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.