Editorial: On Pumping Sunshine
Candor doubles the value of a new library tour
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 11/15/2005
Anyone who has watched libraries for a few years has run into the “pumping sunshine syndrome.” It is an affliction common to all library public relations people and many library administrators. It is especially rampant among library directors who have just invested in capital projects, like a new building or the latest cutting-edge technological breakthrough.
Pumping sunshine is the very natural response to the peering eyes and ears of visiting colleagues who have come to view the new stuff because they are about to take the plunge themselves. During the building tour or technology demo, the librarian who works with the new goodies tells everyone how perfect it all is and how wonderfully smooth every step in the process went.
Everyone knows things are never that perfect, nor are processes that smooth. But having spent so much on the innovation or the building, a library administrator is loath to admit to any problems, issues, or mistakes along the way. No one wants to tell others that some approach didn’t work, some apparatus was not worth the price, or some materials aren’t as durable as others. Yet it is precisely that kind of information that makes these visits to new libraries with the people who planned and built them so valuable.
Of course, it is instructive and useful for colleagues engaged in a project to see successful end results of recent similar activity. But getting the full value of those demonstrations or tours requires a candid librarian who will share the blunders, false starts, and obstacles faced as the project went through the decision-making course.
That’s why I found a recent tour of the beautiful Blair Library, the new main public library of Fayetteville, AR, so refreshing. The library is a gem, as we found when we named it Library of the Year this summer, and Executive Director Louise Schaper not only deserves great credit for bringing it off so successfully, she deserves a medal for her willingness to share candidly both the processes and problems of getting it done. She ought to sell tickets to other librarians adopting new technologies and building new libraries, along with all their consultants, architects, and trustees.
My wife, another Louise, who directs the Darien Library in Connecticut, is engaged in the planning of a new library. As I followed the two Louises through that magnificent Fayetteville structure, I got a real lesson in the incredibly complex art of building a modern public library. Schaper held nothing back as she showed us that obviously successful facility. She filled out our tour with honest discussion of the full scenario, all the complications encountered and the solutions she, her board, and her staff devised to overcome them.
Americans are building new libraries at a tremendous rate. Many library directors are facing the challenge of a new library for the first time, and it is frequently a once-in-a-career opportunity. Yet, while architects and a host of consultants on everything from the building program to the technology can be enormously helpful, nothing is as useful as the kind of forthright, open, informative tour and discussion that Schaper gave us. She is one of the few directors I have accompanied through a great new library who was willing to tell the whole story.
If I were a library director and faced the challenge of presiding over the construction of a new library for the first time, I’d get on the phone to Schaper and set up a tour.
It is worth the cost of the trip from wherever you are if you can get her to give you that half-day special we got. And it is inspiring to hear her talk about a great new library in realistic terms without a trace of pumped sunshine.
