Editorial: Opportunity Knocks
Library organizations must collaborate for any summit to work
Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 7/15/2006
The latest report on public libraries indicates that they are “financially vulnerable.” Yet, the media across the country don’t give a damn. The study was conducted by the highly regarded research institute Public Agenda in collaboration with the Americans for Libraries Council (ALC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Barely half a dozen reporters, including two from LJ and one from Walnut Creek, CA, tuned into a telephone briefing on “Long Overdue,” a study of attitudes about public libraries. Walnut Creek is one of the communities that lost the opportunity to replace its old, dilapidated library on June 6, when Californians defeated a statewide construction bond issue by a small margin.
The lack of media interest in the phone conference and the very few follow-up news stories confirms the study’s complaint as well as librarians’ own: we must make a better case for the role of libraries in the community and thus for library funding. The study in no way upends any of the recent or continuing research from organizations ranging from OCLC to the Urban Libraries Council to the American Library Association (ALA) on the public’s perceptions of libraries, libraries as engines of economic development, and so on.
Adding more fuel to those reports, “Long Overdue” finds that while there is a wellspring of love for libraries, no one—from the typical resident to the engaged citizen—realizes that libraries must fight hard for every local dollar, not only to retain current funds but to grow them to deliver more and better services. It calls for employing these engaged citizens as a conduit to funders. As ALC president Diantha Schull noted, “[There’s] a paradox in the landscape,” with “expanding demand and use of traditional and Internet services [at libraries]” coexisting with “traditional stereotypes that the library is obsolete.”
Still, there was good news, too. “Relative to the other studies we do (a lot on public education),” said Public Agenda president Ruth Wooden, “these are much stronger attitudes.” Even when it comes to paying taxes for libraries, more people say they are willing to pay than is typical of public responses.
Schull sees this and the other major reports as an opportunity. “We have a chance to put together a lot of dots. [W]e need to position libraries about communities.... Just supporting local advocates with better tools isn’t enough. We’ve never created understanding at the upper levels, with governors, mayors....” Schull plans to synthesize the reports and hold an advocacy summit this fall, bringing together “allies inside and outside the library community.”
“It’s an opportunity many of us see,” says newly inducted ALA president Leslie Burger. As part of her presidential focus, she has already begun working on a fall summit to hammer out a policy agenda for the profession that will be ready for next year’s Legislative Day and will incorporate grass-roots efforts. “We need to put a package together around the issues people who use our libraries (public, academic, and school) see as important,” she says, “one that we agree will advance libraries and cement their role in society.”
Despite semantic differences, Schull and Burger are on the same track. Rather than dueling summits, it makes more sense to collaborate and draw in leaders from all the pertinent organizations—whose boards and/or members often overlap—under the aegis of Burger and ALA, which is itself a huge collaborative of units, affiliates, and state chapters and the umbrella for the profession.
The point is not who runs a summit but what comes after it. Summits usually spill out a long lineup of scattered ideas. The meaningful work is to identify, illuminate, and convince all the organizations to follow up aggressively on a few strong initiatives that have the most potential for long-term gain.
