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.

Mining the Archives

In my previous post, I highlighted the State Library's government information blog. That is a neat tool and a great place to find interesting tidbits about Kansas history.

Did you know that the Hutchinson Public Library has something similar? One of our great reference staff members created "Mining the Archives", a blog dedicated to history in general and all the interesting things you can find poking around the archives of our library.

It's been a while...

In years past, I tried hard to promote the KGI (Kansas Government Information) blog. Not because they need my help, but because they provide fascinating reading. The KGI blog is chock-full of the sort of useful information that good librarians collect. The current post is about a mysterious explosion in Coffeeville, KS.

The KGI blog showcases state documents housed in the state library collection and current information that affects us regular citizens in our daily lives. I would suggest a look - it can be really fascinating!

Robots in the work place

Most of the time, when you think of robots in the work place, you think of those giant arm-like machines precisely and rapidly welding automobile frames. In the world of telepresence though, robots, controlled remotely, roam around offices. These kinds of robots allow telecommuting or travelling employees the ability to "be present" in meetings. A staff member controls the robots movement and sends it from place to place allowing the human to interact with co-workers as if she were actually present.

This is one example, there are many companies making these.

I've been thinking a lot about these robots and how they could be used outside of the world of business. While researching, one of our staff members discovered that they are already being used in schools to allow home bound students the ability to participate in school and classroom life.

What about other uses? Another HPL staff member suggested nursing homes. This seems like a fantastic application to me. Imagine being able to visit your Great Aunt Betty by arranging use of the nursing home's telepresence robot! You could roll to her room and have a visit no matter where you are in the world.

Health care seems like a natural place for these sorts of robots. With a fairly sensitive sound and vision package, a doctor in a distant hospital could consult with local doctors and even be present when examining a patient.

I'm interested in these robots at HPL for gimmicky reasons like using one to roam around the Smallville Comic con to answer questions a la  Barbara Gordon (Bat Girl) who was the librarian at Gotham City's Public Library.

But, HPL could also lend the robot to other organizations including schools and medical facilities if they needed it. It could be lent for other purposes as well. What do you think?

Hutchinson Public Library needs to do this

I think a partnership with USD308 and USD313 at minimum such as the one described in this article would be fantastic! Making student IDs a substitute for library cards? Why not? Our goal as a library is not to be a substitute for schools, but a resource to draw upon. Specifically, we want to be a resource for the individual student.

Sometimes, a barrier for kids is not getting to the library, but having their own cards. "But that's subverting parental rights!" you say. This could be true. But notifications could be sent, benefits of the idea could be shouted from the roof tops so that parents are aware of what's going on. And no other effort would have to be made on the part of the parents.

And what would be going on is reading. My goal would be that HPL could be the place where a student gets connected with her or his passion. That passion might be something that leads to a career or that feeds a life-long hobby. It might simply an escape from the day-to-day "work" of studying and school that can sometimes (I can attest personally to this) takes the joy out of reading.

Science Fiction Discussion 2/11/2016

This month we read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, which many people will associate with the Will Smith movie of the same name. A few people may associate it with the cheesy 1970's-era Charlton Hesston movie Omega Man. In fact, the book has been made in to a movie three times. The oldest version stars Vincent Price and is called The Last Man on Earth.

Our group compared and contrasted the book with the Price film. I think the overall decision was that The Last Man on Earth followed I Am Legend very closely. The other two movies did so to a lesser degree. Personally, I really liked the Matheson story. I thought it was paced well and kept me interested. While it felt very much a product of its time (1954) in moral sensibilities, it is still very readable. Price played the main character pretty true to the book. The only problem for me was that no matter what, it was still Vincent Price. Kind of like the Charlton Hesston version, Robert Neville (main character of the book) was there in name only - it was Charlton Hesston the whole time.

All-in-all, I would recommend the book. I liked the Vincent Price version of the movie - very low-budget, but I thought it was true to the novel.

Next up: Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Join us on March 3rd at 7pm here at the library!

Plans are shaping up!

As we move in to the heart of winter, plans are being completed for sprucing up the library! We will be working on the children's story time room, the children's bathrooms, doing a little work on the children's entrance, and a lot of work on the Main Street entrance. The Main street part of the project will include a new second floor reading area. If everything stays on track, we plan to have a bid opening for this work in early March and have work started later in the spring!

But wait, there's more! We are still taking suggestions for milliondollarideas@hutchpl.org regarding what to do with the large bequest that was left to HPL. Our goal is to do something that will have the biggest impact possible on the lives of our patrons and the life of the community. We're trying to think big. We're looking for something amazing, unique, and potentially life-changing for our users.

Bicycle Book Delivery

Oakland Public Library's effort

I think this is just fantastic! This article talks about libraries that are bringing mini-collections of books to book-poor areas of their cities and towns by bicycle.

Hutchinson, KS is an extremely bike-able town, size-wise. I'm not sure what we'd do in winter months here, but you could easily bike a trailer of books to Third Thursday or to a city park or a community center with very little effort. I think even an out-of-shape old man like me could do it!

The article seems to indicate that most of these libraries are using targeted collections for the event or area they are visiting with their pedal-powered bookmobiles. This seems like a great way to do some major good will in one's community while helping a literacy issue that just doesn't go away - the inability to get books in to some people's hands simply because of a lack of availability or access.

e-Books vs. Print Books

[Insert maniacal laughter here] I find a sense of shadenfreude in this New Republic article about reading.  The person being interviewed has been gathering evidence, other than anecdotal, about reading and the use of electronic books versus paper (or "traditional") books.

Turns out that there seems to be a host of component factors to reading that are unsatisfied by reading on a screen. There has been a slowing of ebook sales in the past 5-6 quarters that have puzzled publishers, pundits, and others alike. Why haven't ebooks continued their meteoric rise?

I've wondered about this before and it's good to see someone look at this issue with a certain amount of diligence. I've always thought, with nothing empirical to back it up, that people become distracted when using a device to read versus a paper book. As the article above states, the book provides immediate feedback AND you can't just "quickly" check Facebook.

Anyway, maybe it will turn out that "I told you so" and ebooks will be just another medium for delivering information. They have shortcomings and strengths just like any other medium. To me, it makes sense that ebooks will fill the needs better than paper for some purposes and vice versa. And the best part is that libraries will still be here to help you find what you need. [Insert more maniacal laughter].

This is where we are as public libraries...

The long, painful dismantling of the USA's social safety net is hitting still-functioning public institutions like public libraries right in the gut. This Washington Post article shows us what the end result of our war on poor people is going to look like.

Public libraries are not public health care providers. Public libraries are not homeless shelters. Public libraries exist for an entirely different sort of public service for all - life-long learning and entertainment.

I am strongly in favor of access to library services for ALL - rich or poor; old or young; homeless or gated-community dwelling. However, libraries are not set up for, designed to handle, or in any way truly capable of handling what they are increasingly being forced to deal with. Libraries on the whole are not always even funded to a level to effectively perform their main function. Asking libraries to be medical facilities, mental health providers, and more is the sign of, in my not-so-humble opinion, a nation that has given up and given in to stingy, hard-hearted sentiment.

The Post article states that the solution many of these not-lavishly-funded libraries came up with is to hire social workers, nurses, etc. This is a ridiculous diversion from the mission of public libraries. At least in Hutchinson Kansas we have organizations like New Beginnings to help people in housing crisis and the Salvation Army and many other groups to help with homelessness.

So, what is the role of public libraries in this crisis of poverty? I think it is to be in the second tier of support - helping people find jobs through providing access to resume help, application help, and providing access to training and coaching. Libraries should be places for moving forward. Forward movement can only be achieved once the basic needs of housing, food, and health are met.

Should libraries not be part of this process of change? Of course we should be active participants in this vital conversation, but we should not allow ourselves to be substituted for other institutions and services. We are being taken advantage of because of our collective urge to help people. We should never give up our desire to help people but we should also stop letting ourselves be used as a convenient rug under which bigger societal problems can be swept.

Talk20 Rocked!

This was our 5th Talk20 at the Hutchinson Public Library. Through the hard work of Kari Mallioux and Patsy Terrell, we have been lucky enough to provide a forum for 50 Hutchinson / Reno County residents to tell their interesting, funny, sometimes poignant and almost always surprising stories. Talk20 is a forum for introducing people to their fellow Hutchinsonians (Hutchinsonites?) to each other through sharing. It's amazing the conversations 6 minutes and forty seconds will spark!

Obsolete?

Cool! I think this is probably an indication that librarians are NOT obsolete:

newsworks article

Is it the same job Ida Day had when she was here at HPL in the 1940s and 1950s? Nope. And thank goodness!

As that article states, Google hasn't made us obsolete so much as it has off-loaded some of the more routine questions (what we used to call "ready reference") and allowed us to focus on the more in depth questions. We can help match people with tools that will get them straight down their research paths rather than possibly wandering around on a digital snipe hunt.

I have high hopes for the future of my younger colleagues. I may be one of the old, stodgy library administrator crowd now, but I haven't lost (I hope!) my inquisitiveness, my love of the hunt for the next cool thing, or my ability to recognize a good idea when I or one of our staff sees one.

Where are ebooks headed?

I don't think anyone really knows what's happening in the ebook world. The sales of ebooks plateaued in 2015 and no one really knows if that was a pause or the peak. My thought is that with about 1/4 of the total book sales, ebooks probably haven't reached their peak yet. I do think that the future for them is very uncertain, as is the future of ebooks in libraries.

I say this because the big, mainstream of the ebook publishing world seem to be satisfied with selling ebooks as if their potential to be something more than their paper counterparts isn't worth pursuing. Think about what you could do with ebooks. At the very minimum, like digital versions of movies, you could have added features, interviews with the author, etc. Things that are not possible in paper.

Libraries need to figure out ways around the stranglehold ebook publishers have on them. After all, history has shown that libraries are one of the main places for people to try out, with very low or no risk, new authors, new media, etc. I maintain that publishers are shooting themselves in the foot and driving the growth in the the independent and self-published ebook explosion by making library acquisition of ebooks so clunky and restricted.

Libraries could be the biggest and cheapest sales force a publisher could want. Librarians like reading, we like sharing, and we promote by word-of-mouth the good stuff, the new stuff, the overlooked stuff. It's like having an army of volunteer sales people. Because readers buy the books they like. If they find a new author in a library and they come to love that author, they'll start buying that author's new material rather than wait to borrow. It happened years before ebooks were even remotely a thing.

What got me ranting about this old topic again? This article, which is a pretty good article from American Libraries magazine with the opinions of four experts in the field. I'd recommend a read.

Talk20 time!

It's coming soon - January 22nd here at the Hutchinson Public Library. We'll close the library to regular business at 6pm and then re-open at 6:30pm.

Read all about Talk20 on their website. We love having this event here at HPL even though sometimes we run out of seats and people have to stand!

Thank you Patsy and Kari for all the hard work! And thank you to the presenters who are putting their stories out there and sharing with their community. 6 minutes and 40 seconds goes by so quickly, but the preparation time doesn't, I'm sure!

It's the same all over

Only in some places the scale of the problem seems massive relative to one's own issues. Take for example the City of Birmingham's (UK) problem with overdue books. They currently have 145,671 overdues! Now, of course Birmingham is a large city and the library system there holds well over 1.9 million items. Just in raw numbers though, that's a huge bunch of books. But my reading of the article linked below makes it sound like that 145k number is a snapshot; in other words a total from a specific day but looking back over a ten-year period.

You can read about their predicament in this BBC report.

To put it in perspective, the Hutchinson Public Library holds a total of about 260,000 physical items. We currently average (this is a guesstimate based on number of notices we send out per day) about 300 items overdue. Also, we consider items that are "overdue" for a long time, say a year, not "overdue" but "lost".

Another Interesting Circulating Item

Four Pennsylvania libraries will be circulating ukuleles! This is the start of a project created by a group of ukulele enthusiasts that has a goal of reaching 32 libraries.

Apparently, the ukuleles even come with some training for staff in the basics of ukulele playing. I imagine the staff thinking the same things about this that they do when any new service or tool is introduced at their library - "People are going to ask me how it works!" So I think it is fantastic that the ukulele afficinados responsible for the project are thinking big picture and making sure they have advocates in the libraries.

I saw this and was thinking that this is what really might be the biggest problem for the "Library of Things" post I made about the Sacramento Public Library a few weeks back. I wonder how they deal with patrons who come in and want to check out, say, a sewing machine and then want to have a staff member show them how to load the bobbin? If you had a library of things, you would want to have a library of experts, or at least knowledgeable staff, I would think. Although, I suppose you could just adopt the position that the library of things is there for patrons who already know how to use the "thing" they are checking out, rather than a hands-on learning collection.

Science Fiction Book Discussion 1/7/16

This month, our SF dicussion group read Nancy Kress's 2013 Nebula winner, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. We had a good discussion about it, I think, but I feel a little guilty.

I have never read anything by Nancy Kress, so I went into the book with a good deal of anticipation. I really enjoyed her writing style, it moved the story quickly. Kress really uses language well. I am a sucker for the inter-weaving timeline gimmick too.

However, I finished it and had nothing but questions. This is where the guilty part comes in. I really had a fit in the discussion (jokingly, of course) but I was pretty emphatic about the lack of resolution. What, where, and when were answered pretty much but for me at least, no answers came for who and why. So I kind of felt like I hit on those things too heavily and maybe stifled some other opinions. I hope I didn't, because our group has had pretty strong opinions about almost everything we have read.

I think the consensus was that we might need to read something else of Kress's fairly well-decorated body of work to know what ways After the Fall... is representative of the whole.

Personally, I would recommend it for the writing style, but not the overall tale.

I am fully prepared to admit however, that maybe I just didn't "get it" if someone can answer the "who" and "why" questions I have about how the story played out.

For next month's discussion we are reading Richard Matheson's I Am Legend

Affordable broadband Internet?

This is an article from techdirt, an online technology magazine. The article is from their if-you-build-it-they-will-come department:

After A Decade Of Waiting For Verizon, Town Builds Itself Gigabit Fiber For $75 Per Month

I'm interested - Gigabit fiber for $75 per month? But how did they do it? The municipalities that were being ignored by the big Internet service providers got together and built it themselves.

After the $50 per month charge to offset the building cost, the actual subscription costs $25 per month...for Gigabit bandwidth. That's TEN times faster than the "up to" speed advertised by my local cable provider and their price (with TV of course) is $120 per month.

Reliable, inexpensive REAL broadband is a selling point for communities in today's growing work-from-anywhere job pool. I cannot understand why more small municipalities who want to attract people wouldn't want to consider this sort of public utility approach to Internet service. After all, it is just another connection like water and sewer.

I have nothing against commercial Internet, telephone, and TV providers. I just think there should be healthy competition, you know, like we talk about all the time. Competition is supposed to be the name of the capitalist game, right? That competition isn't going to happen when there are maybe two, or only one, or even zero viable providers in your area. There is no incentive to expand, no incentive to increase speed and capacity, and no innovation.

Building Improvements

Plans are shaping up for making some much needed improvements and refurbishment to our building!

Using funds saved back in our Capital Improvement fund, in 2016 we will be working on both entrances, the children's library restrooms, and the children's story time room.

The west entrance will be first up this spring. We will be changing the HVAC systems in that area to try to improve the comfort level. This phase of the project shouldn't be too disruptive, but there will be times when the entrance will have to be closed for safety reasons.

Once the West entrance has been finished up, we will make a fairly major change to the Main Street entrance. That side will get a larger foyer area, better HVAC and new doors. We will add some seating for people waiting for rides and more.

Tied to the Main Street entrance refurbishment will be a renovation of the old computer lab area on the second floor (directly above the Main entrance). This area will get some windows, comfortable seating, and the AV collection. This will make for a nice quiet reading and study area with a view of Main Street.

Once that area is finished, we should be past the 2016 Summer Reading Program and the refurbishment process will move back over to the Children's Department. The restrooms in that area will be totally redone from the plumbing up. During this time, the story time room will also receive a much-needed face lift that will include new flooring, paint, storage and craft time clean-up facilities.

These projects will be done with funds the library has set aside over a few years by being frugal with our tax dollars. The capital improvement fund was created specifically to help entities like the library save up for needed repairs and improvements to our building. This means that no new taxes are needed nor will any debt be incurred for these projects!