Letters

Just out of curiosity, I searched "civil war" on Google. I got "about 1,910,000" hits in, naturally, no order. Leaving aside the fact that a sampling of these results fished up many sites about the Spanish civil war and the Roundheads vs. Cavaliers imbroglio as well as the events of the 1860s in the United States, I will admit the process was simple, as advertised (John Berry, "Keep It Simple! " Editorial, LJ 10/15/02, p. 8), but the results are unusable. I guess I would say that OPACs are complicated because the world is complicated. By the way, a search on "war between the states" yields 48,300 hits, most of which would not be retrieved by the first search, despite the fact they are on the same subject.
—Michael Gorman, Dean of Lib. Svcs., California State Univ., Fresno

Your editorial (John Berry, "A Message from Cerritos ," LJ 7/02, p. 8) described the Cerritos Public Library…[which] includes "an oak-paneled, 19th-century reading room with...a glowing, if virtual, fire in the fireplace...a huge aquarium...[and] life-size dinosaurs…." I was appalled!

The medium has become more important than the message. One of the roles of the public librarian is to act as a custodian of public funds—taking care to spend money as efficiently and effectively as possible. I was amazed that you would offer this library as an example. It reminds me of the recent problems of my local school system. New school costs have almost doubled because the school system staff and the community advisory committee proposed customized extras that no one questioned. For example, a new elementary school boasts a "lighthouse-shaped reading nook" in the school media center and special arches in the foyer. Unfortunately, this same school system is unable to fund air conditioning for all of the high schools in the district.

I'm very comfortable with LJ's annual Architectural issues, which highlight good library building design—they generally describe new building techniques…but please tell librarians to think about where the money goes! I'd rather have more resources to check out than oak paneling.
—Kathy Sorci, Annapolis, MD

Thanks for Blaise Cronin's "What a Library Is Not " (Dean's List, LJ 11/15/02, p. 46). I sent it to several colleagues. It's so nice to be reminded why we picked this profession in the first place. I thought I was the only one being driven crazy.
—Kelyn Ralya, Librarian II, Social Sciences Dept., Birmingham P.L., AL

I wholeheartedly disagree with "Web departments must die! " (Letters, LJ 12/02, p. 2). It is easier than ever to create web pages, but as professional librarians, we are in the business of producing quality work. As one who uses the Internet extensively and has done several reviews of web sites, I know that not all sites are created equal—it is noticeable when web sites are just thrown together.

Web pages go on forever, there are wild color schemes, and some images use so much bandwidth that it takes 30 minutes to load the page. These things are a detriment to patrons who use the library's web pages. Most patrons will not sit around to look at a poorly developed page. It takes planning, following standards, and knowing code to develop quality pages. Tools are available to assist with this process, but sometimes they do not always do what you want them to do. As a result, you have to look at the code, and if you do not know the code, then you're in serious trouble. There has to be someone on a library staff who knows how to deal with web pages…. That is why funds are allotted for a "department."
—Jamen McGranahan, Systems Svcs. Libn., Waggoner Lib., Trevecca Nazarene Univ., Nashville

As mentioned in Carol Tenopir's interesting "Oldies but Goodies " (Online Databases, LJ 11/1/02, p. 36,38), Gale is embarking on an aggressive program to digitize archival information, but she's one step ahead of us. Gale is indeed digitizing the London Times back to 1785 and approximately 150,000 18th-century books in our "ECCO" program. We're currently filming the million documents in the Papers of Sir Winston Churchill, held in the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge. For at least the next five years, while filming continues, the only way to view Sir Winston's complete government and parliamentary memos and speeches outside Cambridge will be with a microfilm viewer.
—Beth Dempsey, Mgr., Corporate Communications, Gale, Farmington Hills, MI

In "The Building Buck Doesn't Stop Here " (LJ 12/02, p. 42), the architects of record for the ACES Library, Information & Alumni Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (photo credit) also include Phillips Swager Associates of Dallas and Naperville, IL. Phillips Swager should also have been included along with Eppstein Uhen as the architects for the new Franklin Public Library, WI (p. 48). LJ apologizes for the omissions.