Holiday Grinchiness

Is that even a word?  Maybe it is the stress of the holiday season.  Maybe it is just me going through a time of seeing lots of negatives.  Lately, we at HPL have had a series of encounters of the negative variety.  Among them,  just last week we had to call our friends at the Hutchinson Police Department to deal with a disturbance in the building.  We have had a patron's automobile broken into while the patron was in using our services.  Now we have discovered some vandalism to the outside of the building.

So I wonder, is this a symptom of the times that will pass as the economy improves?  Or is this simply a lack of pride in ones community and lack of concern for others? 

As we move to the conclusion of 2009 though and look forward into 2010, I see lots of great things on the horizon for HPL.  We will start the year with a new coffee bar operation and kick off another One Book, One State program with our partner the Hutchinson/Reno Arts and Humanities Council.  In the Spring, we will be working with the Dillon Nature Center and the Rec Commission, participating in their program celebrating the outdoors.  Plus, the HPL 2010 Project will help usher in the new year with a better understanding of the online world and all the tools it has to offer.  Hmm...those will be fun!

Perhaps the key to staying upbeat is looking at the horizon while dealing as you go with the sometimes bumpy path that takes you there.  Stay safe, have fun and have Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas!

The Elusive Que and Some Publishing Madness

I read a few new things about ebooks and readers this past week that started me thinking once again about where this is all going.  I provided a link in this post about a ereader called the "Que".  I mentioned it because it has been designed to address one of the concerns about ebook readers, that is how easily they break.  It appears now that the Que might actually become available for purchase.  It appears Barnes and Noble will sell the Que along side its Nook product.  Meanwhile, the oft-rumored Apple tablet device, a gadget that so far no one has ever seen may really be coming - at an Apple-like price (potentially) of $1,000.  Apple is apparently pitching the product to publishers in an effort to create a content base.

Which brings me to the "publishing madness" portion of my missive today.  I read this article and think that perhaps the publishing industry has collectively taken leave of its senses.  How can they possibly think it is a good idea to delay by FOUR MONTHS the release of a new book in ebook format?  I suppose they really think that people will be so excited about some books that they will buy the print version first and the ebook version later.  What is actually going to happen is that the publishers will cut themselves out of a source of revenue.  The Amazon response quoted in that article is correct, the hype and publicity surge for a new book will be lost four months down the road and sales will be lost.  Another stated concern from the publishers is that piracy of the "e" format will reduce sales.  That is a possibility, but this strategy will certainly reduce ebook sales and I would wager actually increase the instances of piracy.  Sigh...

Projects Shaping Up

Starting off the New Year with some new activities at the library would be nice.  One "new" thing is actually a re-start of an old thing.  I am excited about and hopeful for a partnership between the library and our new coffee and snack vendor.  The Bru Crue Coffee Bar will open for business on January 4th, filling a void left by our last vendor.  The BC folks have a delicious line-up of products ready for sale and will be adding to their offerings as business grows.

Another long-standing issue has been the building just to the north of the library known as the Women's Civic Center.  For many years the building sat largely unused and neglected.  After the most recent effort to raise funds to restore the house by the Hutchinson Reno Arts and Humanities Council, the building was returned to the Library.  With estimates running into the multiple 100's of thousands of dollars to bring the building into a useful state as public space and no takers for moving the building because of its size, the Library has contracted to have it demolished.  We had an 8-week period for citizens interested in salvage to remove useful, re-usable items from the building.  So next, week there will likely be large machines at the corner of 10th and Main completing the task.

However, the Library salvaged some beautiful woodwork to use as part of a plan for a new "quiet" reading room.  Our plan is to re-create a space originally called the "Rayl Reading Room" in the old section of the library.  This will be an area for those people who need quiet for concentration and study.  A group of staff members came up with the plan in response to concerns expressed by several regular library users.  I think it is a great idea and I can't wait to get it started!

As you prepare for the crush of the holiday season, don't forget that the Library can be a great place to stop in for a moment of relaxation.  Pick up a new book, download an audiobook to listen to while shopping, or use our free WiFi. 

Don't forget!  Ask us about the HPL 2010 Project!

One of my favorites...

While Halloween can be lots of fun and Christmas can fill you with good cheer (or not, depending on your stress level), I find Thanksgiving to be one of my favorite holidays.  I really resent the way it gets passed over in favor of Christmas shopping though.  In the past, you could at least count on a nod, but commercially this year everyone seems so desperate even Halloween got buried in red-and-green merchandising.  OK, enough grousing.

November at HPL was filled with great and fun activities.  December is starting off the same way.  Once again, our friend, Dave McKane, is coming to Hutchinson and HPL and leading digital photography workshops.  The first is on December 3rd from 6:30-8:30 PM and the second is December 7th from 9:15-11:15am.  Both workshops will be held in the Library's Auditorium on the second floor.  Find more information here at his site.

If you are looking for a way to support the Children's Department AND get some shopping done, we will be holding a Scholastic Book Fair from December 6th through the 12th.  Profits from this activity will go towards new materials for the Children's collection.

Time for a teaser - looking ahead to early next year, I can't wait for The 2010 Project.  This program is "...a ten-week, self-directed technology exploration program starting in early February that you can work on from home or here at the library."  The goal is to complete the ten-week, self-paced course and learn about new technology.  There are some great incentives for completion as well.  This program has been used in libraries across the country but rarely, if ever, for library patrons.  HPL's version will have a program for staff AND a program for patrons.  Read about it here and sign up for information as it becomes available here.

Good Stuff

Wow!  That's as succinctly as I can put it.  November 12th we hosted a program where participants from three mini-memoir writing workshops read some of their works to the public.  Sheila Lisman has done a fantastic job with these workshops and had a great idea organizing the public reading.  If you weren't there, you missed something really out-of-the-ordinary.  The folks who chose to share provided us with a wonderful mix of poignant and funny, serious and whimsical.  It actually made me a little mad at myself since I don't really have the guts to get out there and share like that.  I heard rumors though, that there might be enough interest to do it again.  So, who knows - maybe I'll have a chance and maybe you will too!

Our National Gaming Day afternoon of games on November 14th seemed to go over well too.  We had about 40 participants ranging from children to adults.  With 2 areas, a family game area in the Children's Department and a youth game area upstairs in the auditorium, there was plenty for everyone to do.

If you haven't seen the polio survivor's display at either the Reno County Museum or the Promise Regional Medical Center, you still have a chance to take in part of the display here at the library.  Through the middle of December, various artifacts and displays will be here for viewing.  The exhibit is in two areas, with the second floor display focusing more on local history and the first floor display focusing on the disease and how people have coped.

E-Readers! (Yes, again with the ebooks...)

After reading stories here and there about Kindle disasters, I started thinking that surely someone, somewhere must be working on this problem.  After all, one of the big knocks against ebook readers, besides being powered devices, etc. is that they are susceptible to damage.

What is going on in the world of ebook readers to address this?  Bridgestone, the tire company, has been working on a flexible screen for devices.  Theirs is in development at the moment, but the product development path looks interesting, although it does not specifically list an ebook reader as a product.  A company called Plastic Logic has a flexible-screen ereader ready to go to market, called the Que.  This certainly addresses what I think is a major disadvantage for ereaders like the Kindle2 or the Sony products.

As I have said before, I love gadgets.  Part of me really wants an ebook reader simply because it would be a new toy.  The way in which I see an ebook reader being really useful to me is to collect in one small object a number of books and journals on a specific topic to use for a project.  It would certainly help me keep my desk tidier.  I have read in numerous places the idea that an ebook reader is perfect for a college student.  What a great way to haul around a semester's worth of textbooks! [EDIT - 11/12]  This article is a good read about the ebook economics libraries face.



Upcoming events worth noting - HPL is having a gaming day to celebrate National Gaming Day.  There will be a family game area as well as a teen gaming area.  We'll have a variety of board games and console games, so come join us!  Also, next week on November 17th we will have a Family Time to celebrate Kansas Reads to Preschoolers.  I can guarantee both events will be fun!

Borrow or Buy?

Halloween, 2009 marked the start of a new experiment at HPL.  You see, despite a good effort, we don't have everything every patron wants exactly when they want it.  We tend to borrow 3,000 to 4,000 items per year from other libraries on behalf of our patrons.  This is a very expensive process, both in monetary terms and in terms of staff time.  Don't get me wrong though.  I think that interlibrary loan (ILL, for short), is a fabulous service.  It expands an individual library's collection far beyond what it could ever be by itself.  The trade-off is that it is sometimes more expensive than simply purchasing an item and adding it to the local collection.

For quite a long time, HPL has struggled with how to decide when to purchase or when to borrow an item a patron requests.  In this time of tight budgets and great uncertainty, we have decided that it makes more sense than ever to try and solve the puzzle.  So, we are going to use a function of Google documents, Google forms, along with a slightly modified process to try a new way of getting what our patrons want.  Our new internal process inserts the collection development staff ahead of the ILL staff.  If the collection staff decides something requested would be of value in our collection, we will buy the item instead of getting it on loan.  If the item requested doesn't fit with our collection or collection policy, then we'll borrow it instead.  The ultimate goal is to shape HPL's collection in a way that more closely reflects our community.

Here's how the thinking goes:  I did a little bit of calculating and came up with a conservative figure of $16 as the average cost for HPL to borrow an item through ILL.  That represents an average of $12 for staff time, $3 postage, and $1 packing material.  Obviously then, if a patron requests an item in the $12-$15 range or lower, it is more cost effective to buy the item than get it on loan, even if we don't expect the book will get checked out more than that one time.  If we buy the item and it goes out several times, we've both saved money and improved the collection.  Even if we buy something that costs double that $16 threshold, the item would only need to get checked out one more time after the initial check out for us to break even.

I think we will finally be putting the horse out in front of the cart with this change.  We will test this process over the next few weeks, refining as we go.  With luck, the experiment will not disrupt normal service in any noticable way.  With a little more luck, we will improve the collection and maybe save some money in the process.