, and maintenance to facilities put off. The state of British public libraries is discussed in this Newsweek article and elsewhere as the true state of affairs is coming to light.

Eating at the library?

Of course. Everyone does it. Walk through the library on any given day and you will see patrons snacking on packaged things like a candy bar or peanut butter crackers. Often, library staff will have an event in their breakroom or a celebration, like our volunteer luncheon, in the auditorium. Food is part of the library. Heck, we even had a coffee bar in here for many years that served cookies, muffins, and sandwiches!

So why not take two of the typical functions of a library - book clubs and food and combine them? This article from the Columbus Dispatch talks about an Ohio library that has done just that. They have a cookbook club that taste-tests recipes from the library's cookbook collection!

What do you think?

Maker spaces should be more than 3D printers

The idea of a "maker space" is very appealing. For me it conjures a vision of walls of tools and cluttered work benches. For others it seems to simply be a 3D printer. Don't get me wrong, I think 3D printers are pretty amazing tools. But when I let my mind wander though and think about what people want to do compared to what tools they can acquire themselves, I see a more wide-ranging maker space. I see a sound lab for recording and editing music or the spoken word, such as collecting local oral histories. I see a video recording studio. I see a place with tools not easily afforded by the individual citizen. I see a place to connect with an editor for one's literary work and even a place to print a book. I see the library becoming a place where knowledge is created in many ways along with the creation of actual "things".

These spaces are being created in libraries all over the country. In this article about Oregon libraries, you can read about what some libraries there are doing. It's happening in larger places all over, but I think it could happen in the middle of Kansas as well.

I am on a ranting roll!

I have spent my entire working career so far as a public servant. I never expected to get rich doing what I'm doing. I am not a leech. I do not collect a paycheck off of "your" taxes and sit on my duff. I try to make the world a better place for all of HPL's patrons through prudent and responsible use of tax dollars to provide services that individuals could never afford on their own.

However, these past few years have made me reconsider. They have made me look around and seriously consider the private sector or a less contentious, out-of-the-fray profession. You see, after a while you just get tired. You get tired of always defending what you do. You get tired of explaining over and over that libraries are not obsolete, they haven't been replaced by Google, we have expertise you can't afford to buy on your own, we have access to tools far too expensive for the individual, and on and on.

What are we at HPL? We are champions of literacy - we want every single child and adult who wants to to be able to read, use a computer, and ultimately to have a good life. We are navigators - we can guide you through the flood of information and lead you to the bits you actually need. We provide a safe place to think and to connect. We want to be a hub for civic and cultural participation.

Yes, we have books. Yes, we have a copy machine. And yes, we have ebooks, downloadable music, audiobooks, and even a teaching tool for you to learn 100s of new marketable skills online - even from home.

And finally, yes, people do use the library. 41,872 people hold HPL cards (and have used them at least once in the last 3 years); our door counters registered 271, 247 entries in to the building last year; and our staff answered 47, 112 research questions last year. Oh, and our WiFi access points recorded 42, 350 connections in 2015 transferring many terabytes of data. 17,722 people of all ages attended programs in 2015.

/end rant

"Taxes are Evil"

I apologize in advance for the wall of text. I assure you though, that this is important.

The chickens are coming home to roost in Kansas. What enjoyed great popularity some 30-odd years ago, "Reaganomics" or "Supply-side Economics" is seeing something more than a resurgence in Kansas. Really, it's a doubling down on an idea that has demonstrably failed to do what its proponents claimed. In fact, it didn't work very well when Herbert Hoover tried it in 1932 in response to the Great Depression with his Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Whatever you want to call it, this theory of economics, coupled with a now ingrained mantra that taxes are evil have led Kansas to where it is today. For all intents and purposes, the state is bankrupt. The old way of doing things, a balanced, moderate, common-sense mix of property, income, and sales tax has been cast to the wind.

In its place we have no income tax for a certain group of "job creators", a movement to limit property taxes, and a rise in sales tax. Maybe the old system wasn't always fair. Maybe from time to time some taxes were disproportionately high. But now, the no income tax group who are supposed to now be generating more jobs aren't doing so; the loss of revenue is forcing local governments to look at increasing property taxes; while the high sales taxes are punishing the working class and causing Kansans to even cross state lines to buy basic goods like groceries!

Kansas is in a downward spiral because "taxes are evil". We want a business-friendly environment to make Kansas an attractive place to start or relocate a business and increase employment. But that will never happen in a place that can't govern itself properly. This legislator gets it. No one wants to pay taxes. But grown-ups understand that in order to have good safe roads to carry individual AND business traffic, you have to pay for them. Grown-ups also understand that if you are moving your business someplace, that business will be looking for an educated, motivated workforce and guess what - you have to pay for that by funding public education. Grown-ups also understand that while taxes are unpleasant, the rewards of properly funded, prudently managed public services make everyone's lives better. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, I would wager few want to pave their own potholes, fix their own water mains, all the while home-schooling their children, having to buy all the books and database access they need for that, and simultaneously hoping no one in the family gets sick and has to travel across counties to go to a hospital.

Yes, taxes are a boor. Taxes suck. But taxes are not evil. Not in a modern society that cares for the common good. Just as an example, I gladly pay taxes for public schools. Yes, I have school-age children. But I pay them for the other families and children as well. I don't want to live in a society of illiterate, low-skilled citizens. Lack of education leads to lack of opportunity which in turn leads to higher rates of incarceration.

Let's get back to the the days where fiscal conservatives, social reformers, moderate what-evers, social conservatives, the left and the right or whatever you label yourself agreed to disagree, but worked together for the common good. I don't understand why everyone seems to think that success is winning EVERYTHING. Success is getting on with it. Shutting the hell up (ironic, right :-) ) when you are being non-productive, stopping and listening to the other side, and finding common ground to advance the common good.

All this to say:

I hope my colleagues who drove to the State Capitol on Monday were successful in explaining to our legislators on the Committee on Taxation that their bill to defund regional library systems in Kansas is a dumb, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot idea. Thank you fellow librarians for your action.

What I'm Listening to Today (3/13/16

Today I'm listening to one of my favorite blues piano players, Joseph "Pinetop" Perkins. Pinetop played with all sorts of musicians, mostly blues players and wrote and recorded music throughout his long career. Most notably I guess, he played for a number of years with Muddy Waters - that was how I first heard him. While visiting my sister one time, I actually got to see him play live in a little club in NYC. He had to have been in his eighties at least.

This is the album I'm listening to right now - "Heaven". I found it on our free music download/streaming service.

Grab your Hutchinson Public Library card - it's all you need to get started - and start exploring!

An Excellent Choice

For the first time in about 30 years, the Library of Congress COULD be headed by an actual <GASP!> librarian! Though her appointment is far from certain in our current Idiocracy, President Obama has nominated Carla Hayden for the position of Librarian of Congress. I think she is an excellent choice for a number of reasons. First, she is a librarian. Not just a run-of-the-mill librarian like me, but one who has made her career standing up for her ideals.

You might not remember, but Dr. Hayden was a vocal opponent of the Patriot Act in those frantic and frightened months after the 9/11 attacks. By publicly butting heads with the then Attorney General John Ashcroft, she made sure that the citizens of our country knew the dangers of that pernicious and long-lived erosion of our constitutional rights. The Patriot Act truly is the defeat of American ideals that the terrorists were looking for.

More recently, as head of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Dr. Hayden kept the library open during the rioting and strife that city experienced. EPFL remained open as a safe haven for the community in a time of danger and fear.

The Library of Congress has, in my humble opinion, fallen behind in the world of national libraries. Specifically, digital access to collections has been slow in coming. In order to lead in the world, again in my humble opinion, the US must lead in knowledge creation. We have a mighty engine of collection and organization for that knowledge that could regain preeminence in the library world under the leadership of a skilled librarian.