Humanizing Homelessness at the San Francisco Public Library

A social worker connects at-risk library patrons with resources and a chance to give back.

By Juli Fraga
March 29, 2016

 

A homeless man sits on the steps of the San Francisco Public Library. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Leah Esguerra, a social worker in San Francisco, begins her workday roaming in between the bookshelves at the city's Main Library. She's looking for homeless people who need her assistance. Esguerra is the nation's first library social worker. Since 2009, she's been providing social services and outreach programs to many of the city’s homeless patrons.

On this particular rainy morning, she’s hoping to find her client, John, who suffers from depression and is in need of mental health care and temporary housing. Esguerra is excited to tell John that she’s arranged some resources like food stamps and made an appointment for him to meet with a psychiatrist who will help treat his depression.

John is one of more than 7,000 homeless people living in San Francisco. Each day, hundreds of the city's homeless take refuge at the library, where they find shelter from the rain and a daytime roof over their heads.

A 2015 survey of San Francisco’s homeless population found that 67 percent reported chronic health conditions, from physical disabilities and HIV/AIDS to psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. People with untreated psychiatric disorders may pose a danger to the public or themselves. A 2014 investigation by KQED discovered that more than half of the residents shot by the police between 2005-2013 were mentally ill.

At the library, Esguerra recognizes at-risk patrons when she sees them talking to themselves or pacing back and forth between the bookshelves. This is how Esguerra met Henry seven years ago.
After his son died unexpectedly, Henry became depressed and began abusing alcohol to help ease his pain. Eventually, he lost his job and home and spent nine months living on the streets, sleeping underneath a bridge on Division Street. Meeting Esguerra at the library, however, helped him turn his life around.

Esguerra introduced Henry to the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT), and they found him subsidized housing. They also connected him with mental health services so that he could begin counseling.
Henry still spends his days at the library, but now he’s a Health and Safety Associate (HASA) worker, and Esguerra is his boss. As a HASA worker, Henry’s job is to help the homeless patrons find the resources they need to get back on their feet. "The homeless feel safe talking to me because I tell them that I've been there, too,” Henry says. Esguerra has five HASA workers on her team—all of them are formerly homeless.

“I feel authentic compassion for the people I’m trying to help,” adds Henry. “I believe this goes a long way because they know I am not faking it, and they feel comfortable opening up to me.”

 A homeless man named John sits in his wheelchair inside the library. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)


Not long ago, Esguerra met a woman named Sally at the library. Sally used to work as a nurse at a hospital in San Francisco. After witnessing a co-worker commit suicide, Sally suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and was unable to continue working. Eventually, she became homeless, and while she was living on the streets, she saw a stabbing, which worsened her PTSD.

By the time she met Esguerra, Sally felt hopeless. She worried about the prospect of finding a new job in her 50’s. Esguerra recalls her saying, “I’m back to square one.” Esguerra helped Sally find mental health care, food stamps, and job training. Henry took Sally under his wing, too. He helped her navigate the community resources that Esguerra had put in place and reassured her that he understood what she was going through.

Today, Sally lives in subsidized housing, and she is working again. She still visits Esguerra and the HASA outreach workers at the library. “This team became my family,” says Sally. “At one time, the library was my home.”

Esguerra says that the program dismantles stereotypes about homelessness. Over the years, she's helped former restaurant owners, medical professionals, and senior citizens find housing and she's connected close to 1,000 people with community resources such as legal services and medical and mental health care. The program is so successful that this year it will expand to other library branches in the city.

The program also began a national trend. Today, twenty-four public libraries in the country have followed in San Francisco's footsteps. The Dallas Public Library implemented a peer-counseling model, and the Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Arizona hired a nurse to provide medical care for the homeless population.

In the end, these social service programs serve as a bridge, helping the homeless patrons find a sense of community at the library so that they can receive other essential resources, too.
“These programs are humanizing homelessness throughout the library,” says Esguerra. “The library becomes a sanctuary for many of the patrons and our program helps them to feel safe again.”

Source: The Atlantic CITYLAB

The Delicate Task Of Restoring One Of The World's Oldest Libraries

By Leila Fadel
May 21, 2016

The curator of the Qarawiyyin Library, Abdelfattah Bougchouf, opens an original version of a famous work, Muqaddimah, written by historian Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century. The library in Fez is one of the world's oldest working libraries, dating to the 10th century when it was founded by a pioneering woman. The library is set to reopen in May following a renovation.

Samia Errazouki/AP 

 

 The copper craft makers in Seffarin Square in the historic district of Fez, Morocco, bang out designs on platters and shape copper pots to a rhythm.

Called the medina, neighborhood streets lined with domes and archways take you back through the history of the dynasties and occupiers that ruled Morocco from the 9^th century on. At the center of the square is the Qarawiyyin Library, founded more than a millennium ago.

We've heard much recently about the destruction of grand historical sites in places like Syria and Iraq, where war and ISIS wreak havoc on the present and the past. But this library has been lovingly restored to protect ancient manuscripts by some of the greatest Islamic thinkers.

It's part of what the United Nations calls the oldest operating educational institute in the world. The complex started as a mosque in the 9^th century and expanded to include a university and library in the 10^th century. It's defined by beautiful courtyards centered around fountains.

Inside the library are ornately carved wooden window frames and archways, colorful ceramic tile designs on the floors and elegant Arabic calligraphy engraved in the walls. The high ceilings in the reading room are adorned with gold chandeliers.

 The reading room of the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez is part of a four-year restoration project.

Samia Errazouki/AP 

  

"There is a big restoration because there was a need for the building and the manuscripts to be preserved," said Abdullah al-Henda, part of the restoration team that's been working on the restoration since 2012. "There were problems of infiltration, of sewage, degradation of walls, some cracks in different places in the library."

The library holds some 4,000 manuscripts: Qurans that date back to the 9^th century, the earliest collection of Islamic hadiths — the words and actions of Islam's prophet Mohammed — and an original copy of the great Muslim thinker and historian Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah.

And Henda points out the library connected the east and the west.

"It was a bridge of knowledge of researchers, between Africa and between the Middle East and Europe," he said.

 

One of the oldest works in one of the world's oldest libraries is a 9th century Quran written on leather with kufic calligraphy, at the Qarawiyyin Library, in Fez, Morocco.

Samia Errazouki/AP 

 

When the library opened, it created a space for non-Muslims and Muslims to exchange ideas. In the 10^th century, Pope Sylvester II, known as a prolific scholar, was one of the visitors. 

 

And notably it was all made possible because of a woman, Fatima al-Fihri. She was the pious daughter of a wealthy merchant who provided the money to found the mosque, the university and the library.

That doesn't surprise Henda.

"Ladies are half of society," he said. "She was descended from a rich family, she has the capacity, she has the ability, the money to do it and the will."

It's a small reminder of the importance of women in the history of Islam. And it's echoed in the fact that a Canadian-Moroccan woman, architect Aziza Chaouni, led the restoration.

Now the library has a new gutter system and solar panels. Air conditioner units are tucked behind wooden carvings that match the aesthetic. And finally, the delicate manuscripts are protected in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room with a modern security system.

Henda says the library, which will reopen officially in May, is more than just a building.

"We have to preserve it. We have to restore it because it's our identity," he said. "It's our archives. It's our memory."

Source: npr

$15.5-million expansion, public rooftop garden planned for Vancouver Public Library

By Kenneth Chan

May 10, 2016

 

 

 Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Vancouver’s Central Library at Library Square is gearing up for a significant two-level expansion to create new reading and community spaces, including a unique public rooftop garden.

The top two floors of the Vancouver Public Library’s (VPL) Coliseum-inspired hub are currently used as office spaces for the provincial government, but that will soon change to become a 40,000-square-foot addition of the library’s useable floor area.

On level eight, there will be a 77-seat fixed-seat auditorium, art and cultural exhibition spaces, community meeting rooms, and large quiet reading room on level eight, which will be a first for the building.

 “It has been one of the most requested spaces in this library since we opened,” Sandra Singh, Chief Librarian of VPL, told Vancity Buzz. “People come in and they want to know where the quiet space is, which is kind of ironic. We actually don’t have a reading room in this library, so we’re very excited to be able to provide an inspiring space like that for the community.”

Two large outdoor terraces on the north and south side on the same level will be areas where people can eat their lunch. When the space opens to the public, there will be some food vending services in the area but it will be short of becoming a complete cafe service.

Further up on the rooftop level, a new 8,000-square-foot public garden is intended to become an individual and contemplative area where people can read a book, do some work, or find a quiet retreat from the busy city below. There are plans to have programmed events on this rooftop space, such as lectures, workshops, learning events, and community meetings.

In addition to the outdoor space found on the rooftop, there will also be approximately 8,000 square feet of indoor area next to the garden, which includes the lobby entry area, meeting rooms, and other public areas.

Singh says VPL is working with world-renowned Safdie Architects and locally-based DA Architects, the original designers of the project in the early-1990s. For the garden’s landscaping, they have contracted landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander who designed the building’s original green roof.

This project on the top two floors of the building is now possible as the provincial government’s 20-year lease, in exchange for its $8.4-million contribution towards the cost of building the new library in 1995, has come to an end. These floors were always intended to be expansion floors for the library, however, the office tower on the northeast corner of the complex will remain as a federal office building as part of the federal government’s $7-million commitment and lease-purchase deal for the tower.

Designs for the expansion will be finalized this year so that construction can begin in early-2017 for an opening in spring 2018. The cost to renovate both levels has been pegged at $15.5 million, with $9 million coming from the City of Vancouver and the remaining to be raised by the Vancouver Public Library Foundation.

Future improvement projects still a few years away include turning level seven into the new home of the City of Vancouver Archives. Currently, the Archives are located in the same Vanier Park building that houses the Vancouver Museum and H.R. MacMillan Space Centre.

Singh also noted that the basement-level children’s library is often at capacity and staff are looking at ways to expand and update that level. Since the library was built, the downtown population has soared and that includes many families with young children.

“When this library was built in 1995, nobody imagined the extraordinary number of families that would be living in the downtown area,” she said. “This has become not just the Central Library to them but also their local neighbourhood library.”

There have been many technological changes during the same period of time, and the library has acknowledged that it needs to adapt to how people today engage with knowledge, how they share it, and how they consume it.

Singh says this is an ongoing process. For instance in 2015, VPL opened a $600,000, 7,500-square-foot Inspiration Lab for the public to use. Located on the third level, the digital space consists of four sound booths with audio mixing and recording equipment, a recording room with a green screen and video recording equipment, analog-to-digital conversion equipment for video and sound, flatbed scanning stations for photos and negatives, and a dozen high-performance desktop computers with professional editing software.

VPL has plans to make additional updates to the second and third floor technological spaces.

 Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

 

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Image: Vancouver Public Library / Vancity Buzz composite photo

Source: VANCITYbuzz

A Look Inside Calgary’s Lego Library

Famous authors, superheroes and even Simpsons characters all inhabit this 150 pound, brick-sized library model

By Andrew Guilbert

April 11, 2016

 

A close up of the Lego Library model's front steps.

Photos by Andrew Guilbert

 

Calgary’s much-anticipated New Central Library is still a ways away from being open to the public, but the Calgary Public Library has something that they think will sate your curiosity: a scale mode of the planned library built from Lego bricks, and populated with celebrity minifigs.
It took Ben Stephenson, a professor of computer science at the University of Calgary and an avid Lego builder, around 16 months to complete the building, which consists of around 100,000 individual bricks and weighs 150 pounds. Stephenson, a member of the Southern Alberta Lego User Group, occasionally creates Lego pieces on commission and says this particular piece came with a number of challenges.

“We were limited by the medium, and we were working from concept art rather than architectural drawings,” he says. “One of the challenges with this building is it doesn’t' have right angles, and Lego likes right angles. It’s fastened at the far end and fastened at one point here, and that's it. The actual places where it snaps to the base is only three small points.”

In addition, sourcing parts proved to be a challenge at times. Stephenson scoured Lego stores, ordered directly from the company and used the "Craigslist of Lego" site bricklink.com to buy specific pieces, including one order for the more than 800 plastic windows used in the construction of the set.

The eight-foot-long model’s tiny yellow population clocks in at around 330 minifigs and includes members of the Simpsons, the Lego Movie, Wonder Woman and even mayor Naheed Nenshi. It recently welcomed a new addition when a hand-painted figure of Yann Martel, the author famous for his book The Life of Pi, was added to the collection. Martel, who was in town promoting his latest novel, was presented with the figure and placed it himself on the front steps of the building.

Far from just a fancy toy, the library, which consists of around $10,000 in bricks, is seen as a cultivation expense, says Paul McIntyre Royston, president and CEO of the Calgary Public Library Foundation. “The library is about community, so we always try to do things that are a little bit different, a little more enticing, to get people excited about the work we're doing,” says McIntyre Royston. “You see the kids and you see the adults [who stop to look]. Yann Martel almost had tears in his eyes. It does something. It's a toy, but it's more than that. That's what we wanted to achieve.”

 You can see the Lego library at the Central Library until 2018, when it will be moved into the $245-million New Central Library in the East Village, where it will remain until, as McIntyre Royston says, “We’ll have a big celebration and let the kids tear into it and build their own thing.” In the meantime, expect the mini-library to welcome a few more minifigs of famous people, says McIntyre Royston, though he won't say who might be next.

If you’d like to bring  a little piece of the Lego library home with you, the Library sells two different custom-designed Library Lego sets (as well as a Nenshi minifig) at librarystore.ca.

 

 

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

Ben Stephenson, left, and Paul McIntyre Royston, right, stand next to their eight-foot-long Lego model.

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

The Yann Martel minifig stands on the steps of the library, book in hand. Bart and Lisa Simpson are just to his left and clearly in awe of the author.

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

A look at the inside of the Library's second floor, which might serve as a quiet study area.

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

The library includes two model LRTs running through its base.

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

A dutiful search of the 880 windows in the library will reveal a number of famous faces including Calgary's own Naheed Nenshi complete with hand-painted, purple-accented suit.

Photo by Andrew Guilbert

A completed model of the larger New Central Library kit available for purchase from librarystore.ca

Source: avenue

The Toronto Star: Libraries feel the eBook pinch

By Verity Stevenson
May 24, 2016

The book worm has turned.

Local libraries are making noise about eBook prices, saying that they pay multinational publishers up to five times more than average consumers do for the same titles.

Toronto Public Library's city librarian, Vickery Bowles,
says the current rate for ebooks isn’t sustainable for
public institutions.  (Melissa Renwick / Toronto Star)

And libraries — including ones in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver — say they’d like things to change, so that they can pay according to their size and needs, rather than using the current one-size-fits-all model.

That model is part of what’s causing higher prices for them, says to Kate Edwards, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

“They’re not tailored to the Canadian market,” Edwards said of the way international publishers evaluate libraries’ reach and determine prices. Many publishers also charge in U.S. dollars, which adds to the cost for Canadian branches.

Last summer, four Canadian public libraries began pushing for change; since then, their group, Canadian Public Libraries for Fair Book Pricing, has grown to include 29 systems. Libraries say demand for their eBooks has grown 1,200 per cent since 2009, and meeting that is denting their budgets.

In February, the group outlined its demands in an open letter to the “Big Five” publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Random House and Simon & Schuster.

They have a meeting scheduled with Simon & Schuster this month as a result, said Toronto Public Library city librarian Vickery Bowles. And one major publisher, Penguin Random House, has agreed to offer better prices for its digital books

Libraries say the eBook prices they face are 1.5 to five times what consumers pay, and have not been adjusted to take the drop in the Canadian dollar into account (apart from the recent changes by Penguin Random House). They say charges from Canadian publishers, with whom they meet regularly, are not a problem.

In the case of a James Patterson crime book, the library groups says, average readers pay $14.99, while a library pays $121 per copy (which would be read by multiple patrons). And some publishers’ eBooks expire after a year, so libraries must repurchase the stock.

For print books, “we’ll pay $18 to $25,” said Bowles of the Toronto library. “There’s no premium; in fact, we get volume discounts.”

Why the high prices? “My understanding is that publishers are concerned that borrowing an eBook is so much easier,” said Bowles, adding that she understands why there would be a premium, but the current rate isn’t sustainable for public institutions.

HarperCollins Canada says the prices they offer libraries are already similar to what the group is asking for — except for the expiry it’s placed on eBooks after 26 consecutive lends, determined by the publisher to be the average uses a physical library book gets before breaking or becoming unpopular.

“HarperCollins is committed to the library channel and has a model that supports library purchasing . . . . Our model is designed to be cost-effective for libraries and based on actual usage,” the publisher said in an emailed statement.

Though the library group has reached out to government agencies, including the Competition Bureau and minister of Canadian heritage, “they aren’t suggesting what the legislative tools are to help with that,” Bowles said.

It’s unclear which government department could create policy surrounding the public purchasing of eBooks. Ottawa councillor and chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Tim Tierney says regulation could come from the Copyright Act. It “dictates who can use something without being sued, in a nutshell,” Tierney said, adding that the act was amended in 2012 so that schools don’t have to pay to play films and music in their classrooms.

“We’re not asking for free, but we’re asking for fair,” he says.

Source: The Toronto Star

Nautli.us: How Big Data Creates False Confidence

By Jesse Dunietz

April 23, 2016

If I claimed that Americans have gotten more self-centered lately, you might just chalk me up as a curmudgeon, prone to good-ol’-days whining. But what if I said I could back that claim up by analyzing 150 billion words of text? A few decades ago, evidence on such a scale was a pipe dream. Today, though, 150 billion data points is practically passé. A feverish push for “big data” analysis has swept through biology, linguistics, finance, and every field in between.

Although no one can quite agree how to define it, the general idea is to find datasets so enormous that they can reveal patterns invisible to conventional inquiry. The data are often generated by millions of real-world user actions, such as tweets or credit-card purchases, and they can take thousands of computers to collect, store, and analyze. To many companies and researchers, though, the investment is worth it because the patterns can unlock information about anything from genetic disorders to tomorrow’s stock prices.

But there’s a problem: It’s tempting to think that with such an incredible volume of data behind them, studies relying on big data couldn’t be wrong. But the bigness of the data can imbue the results with a false sense of certainty. Many of them are probably bogus—and the reasons why should give us pause about any research that blindly trusts big data.

In the case of language and culture, big data showed up in a big way in 2011, when Google released its Ngrams tool. Announced with fanfare in the journal Science, Google Ngrams allowed users to search for short phrases in Google’s database of scanned books—about 4 percent of all books ever published!—and see how the frequency of those phrases has shifted over time. The paper’s authors heralded the advent of “culturomics,” the study of culture based on reams of data and, since then, Google Ngrams has been, well, largely an endless source of entertainment—but also a goldmine for linguists, psychologists, and sociologists. They’ve scoured its millions of books to show that, for instance, yes, Americans are becoming more individualistic; that we’re “forgetting our past faster with each passing year”; and that moral ideals are disappearing from our cultural consciousness.

WE’RE LOSING HOPE: An Ngrams chart for the word “hope,” one of many intriguing plots found by

 xkcd author Randall Munroe. If Ngrams really does reflect our culture, we may be headed for a dark place.

The problems start with the way the Ngrams corpus was constructed. In a study published last October, three University of Vermont researchers pointed out that, in general, Google Books includes one copy of every book. This makes perfect sense for its original purpose: to expose the contents of those books to Google’s powerful search technology. From the angle of sociological research, though, it makes the corpus dangerously skewed.

Some books, for example, end up punching below their true cultural weight: The Lord of the Rings gets no more influence than, say, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. Conversely, some authors become larger than life. From the data on English fiction, for example, you might conclude that for 20 years in the 1900s, every character and his brother was named Lanny. In fact, the data reflect how immensely prolific (but not necessarily popular) the author Upton Sinclair was: He churned out 11 novels about one Lanny Budd.

WHO’S NAMED LANNY?: A Google Ngrams plot of “Lanny” vs. more common names in English fiction.

Still more damning is the fact that Ngrams isn’t a consistent, well-balanced slice of what was being published. The same UVM study demonstrated that, among other changes in composition, there’s a marked increase in scientific articles starting in the 1960s. All this makes it hard to trust that Google Ngrams accurately reflects the shifts over time in words’ cultural popularity.

GO FIGURE: “Figure” with a capital F, used mainly in captions, rose sharply in frequency through 
the 20th Century, suggesting that the corpus includes more technical literature over time. 
That may say something about society, but not much about how most of society uses words.

Even once you get past the data sources, there’s still the thorny issue of interpretation. Sure, words like “character” and “dignity” might decline over the decades. But does that mean that people care about morality less? Not so fast, cautions Ted Underwood, an English professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Conceptions of morality at the turn of the last century likely differed sharply from ours, he argues, and “dignity” might have been popular for non-moral reasons. So any conclusions we draw by projecting current associations backward are suspect.

Of course, none of this is news to statisticians and linguists. Data and interpretation are their bread and butter. What’s different about Google Ngrams, though, is the temptation to let the sheer volume of data blind us to the ways we can be misled.

This temptation isn’t unique to Ngrams studies; similar errors undermine all sorts of big data projects. Consider, for instance, the case of Google Flu Trends (GFT). Released in 2008, GFT would count words like “fever” and “cough” in millions of Google search queries, using them to “nowcast” how many people had the flu. With those estimates, public health officials could act two weeks before the Centers for Disease Control could calculate the true numbers from doctors’ reports.

When big data isn’t seen as a panacea, it can be transformative.

Initially, GFT was claimed to be 97 percent accurate. But as a study out of Northeastern University documents, that accuracy was a fluke. First, GFT completely missed the “swine flu” pandemic in the spring and summer of 2009. (It turned out that GFT was largely predicting winter.) Then, the system began to overestimate flu cases. In fact, it overshot the peak 2013 numbers by a whopping 140 percent. Eventually, Google just retired the program altogether.

So what went wrong? As with Ngrams, people didn’t carefully consider the sources and interpretation of their data. The data source, Google searches, was not a static beast. When Google started auto-completing queries, users started just accepting the suggested keywords, distorting the searches GFT saw. On the interpretation side, GFT’s engineers initially let GFT take the data at face value; almost any search term was treated as a potential flu indicator. With millions of search terms, GFT was practically guaranteed to over-interpret seasonal words like “snow” as evidence of flu.

But when big data isn’t seen as a panacea, it can be transformative. Several groups, like Columbia University researcher Jeffrey Shaman’s, for example, have outperformed the flu predictions of both the CDC and GFT by using the former to compensate for the skew of the latter. “Shaman’s team tested their model against actual flu activity that had already occurred during the season,” according to the CDC. By taking the immediate past into consideration, Shaman and his team fine-tuned their mathematical model to better predict the future. All it takes is for teams to critically assess their assumptions about their data.

Lest I sound like a Google-hater, I hasten to add that the company is far from the only culprit. My wife, an economist, used to work for a company that scraped the entire Internet for job postings and aggregate them into statistics for state labor agencies. The company’s managers boasted that they analyzed 80 percent of the jobs in the country, but once again, the quantity of data blinded them to the ways it could be misread. A local Walmart, for example, might post one sales associate job when it actually wants to fill ten, or it might leave a posting up for weeks after it was filled.

So rather than succumb to “big data hubris,” the rest of us would do well to keep our skeptic hats on—even when someone points to billions of words.

Jesse Dunietz, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, has written for Motherboard and Scientific American Guest Blogs, among others. Follow him on Twitter @jdunietz.

Source: Nautil.us

OpenShelf.ca: The Trouble with Twee

[Little free libraries are always appearing in the news and even the LG Blog has had an entry or two (or more) on them. Jane Schmit, an academic librarian at Ryerson takes issue with the notion that those little free libraries popping up in neighbourhoods in the GTA are such a great thing...--Transcriber]

By: Jane Schmidt
May 1, 2016

Twee: excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental (Oxford, 2015)

For the past year, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to neighbourhood book exchanges, in particular those branded with the Little Free Library (LFL®) trademark. When I announced that I would be doing this research, I received many links to articles about them each article more like the last.

“Person/group installs book exchange. Usually a brief history of the LFL® organization. Neighbourhood agrees it’s lovely. A blurb about building community and encouraging literacy.”

And that’s about it. The narrative is maddeningly homogeneous (some notable exceptions; see the Reading List below) and almost unfailingly obsequious – a sure sign that a critical eye is needed. Here’s where I come in.

I always like to begin with the assurance that I have no issue with neighbours sharing books with each other. I recognize that I am positioning myself to be viewed as a librarian toting a bag of sour grapes when I openly critique the movement. But hey, I’m an academic librarian, it’s sort of my job to think critically about our industry. I’m ready to accept the ramifications of being the Librarian Who Hates Little Free Libraries®.

Let’s roll.

To begin, we need to ask two questions – what are neighbourhood book exchanges not doing, and what are the potential unintended consequences of their existence?

The first question is one that is best imposed specifically upon the LFL® movement. The most glaring answer is simply that they are not libraries. While we (libraries) are not able to dictate the use of the term, it is nevertheless a bit cringe worthy to see the word used alongside the ® symbol and the word “free” slapped on a box of second hand books. Their mission, goals and key strategies speak to promoting literacy and a love of reading through building LFL®s worldwide. That’s it. If you build it, they will come. Books of varying quality and quantity will be there. Happy reading, folks! World made better – ✓

In terms of unbranded book exchanges, all are not created equal. Chances are, you’ve seen dozens of “take a book/leave a book” installations in your own lifetime – the concept is certainly not new. In this world of Pinterest and Instagram, however, the twee factor gets attention. In a sea of miniature houses and dusty shelves in hostels, some stand apart from the rest. There are those such as the Public Collection by the Indianapolis Public Library which bills itself as a public art and literacy project. These book exchanges are conceived, executed and managed by the library, this project stands out as an extension of the public library.

As a steward of my own book exchange (in the interest of getting up close and personal with my research project, I decided to take a phenomenological approach and purchased an LFL® for my front yard), I can attest to the need to maintain the collection. While one may not have to be a card-carrying librarian to do this work, it most certainly requires a not-insignificant amount of effort and resources to ensure it is well stocked, tidy and weeded occasionally (i.e. culling the mouldy bodice-rippers and old textbooks). Sometimes, one person’s trash is really just another person’s trash. As any library worker can attest, not all books are treasures.

Much of the chatter among stewards and the content of many articles about running a neighbourhood book exchange focuses on how to make the exchange attractive, popular and well stocked. Reading through this dialogue with a critical eye leads one to a relatively obvious conclusion – something that is considered to be so important and takes this much work should be handled by … oh, I don’t know … an actual library?

Investing in LFL® v. a public library is an investment in a trendy whim rather than an investment in long established institution that is beholden to funders to deliver effective programming. If one truly cares about equality and accessible content for all in support of literacy, one could concede that while this movement may not be hurting, it isn’t exactly advancing it in a measurable way.

What if I told you that, in fact, these well intentioned exchanges could conceivably be hurting public libraries?

It is helpful to turn toward what is known as civic crowdfunding here to explore the second question – “what are the potential unintended consequences of their existence?” Absolving government of their responsibility to fund societal needs by volunteering to do it yourself is not A Good Thing. All one needs to do is look to Barnet in England to see the very real consequences of what happens when government responsibility is shifted to the public.

Thanks to a local council member taking inspiration from the discount airline EasyJet (not a joke – the initiative has been dubbed EasyCouncil), the One Barnet initiative means that local government offers no-frill basic services and a shift of 790 full time jobs moved to the private sector to run “extra” services (such as planning and environmental services). Other services have been posted to the website Pledgebank where citizens can volunteer to clear snow and ice from streets or even offer a computer class. What this has meant for libraries is a proposed 46% staff cut – libraries remain open, but run by volunteers, or are simply left unstaffed. This is actually happening. Ergo, when an ever-growing organization that appears to be very well organized and resourced, and succeeds through the labour of good-hearted volunteers suggest that they can end “book-deserts” and support literacy in their communities, cash-strapped governments are likely to take a second look. Hence … my concern.

An analysis of urban public library revenue from 2010-2013 (CULC KPIs) revealed funding is either decreasing or holding steady. The vast majority of revenue comes from municipal sources. According to the 2016 Canadian Infrastructure Report Card, one third of our infrastructure is in fair, poor or very poor condition. Over 60% of the country’s total infrastructure is owned and maintained by municipal governments. Couple those facts with Canada’s uncertain economic forecast, and it’s not a stretch to imagine many local governments looking to drastic measures as they struggle to keep afloat in the coming years.

Strong public libraries help build strong communities. They provide space for learning, gathering, making, reading, and so much more. From infancy to the golden years, people from all walks of life can use the library for everything from looking for a job, to seeking the services of a social worker or just a quiet place to read a magazine. This place cannot be matched by a box of books. They may not all be as aesthetically pleasing or as media friendly as a neighbourhood book exchange, but their novelty never wears off.

There will always be surplus second hand books to go around, but we cannot take for granted that the funding will always be in place to ensure public libraries grow to meet the ever-increasing demands on them. Let us not be distracted by things that are shiny; let us encourage our neighbours to support the public library. There is clearly a lot of energy, goodwill and passion for literacy out there. The trick is to harness it and strengthen the connection to public libraries. The potential is enormous.

I challenge public libraries to reach out to local neighbourhood book exchanges to see how they can be involved. I challenge stewards of book exchanges to consider how they can best support their own public library. Most of all, I encourage Little Free Libraries®, stewards-to-be and other organizations interested in sponsoring a neighbourhood book exchange to consider how they are addressing the issue they are passionate about.

Do you really just want to share your old books and meet your neighbours? That’s fine – start a book exchange, but please don’t call it a library. Are you a teacher and want to use it as a class project? Fabulous idea, but please ensure advocacy for the public library is part of that learning module. Do you really want to ensure that there is equitable access to reading material and support literacy in your neighbourhood? Maybe your energy is best directed supporting the local public library or grassroots advocacy for universal daycare.

There are many ways to build community – a box of books is one of them, to be sure, but there’s more to the story than appears.

Source: Open-Shelf.ca

USA Today: Book-loving stars on Instagram: They're the new Oprah

By Jocelyn McClurg,

April 25, 2016

The hottest Hollywood accessory of the moment is just the right size to fit snugly in a Hermès Birkin bag or a Céline Luggage tote: a book.

Once upon a time, Oprah Winfrey told America what to read. But 20 years after Oprah launched her wildly successful book club, a new generation of celebrities is using social media to share the books they love and help create best sellers.

Reese Witherspoon, Lena Dunham, Emma Watson, Emma Roberts, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kimberly Williams-Paisley are among the stars who use Instagram and Twitter to blast “book selfies” — cellphone snaps of the (usually physical) books they’re reading — accompanied by their own enthusiastic mini-reviews. (“#OpeningBelle is a smart, biting and honest peek into what it means to be a woman on Wall Street,” Witherspoon recently raved under the hashtag #RWBookClub.)

Witherspoon is the undisputed queen of the celebrity bookworm trend, but she’s not alone.

► The actress, who earned an Oscar nomination for her starring role in the film version of Cheryl Strayed’s hit memoir Wild, has plugged books including Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling, Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Other Witherspoon recommendations, including Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty and Opening Belle by Maureen Sherry, are books she’s so wild about that she has acquired them for film or TV for her production company, Pacific Standard.

►Girls star Dunham, 29, who wrote her own best seller, Not That Kind of Girl, makes reading suggestions every “Lit Thursday” on Lenny, her online newsletter and website for young women. Lenny has become such a force that publishing giant Random House just signed Dunham and Girls executive producer Jenni Konner to create a book imprint called Lenny.

►Watson, better known as Hermione Granger of Harry Potter fame, launched a feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf, in January through the Goodreads website. The 26-year-old’s first pick was My Life on the Road by 82-year-old feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

Actress Emma Watson has launched an online book club

Why are stars who might otherwise covet their privacy hopping aboard the “sharing” train when it comes to books?

“I’ve been a reader for years. I’ve always loved book clubs; I’ve always loved sharing books and talking about books, going into bookstores and browsing. And to me, doing it online is just a bigger way to do that,” says Williams-Paisley, 44, calling from the road where she’s promoting her new memoir, Where the Light Gets In: Losing My Mother Only to Find Her Again, about her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.

The online culture, she says, is “a great way to connect with fans” and fellow book lovers.

“I love the comments from people that I get when I’ve posted about a book, and then I love the recommendations that say, ‘Oh, if you liked this one then you’ve got to try these five,’” says the actress, who has posted her love for such titles as Euphoria by Lily King and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.

Williams-Paisley also follows what other stars are reading, including Witherspoon (“I love Reese"), and says, “I’ve read Emma Watson’s recommendations, too.” And she likes posting about children’s literature because “I love reading to my children.” (She has two sons, ages 9 and 7, with her husband, country star Brad Paisley.)

Celebrities who share what's on their reading list usually do so in an informal manner that creates an intimate online conversation. “What are y’all reading??” Southerner Reese will often ask, to a barrage of fan responses.

For authors who are beneficiaries of star tweets, it’s a whole new level of attention, and often sales.

Reese Witherspoon is  big fan of the novel 'Big Little

“A celebrity endorsement is a wondrous thing for any author struggling to get the word out about their work,” says Moriarty, author of the USA TODAY best sellers The Husband’s Secret and Big Little Lies.

Witherspoon, 40, first posted a photo of Big Little Lies in August 2014, just a few days after the hardcover publication, and now she’s co-starring in and co-producing (with Nicole Kidman) an HBO adaptation of the darkly comic novel about kindergarten moms and a possible murder.

“I've been hugely grateful for all the times Reese has mentioned Big Little Lies on social media,” Moriarty says. “I'm not much good at social media myself, so it's fantastic to have someone with Reese’s celebrity status mentioning the book to her legions of fans.”

Witherspoon also gave a boost last year to Luckiest Girl Alive when she posted about Jessica Knoll’s debut thriller (a “non-stop nail-biting crazy train”) and mentioned she had acquired film rights.

Richard Rhorer, associate publisher of Simon & Schuster, says buzz already was building for the book, but “when Reese posted on Instagram, it just took (pre-orders on Amazon) into the stratosphere. For a debut novel from someone that no one had really heard of yet, that’s kind of remarkable.” Luckiest Girl Alive landed at an impressive No. 12 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list on May 21, 2015, and has sold more than 450,000 copies.

The novel, about a glamorous magazine writer hiding secrets from her past, returned to the spotlight last month, when Knoll wrote an essay for the Lenny letter revealing that the gang rape in the novel was drawn from her own experience. The newsletter piece was timed to Knoll’s book tour for the paperback edition and the inevitable questions she knew she would face at events. Luckiest Girl Alive returned to USA TODAY’s top 50 after the essay appeared.

Lena Dunham gets her own publishing imprint,Lenny

It demonstrated Lenny’s reach, and just a few weeks ago, Random House announced the launch of the Lenny book imprint for late 2017. The Lenny newsletter, says Random House editor in chief Andy Ward, “is attracting all kinds of exciting new voices,” and the book imprint aims to do the same in a “bigger format,” mostly with female writers. Dunham, he says, “is committed to quality.”

Of course not all books that stars rave about become best sellers, although publishers love it when their titles are “discovered” by famous names.

Television producer Jennifer Konner, left, and 'Girls'

Television producer Jennifer Konner, left, and 'Girls' star Lena Dunham are teaming up on a book imprint. (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris)

These celebrities, and they’re mainly women, are helping fill a gap left by Winfrey, who under her 2.0 club recommends far fewer books than her original club did, when she had a talk show and a huge audience.

“Social media is more diffuse,” says Simon & Schuster’s Rhorer. “With Oprah, you had millions of people tuning in on a particular day of the week and a particular hour of the day, and when she would say ‘Go buy Wally Lamb’s new book,’ you had all those millions of people reacting in the same moment. But with somebody who has as large a following as Reese Witherspoon, the impact can be significant.

"And it’s great.”

Source: USA Today

The Guardian: Books are back. Only the technodazzled thought they would go away

The hysterical cheerleaders of the e-book failed to account for human experience, and publishers blindly followed suit. But the novelty has worn off

Waterstones switched shelf-space to books and saw
a five percent rise in sales. Photograph: Alamy.

By Simon Jenkins
May 13, 2016

At last. Peak digital is at hand. The ultimate disruptor of the new information age is … wait for it … the book.

Shrewd observers noted the early signs. Kindle sales initially outstripped hardbacks but have slid fast since 2011. Sony killed off its e-readers. Waterstones last year stopped selling Kindles and e-books outside the UK, switched shelf space to books and saw a 5% rise in sales.

Amazon has opened its first bookshop.

Now the official Publishers’ Association confirms the trend. Last year digital content sales fell last year from £563m to £554m. After years on a plateau, physical book sales turned up, from £2.74bn to £2.76bn.

They have been boosted by the marketing of colouring and lifestyle titles, but there is always a reason. The truth is that digital readers were never remotely in the same ballpark. The PA regards the evidence as unmistakable, “Readers take a pleasure in a physical book that does not translate well on to digital.” Virtual books, like virtual holidays or virtual relationships, are not real. People want a break from another damned screen.

What went wrong? Clearly publishing, like other industries before (and since), suffered a bad attack of technodazzle: It failed to distinguish between newness and value. It could read digital’s hysterical cheerleaders, but not predict how a market of human beings would respond to a product once the novelty had passed. It ignored human nature. Reading the meaning of words is not consuming a manufacture: it is experience.

As so often, the market leader was the music business. Already, by the turn of the 21st century, its revenues were shifting dramatically from reproduction to live. This was partly because recording and distributing music became so cheap there was no profit margin, but it was largely because the market had changed. Buyers, young and old, wanted to witness music played in the company of like minds, and were prepared to pay for the experience – often to pay lots. Soon the same was true for live sport, live theatre, even live talks. The festival has become king. The money is back at the gate.

Books must be the ultimate test. Admittedly some festivals now give away books for free and charge instead to hear the writers speak.

But just buying, handling, giving and talking about a book seems to have caught the magic dust of “experience”. A book is beauty. A book is a shelf, a wall, a home.

The book was declared dead with the coming of radio. The hardback was dead with the coming of paperbacks. Print-on-paper was buried fathoms deep by the great god, digital. It was rubbish, all rubbish. Like other aids to reading, such as rotary presses, Linotyping and computer-setting, digital had brought innovation to the dissemination of knowledge and delight. But it was a means, not an end.

Since the days of Caxton and Gutenberg, print-on-paper has shown astonishing longevity. The old bruisers have seen off another challenge.

Source: The Gaurdian

GoodEreader: US Libraries on pace for a record year of e-book checkouts

By Michael Kozlowski
April 6, 2016

Overdrive is reporting that public libraries digital catalogs are on pace for another record-breaking year for lending digital titles. Based on activities of top circulating public libraries, eBook, audiobook and digital magazine checkouts are on track to grow 30-40 percent for 2016 over the record levels achieved for 2015.

Trends and best practices that emerged from aggregated eBook and audiobook borrowing patterns of millions of readers’ hundreds of millions of sessions include:

1. With a 30 percent increase in children’s digital books borrowed (Q1 2016 vs. Q1 2015), younger readers are increasingly embracing public library children’s and YA eBook collections. This is due to:

• Significant growth of catalogs of enhanced eBooks featuring rich graphics, synchronized narrated audio with highlighted text (Read-Alongs), and the addition of thousands of comics and graphic novels. OverDrive offers the largest collection of EPUB3 and HTML5 eBooks for library lending; and,

• Librarian-curated Kid’s & Teen’s eReading Rooms that create a safe, age-appropriate online reading destination for parents, teachers, and young readers to bookmark and visit often.

2. Access to multiple eBook and audiobook lending models are enabling libraries to leverage content to maximize the number of readers served.

• Traditional Book Clubs have become extremely popular in the United States and now digital Book Clubs are starting to grow. Libraries are increasingly using their OverDrive platform to host and promote “eBook Reading Clubs” enabling dozens of “city read” or “one-book, one community” programs. For example, this month the entire city of London is reading Ten Days as part of CityRead London.

• Growing catalogs of simultaneous access titles for audiobooks, education, and nonfiction genres, including travel, enable “always available” collections to provide all readers with ready-to-borrow options.

• Libraries are benefiting from One Copy, One User model for popular and evergreen titles that amortize the cost of titles across multiple years of circulation.

3. Self-published, indie authors, and non-English materials on the rise.

• With authors such as Vi Keeland, Penelope Ward, Deborah Bladon, and Tijan seeing their indie books reach theNew York Times digital bestseller list, independent author titles are growing at a 20 percent rate, and self-published eBooks are growing even more quickly – with 40 percent more titles being borrowed (Q1 2016 vs. Q1 2015).

• Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French, and other non-English readers are discovering the growing eBook and audiobook catalogs now available from OverDrive in their communities.

As digital circulation continues to soar, librarians are requesting more data to maximize their digital collection and development practices. OverDrive has developed tools such as OverDrive Insights, Data Reports and Smart Lists to help libraries serve entire communities and enhance the user experience. OverDrive Insights provides librarians real-time analytics on their collections and more reference points to manage budget and boost circulation.  Smart Lists help insure must-have titles are automatically flagged for considerations under multiple criteria.

“This spike in library lending of eBooks, audiobooks, and streaming video is the result of the tremendous efforts of thousands of librarians, as well as significant ease-of-use improvements including seamless integration with library catalogs,” said Shannon Lichty, OverDrive’s Director of Partner Services. “We’re also seeing the effects of new access models publishers are offering through OverDrive, which have increased availability for readers.”

Source: GoodEreader

Los Angelas Times: When you buy digital content on Amazon or iTunes, you don't exactly own it

In 2009, Amazon electronically erased George Orwell's "1984"
and "Animal Farm" from people's Kindle e-readers because of
a copyright dispute. (Kathy Willens / Associated Press)

By David Lazarus
May 13, 2016

Buy an e-book on Amazon or an album on Apple's iTunes and you own it, right?

Maybe not as much as you think.

It's all about what the tech industry calls digital rights management, and the bottom line for consumers is that there are significant differences between owning a tangible product and owning its electronic equivalent.

A study to be released Friday by researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and UC Berkeley finds that "a sizable percentage of consumers" have no clue about what they're really purchasing when they "buy" digital content.

"They mistakenly believe they can keep those goods permanently, lend them to friends and family, give them as gifts, leave them in their wills, resell them and use them on their device of choice," it says.

In other words, they think buying something means buying something. But in the magical land of digital content, ownership is relative.

"The reality is that for many digital transactions, there are restrictions on activities you might think come with ownership," said Aaron Perzanowski, a Case Western Reserve University law professor and co-author of the study.

"No one comes to your door and demands that you give back a book. But in the digital world, they can just go into your Kindle and take it."
— Aaron Perzanowski, Case Western Reserve University law professor

He told me consumers received a wake-up call in 2009 when Amazon electronically erased George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from people's Kindle e-readers because of a copyright dispute. Although Amazon gave refunds for the deleted books and subsequently said it wouldn't pull a stunt like that again, the point was made.

"It showed that things are different when it comes to digital content," Perzanowski said. "This wouldn't happen in the physical world. No one comes to your door and demands that you give back a book. But in the digital world, they can just go into your Kindle and take it."

Yet consumers remain largely unaware of such distinctions.

"When you buy a physical object, you have a bundle of things you can do with it," said Raza Panjwani, policy counsel at Public Knowledge, a digital-rights advocacy group. "You can lend it, you can sell it, you can set it on fire."

And when you die, you can leave your possessions to others. But, asked Panjwani, "Can you leave your Kindle library to someone?"

The answer, he said: "Unclear."

The new study, titled "What We Buy When We Buy Now," found that about 83% of survey respondents believe that when they purchase digital content, they own it just as they own a physical good.

It's a reasonable belief. However, digital content sold on digital platforms comes with different rules - rules that, as Amazon has shown, are uniquely enforceable.

The fine print for Amazon's Kindle Store says that "unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle content." Similarly, the fine print for Amazon Music says "you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use purchased music or Prime Music content."

Apple's iTunes Store has the same restrictions. Its fine print also stipulates, ominously, that "Apple and its licensors reserve the right to change, suspend, remove or disable access to any iTunes products, content or other materials comprising a part of the iTunes service at any time without notice."

Neither Amazon nor Apple responded to my requests for comment.

Of course, there are benefits to obtaining content in digital form. It's often (but not always) cheaper. It's more portable. It's much, much easier to store. Amazon and Apple both offer ways to share content with family members.

The issue, Perzanowski said, isn't whether publishers and tech companies have a right to license and control digital content, or to ensure that copyrights are protected. They have that right.

Rather, the issue is whether all these terms and conditions are being communicated clearly and fairly to consumers. As Perzanowski sees it, they're not.

It's all about the "buy now" button that you have to click on most sites to complete a transaction.

"There's a lot of meaning built into the phrase 'buy now,'" Perzanowski said. "It's not saying 'rent now.' It's not saying 'gain conditional access.' It says 'buy,' and that means something very specific to most consumers -- something that, in the case of digital content, isn't true."

He and the study's co-author, Chris Hoofnagle, an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, propose a simple and, I think, effective remedy.

Rather than a "buy now" button (or "get now" or similar labeling), they say there should be an easy-to-read box making clear what a consumer can and can't do with the digital content being purchased.

For an e-book, say, the box would specify that a buyer could read it on an approved device and keep it subject to the service's terms of use. It also would state that the buyer couldn't lend, give away, resell or read it on an unapproved device.

Above the box would be a button that simply shows the price.

The study found that when consumers are given a plain-language disclosure like this, awareness of their rights -- or lack of rights -- improves significantly. It also found that many consumers would be willing to pay a little extra for the ability to share digital content beyond immediate family members.

"Language like 'buy now' confuses the contexts of offline and online purchasing," Hoofnagle said.

He and Perzanowski said it would be ideal if all interested parties adopted disclosures voluntarily. If that doesn't happen, they said, the next move would be for the Federal Trade Commission to consider a regulation requiring such openness.

The pair already have presented their findings to the FTC. "They were interested," Perzanowski said. An FTC spokesman declined to comment.

I'm not surprised regulators would sit up and take notice. The study concludes that current use of the "buy now" button "constitutes false and deceptive advertising."

That should be a red flag to the digital-content industry.

Source: The Los Angelas Times

Yes!Magazine: The Future of Libraries Is Bigger Than Books

Modern libraries are essential in underserved communities as places where everyone is welcome to gather, work, borrow materials, or just spend time.

By Cat Johnson

April 16, 2016

On the day after Christmas in 2009, Amazon.com released a statement that their Kindle e-reader had become the most gifted item in the company’s history. That holiday season marked an explosion of reading devices into the mainstream and posed a huge challenge for libraries. Now that people had readers, they wanted to borrow ebooks from their local library.

“There are thousands of independent publishers who, without library sales, would not be able to remain in existence.”

“It was a wild time,” says Keith Michael Fiels, executive director of the American Library Association (ALA). “Hundreds of thousands of people got Kindles and showed up at their library ready to borrow ebooks. But the big six publishers [now the big five] weren’t selling ebooks to libraries. There was a lot of anxiety about the potential of this model to disrupt—that a library would buy one copy of an ebook and then circulate it to everyone in the United States.”

In hindsight, the slightly paranoid perspective is amusing. Today, the big five publishers all work with libraries and, for the majority of smaller, independent publishers and the majority of their titles, libraries constitute a majority market.

“We’ve come to a much deeper understanding of how we help each other,” says Fiels. “There are thousands of independent publishers who, without library sales, would not be able to remain in existence. Whereas something like a Harry Potter or a Fifty Shades of Grey may be able to sell a billion dollars worth of books in a year, most of the thousands of publishers and the titles that are published depend on public libraries.”

For libraries, supporting small publishers extends to the community level as they increasingly help individuals share their creative works. User-generated content (UGC) is a growing focus for libraries as tech platforms make self-publishing and alternative distribution easier than ever.

“A library has become more than a place that purchases commercial books from standard publishers,” says Fiels. “Increasingly, a library is a place where people can create content and share it with other community members. Whether it’s a place where people can put old family photos or things related to community history, or their great unpublished novel, this has become a huge area that a lot of libraries are looking at.”

Several years ago, Shareable reported on libraries’ changing role as community hubs offering gathering spaces, digital media labs, community resource centers, and art spaces. That trend has only grown, as makerspaces, incubators for small businesses, and programs to support entrepreneurs and the new workforce are now commonplace in libraries around the world.

Guided by a growing focus on user-centric design, where the people who use a space play a key role in designing the space, libraries are also experimenting with new ways to organize and display collections and reimagine the ALA’s mission to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.

“Increasingly, a library is a place where people can create content and share it with other community members.”

Increasingly, that means helping people to help themselves, whether through a multi-media center that provides access to video and audio recording software, a makerspace with 3D printers and digital design tools, portable wi-fi hotspots, or membership in a toy, tool, or seed library, the idea is to create spaces that provide access to information and resources of all kinds.

“There’s a lot of out of the box thinking about how community members and library users can help design spaces that are more accessible,” says Fiels, “and an understanding that this is something that’s going to evolve on an ongoing basis. What we’re starting to see is a whole generation of libraries that look very different and act very different from traditional libraries.”

A crucial aspect of empowering communities is bridging the digital divide. In the US, 15 percent of the population doesn’t have access to the Internet; another 25 percent doesn’t have access to a computer. Providing access to tech tools is a high-priority for librarians as accessing the Internet is now essential for job searches, employment applications, and applying for many government services. Inside libraries, librarians are there to help people navigate an ever-growing number of online resources, as well as find the most reliable sources of information.

“You’ll run into people who say, ‘Oh, we don’t need libraries because we can just use Google on our handheld,’” says Fiels. “But there are a lot of assumptions underlying that. You need to have an understanding of what you’re navigating, you need to be able to tell an infomercial from real information.”

For a new generation of librarians, the job has evolved.

“We’re starting to see is a whole generation of libraries that look very different and act very different from traditional libraries.”

“One hundred years ago,” says Fiels, “you’d open the doors at 9 o’clock, you’d have books on the shelves, and people would come in. Today’s library doesn’t operate that way. You’re providing 24/7 service, librarians are out talking with community members and hoping to develop new approaches to serving the community.” He adds, “That’s really an exciting development and it makes for a very vibrant institution going forward.”

A next step for libraries is to create a national system where users can access materials from any library in the country. It’s an ambitious notion, but one that the the library leadership is working on.

In many communities, libraries are the great equalizers—places where everyone is welcome to gather, work, borrow materials, or just spend time. Whether it’s bridging the digital divide, providing a quiet work space, incubating entrepreneurial projects, or offering a way for people to check their email, libraries are designed to serve everyone and are essential in underserved communities.

“The key here is that libraries have always been even more useful for people that do not have advantages,” says Fiels. “You’ve got millions of young people that have potential, but don’t have the financial resources to be able to access reading materials or homework help. Lifelong learning through libraries is critical to the whole concept of opportunity in America.”

As libraries evolve to meet the changing needs of communities, they face many of the same challenges that have plagued them for decades. At the top of the list is funding. The fact that many libraries are funded with rounding errors from transportation projects and other big municipal projects, making them a small, budgetary afterthought, points to a need to recognize libraries’ importance and prioritize funding them. The 2015 Survey of Chief Officers of State Library Agencies found that 48 percent of libraries reported increases in the budget for the state library, which inspired a "cautiously positive outlook for the agencies." However, the increases were modest, with 43 percent of the reported gains in the 1-2 percent range.

“As far as the future of libraries, I’m very, very optimistic.”

Funding libraries should be a priority for municipalities as they play an increasingly important role in serving diverse populations and supporting creativity, collaboration, self-improvement, and community cohesiveness. As Fiels says, “I’d love to see a stronger recognition in terms of resources, and, certainly, it’s doable. I’m optimistic because I think there are great opportunities that exist for libraries and the spaces are going to become more and more interesting. We’re seeing a lot of libraries providing leadership in designing new kinds of spaces.”

Another challenge is shaking off the antiquated notion of what a library is. Part of what the ALA does is fight the perception of libraries being places that house dusty old books.

“Anyone who’s been in a good library, or a progressive library, knows that most libraries are fundamentally changing the way in which they relate to communities,” says Fiels. “There’s a lot more community engagement, a lot more openness to the library looking at the aspirations and challenges of the community and the role libraries can play.” He adds, “This really represents a whole repositioning of the library as a community institution.”

The theme of this year’s National Library Week, which runs April 10-16, is “Libraries Transform.” The theme illuminates the important role libraries play in transforming both communities and individuals through access to tech tools, career development resources, skills to thrive in the digital era, and an ethos of collaboration, equity, and community. It also reflects a bright future for libraries and the communities they serve, driven by the sharing spirit that is at the heart of the global library community.

“As far as the future of libraries, I’m very, very optimistic,” says Fiels. “If there’s any group of institutions and individuals that have embraced networking and resource sharing more than libraries, I think it would be hard to imagine that.”

Source: Yes!Magazine