goblin cartoons

I’m writing this to participate in the Louisville Free Public Library blogathon, to raise awareness (and hopefully some money) for the Louisville Free Public Library, which was recently hit with flash floods, dumping over four feet of water into the library and causing over a million dollars in damages.

Why did I donate money to the library? Why should you? It’s not because I’m a librarian. I became a librarian because I think libraries kick ass, not the other way around.

Libraries kick ass because they are a public service, free to all, centered around literacy, information, education and entertainment. Libraries, provide free books, CDs, DVDs, video games, newspapers and magazines, microfiche, databases and other resources to public communities. Libraries provide activities, meeting spaces and internet access to the public. I really believe libraries are essential to a community.

So please, donate as much as you can to the Louisville Free Public Library, either in the name of the Library Society of the World or directly to the Louisville Free Public Library Foundation. But please help out in some way, because we all need our libraries.

Because I am a huge geek, one of my big inspirations for the naming & iconography of the Library Society of the World was a comic book superhero group like the Justice Society of America. But in the real world, we’re not superheroes, we’re just regular people doing our best in life.

Still, there are times when I’m particularly proud to be associated with the LSW, and this is one of those times. My fellow carping nerdboy Steve Lawson has started a drive to collect money to donate to the Louisville Free Public Library, which has recently been hit by disastrous flash flooding. I’m thrilled that Steve has taken the initiative to do this and to do it in the name of the LSW. I’m also thrilled that people have actually been donating. I’ll admit, as a public librarian in Kansas, I don’t exactly have loads of money to throw around, but I did make a small donation.

Please help out the Louisville Free Public Library in any way you can, either by donating through PayPal, sending a check to the Library Society of the World Clubhouse (PO Box 7893, Colorado Springs CO 80933) or sending a check directly to:

The Library Foundation
Attn: Flood
301 York St.
Louisville, KY 40203
(502) 574-1709

I know this is extraordinarily corny to say, but you really don’t have to be a superhero to do good in the world.

Yesterday, I drove to Wichita to present at the Kansas Library Association/Mountain Plains Library Association conference on “Impractical, Unfeasible, Unfundable Ideas for Libraries.” This was a presentation based on one of the best sessions of Library Camp of the West that I participated in. I expanded the premise a bit to be: in these times of economic uncertainty and hardship, now is not the time to give in to despair or to play it safe. Libraries should be daring, bold, willing to dream big, take risks and make mistakes. Rather than stand up and babble for the entire session, with Powerpoint slides to illustrate my blather, I threw out some wild ideas I would like to see in libraries and then solicited ideas from the attendees. Which was easy, because librarians are full of wild ideas they’d like to see.

Here are the major ideas we came up with:

Libraries stop rolling over for vendors

* For ILS vendors, aren’t libraries their only customer base? They should roll over for us!
* What about database vendors? Why don’t they give us more of what we want? (And what DO we want?)?

Libraries go completely open source

* Open source software isn’t always an easy solution or an easy change
* But the ideals of OSS match librarian ideals
* Going open source could push more librarians to be computer problem-solvers

Bill Gates gives computers, software & money to libraries…

* Why not other companies, like FedEx & UPS?
* Why not other entrepreneurs who may share library values? Like Mark Shuttleworth, the sponsor of Ubuntu Linux.

Librarian travel by pneumatic tube to wherever they’re needed!

Databases controlling the space.

Hybrid engines for library vehicles! Or biodeisel engines from Willy Nelson.

Partner with Meals on Wheels.

Choose something in the catalog & the item starts blinking. Spot where item goes blinks when it needs to be reshelved.

Staff-driven climate control.

Like Loews–patrons push a button & “Help wanted!” would sound out, alerting librarians.

Abolish the reference desk! Reference staff should walk around the library, not sit at a desk.

Everything with a number & up to date.

Magic button that reorganizes furniture and puts it back where it belongs after patrons move it.

Streamlined ILL!

Librarians out of the library! Have librarians on cruise ships! in coffee shops!

Technology that decodes “I want the book with the blue cover” question patrons often have.

Flashing neon signs to direct people to restrooms.

Creating added entries in MARC records for “red book” & “blue book”–tagging items in catalog–browsing by cover.

On www.etsy.com, you can browse by color. Why not in library catalogs?

Abolish the Dewey Decimal System!

Culture shift to play with things that might not work.

Combine libraries with laundromats & the DMV.

Bars in libraries!

Check out an audiobook at one Kansas library & return it to any other Kansas library.

Nationwide library cards. (Or just get rid of library cards.)

Anything marked as library materials goes through the mail for free.

Heather Braum of NEKLS was one of the attendees who also tweeted during the session.  She posted great notes and got some interesting responses.

What wild, crazy, dreamy ideas do you have for libraries? And how can we make these ideas a reality?

EDIT: The notes from the LCOW session have great ideas, too.

The future of library technology is here! SMS services? Facebook apps? iGoogle widgets? Bah! You may as well ask for a steam-powered velocipede! My place of work, the Johnson County Library, is premiering its new technology initiative for patrons: the brain chip!

Welcome to Tomorrow. It’s an exciting place.

This coming Monday, I will be a guest on The Walt Bodine Show at 10 a.m., on KCUR, our local NPR station. The topic will be “Libraries in the 21st Century,” which I’m always pretty excited to talk about. Not only can you listen to it on the radio, you can stream it live online and the show will be archived on KCUR’s website. So, there’s no excuse for not listening to me babble about libraries. Unless listening to me babble about libraries really isn’t your thing–but who in their right mind would cop to that?

I’m leaving this morning to drive to Denver, CO to attend the one-day unconferece Library Camp of the West. I’ll get to hang out with my friends Steve Lawson and Laura Crossett, as well as some other great library folks. This will also be my first time going across western Kansas and going to Colorado in 30 years. So, I’m pretty excited. Yeeee-hah!

It’s been almost a month since I last posted here (and I said I intended to post more, ha ha!), but the fact is, I’ve been feeling…well, bored with Libraryland. I still love libraries, I still love being a librarian, but I don’t have anything to say about libraries or librarians.

So, don’t expect to see much posting until I get all fired up about something. In the meantime, if you’d care to, leave me a comment telling me what’s getting you all excited or angry or ecstatic about libraries. Or, hell, leave a comment about what’s getting you all excited or angry or ecstatic about anything.

Congratulations to fellow Kansan David Lee King, who has been named as one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers for 2008. David is doing amazing stuff at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library (and inspiring others at the library to do amazing stuff), as well as blogging and speaking nationally about library progress. Thanks for representing Kansas progress in Libraryland, David!

Congratulations to all of the other 2008 Movers and Shakers, including the Lady of the Rebel Yell, Michelle Boule, New Jersey Transformer (more than meets the eye!) Peter Bromberg and LibraryThing mastermind Tim Spalding. Well done, all of you!

Steven Cohen links to this piece by Dave Gibson, “Our Public Libraries Are Being Turned Into Video Game Arcades,” in which Gibson laments the increase of video games and movies in public libraries. He sees it as part of the dumbing down of American youth. “It is little wonder that our nation’s literacy rate continues to decline,” he says.

I’m not going to argue specifically about what Gibson says (Jenny Levine does that better than I could in the comments on Steven’s blog), but I will argue about that sentiment in general.

Is the public library “brand” books? Most people I know seem to think it is, and I would agree it’s so. But libraries in general have never been solely about books, and if public libraries were ever about just books, it was certainly long before I was born.

Even if public libraries have been about books more than other forms of media, so what? I know, I know, librarians are supposed to be the champions of the written word, defenders of literacy. Well, I’m not. I mean, I love books, sure, but I love movies and TV shows and theater and music and games at least as much. And I think the idea of libraries being primarily about books–and books being primarily about education and intelligence–is wrong to the point of being dangerous.

For one thing, we need to talk about what’s in the books. Would it be better for the patrons of public libraries to read any books rather than watch movies or play video games? Would it be better for them to read romance novels? Would it be better for them to read Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly? What about comics? Or are libraries only supposed to keep the “classics,” and if so, who decides what the classics are? Is it better for a teen to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, even if the book has no personal relevance to them?

We also have to take into account this: reading text is not inherently better than watching a movie or playing a video game. There’s no conclusive proof that it is. There is evidence that different people learn and are engaged by different methods. Some people are more engaged, more provoked to thought, by visual and/or active media, like watching movies or playing video games.

People who read books less than they watch movies or TV, play games or sports, hike through woods, play music, garden, knit, or bake are not necessarily stupid or illiterate. People who read lots of books are not necessarily smart or wise. Let’s get rid of that notion right now.

Libraries can’t be all things to all people. It’s probably not feasible for a public library to also be a gym, a dance studio, and a carpentry workshop. But if public libraries broaden what they offer their patrons, turning the library into a video arcade…well, I think that’s awfully smart.

While I’m in a quoting mood…

There’s a line in an episode of Sports Night (one of my all-time favorite TV shows)–

I understand what makes a woman think that any man is better than nothing. I’ll just never understand what makes any woman think she’s got nothing.

–which I think aptly sums up the relationship between a lot of libraries and their vendors.