My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #8, August 24-31, 1998

BORDERS SKIRMISH REVISITED

A few weeks back I told you about the fuming in the library community when our own professional journals claimed that the chain bookstores were doing pretty much the same job we were, but were doing it better and cheaper. I invited you to tell me what you liked and disliked about bookstores and libraries, and what your ideal library would look like. Having gotten some fascinating responses from about 70 of you, for which I thank you, I am now ready to report back to you, and to make some suggestions to my fellow librarians about how we can make ourselves even better.

We ARE good already--you told me that. Since the first rule of self-improvement is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," we need to know what our users like and even love about what we do, and make sure we keep on doing it. (As best I can tell, the people who planned the new San Francisco Public Library forgot this principle, putting so much of the new technology up front that longtime users had a hard time finding the books and magazines and reading space they'd come for.)

Overwhelmingly you told us that libraries are a wonderful place for children. Many of you fondly recalled your own childhood in libraries, mentioning story hours and Halloween parties and summer reading programs, and of course picking out all the books you could manage to carry or get your mom to carry for you. My friend Christine told about going off to the library by herself when she was four, without the grownups noticing. Her mother, though, had no doubt where Christine would be. Sure enough, "they found me at the library in my favorite kangaroo rocking chair reading outloud to myself."

What the children's room has, that the chain stores do not, is enormous quantities of children's books, old ones as well as new ones, for eccentric tastes as well as popular tastes. As parents, you enjoy taking your children there because, as Martha said, the wide and varied collection keeps up with a child's changing interests. As children, you knew that whether you wanted to make a kite or raise a guppy, you'd find books there to tell you how to do it. Jennifer said "It was always an adventure going to the library...kind of like having Christmas several times a year."

But you also mentioned the nice librarians who told you stories and put on puppet shows. You remembered them because they listened to you, answered your questions, knew what interested you, and always found just the right books for you. They acted like you were real people, only shorter.

A lot of you spoke about the joy of learning what you want to know, at your own pace, as you work your way through all the books and journals on your subject. Max talked about "afternoons and days spent reading in the library...I couldn't picture doing that in a bookstore. Not without feeling that I should buy something." Gary said he "never felt comfortable reading books that weren't mine in a bookstore," and spoke lovingly about a library's "nooks and crannies from which you could escape just about any noise," where he read his way through every volume in the Jane's series, and picked up a sense of history in all the old issues of Flying.

For many of you, libraries are places for thinking and dreaming. You like a collection you can wander around in on your own without having to ask for help--all you really need is the books, a comfortable chair, and nobody to hassle you while you read. (Such unobtrusive readers, incidentally, may never show up in a library's usual statistical measures.) You like having a big reference collection to draw on, and a large collection of not only the most current magazines and journals, but also the historical backfile for research. My son and several others mentioned how much they appreciate the ready availability of computers for exploring the web or checking e-mail or doing research in different databases.

But most of you also appreciate librarians who can help you find what you need even when you don't know the title or the author or what subject heading to look under. You spoke about librarians who didn't just find the call number and point, but who took you to that floor, showed you the whole subject area, and left you to browse happily. You talked about chatting with library staff about books, and how much you appreciate their displays and reading lists and reviews that tell you about good books. You said we add value in a way that bookstore staff often can't. Several of you were downright contemptuous of the chain store clerks who in Al's words, "are not motivated and don't know the store's inventory"; Wels called them "shoe clerks [who] can only read the labels and the price."

But there are also things about the chain stores you really did like, that you wished we could imitate, notably color, light, cleanliness, and attractive displays to pique our interest. Too many libraries are like my old one, badly lit, dingy, drab and uninviting, with no display windows to showcase our wares and entice people into the building. Many urban libraries have compounded this problem by removing all the comfortable chairs; unfortunately, in discouraging homeless users, we've discouraged the patrons we want as well.

Some of you also felt that the chains do a lot better job of having enough copies of best-sellers --you found it frustrating to be on a long waiting list for books you really wanted to read (a problem Jim, who is a library trustee, wants to address with a "popular library," containing multiple copies of heavily used fiction, nonfiction, CDs and videos). Several of you want us to stock lots more books on tape because you spend too much of your life driving.

While Dan likes being able to use our collections of computer and electronics journals, he goes to bookstores for computer books, because he sees the technical collections in libraries as monuments to dead technologies--not only do we not understand what kinds of books to buy in the first place, he says, but we also don't know when they need to be thrown away. And as librarians already know, men often complain about inadequacies in our collections on home repair and other mechanical topics.

These may be areas in which our collections suffer because librarians are mostly female, and mostly generalists. Perhaps we could consider enlisting our users as consultants in building our collections in these areas. We could survey our users, asking what areas of our collection need improvement, and whether they might offer their technical knowledge to assist us in selection and updating.

And yes, the in-store coffee house is something many of you mentioned. Most of you like the idea, and now that I have read a book called Cities Back from the Edge,* I think I understand why it is so appealing. The book talks about how little public space there is anymore, in our towns--places where people can bump into each other unexpectedly, where impromptu gatherings happen naturally, where conversational groupings of chairs and benches and tables mingle with flowers and waterfalls and sculptures, inviting people to sit down, forget about schedules and enjoy the now.

The attraction of the in-store coffeehouse may have less to do with the coffee (some of you hate it, and Peter wants hot chocolate, please) than with the fact that it provides this kind of casual meeting space which may be unavailable elsewhere. This suggests to me that we could do more with both our interiors and our grounds to create this kind of gathering place for people.

Bettendorf's newly renovated Public Library is one model of how to create an inviting public space. It houses several flexible size meeting rooms and an Iowa Cable Network classroom upstairs, and a coffeeshop downstairs, separate from the library. It also has picnic tables outside, surrounded by flowers and trees and a human-size redwood Cat in the Hat. As part of what is called The Learning Campus, it has beautifully landscaped walkways that lead to the new children's museum; the library generates traffic for the museum, and the museum returns the compliment. The library has created new reasons for people of all ages to go there.

Many libraries are stuck in central cities, while their patrons have moved away from the urban core. When people no longer go downtown to shop, a trip to the library requires a special effort. When the parking is also inadequate (as some of you pointed out), many people won't even try. Since it isn't easy for a library to pack up and move to where the people are, it might be a better idea for the library to work with city leaders and private businesses to bring people back downtown, by creating inviting public spaces where interesting things are happening.

It has been done. New York City's main library at 42nd Street, already a place where people would gather informally, sitting on its broad front steps, became a hub around which a small section of the city was reborn. The library board worked with a private organization to restore the adjoining Bryant Park. As it was re-landscaped, as tables and movable chairs were added, as kiosks offered food, and the library offered programs, it became a favorite gathering place. Park users would wander into the library, while library users would also visit the park. Soon merchants were setting up shop in the nearby buildings, generating even more traffic for the park and library.

Public libraries already give a good return on the public's investment by providing a common store of books and information and meeting rooms. But they are also committed to their town's well-being in a way chain stores are not--Barnes & Noble may pick up and leave if they don't generate enough revenue, but libraries are with you through the good times and bad times alike. If libraries can learn the lessons Borders and the New York City Library have to teach, they can offer an even better return, revitalizing the heart of the city by programming special events, and making the space inside them and around them a place people can love.

* Roberta Brandes Gratz. Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown. John Wiley and Sons, 1998.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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