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Asking the Hard but Right Questions
by
Glen
Holt
published June 16, 2005
When Frank Hermes asked me to
write an article for the
first issue of
his new electronic journal, he told me that it should be
“something different” to match the character of his
offering to the profession.
Frank’s new journal, I think, is
more akin to recent
publishing
innovations in medicine than it is either to traditional paper-based
library journals or to the electronic blogs that recently have taken
the library profession by storm. Frank’s e-journal
promises
the regular scheduling and quality information that is found in reading
the Sunday New York Times. It also promises to address timely
topics as soon as enrichment and/or interpretation become
possible. Then, to add ease in recovery, subscribers will
have
access to a current easily searched e-archive where authors and readers
alike will update earlier articles and comment on changing trends.
As he conceptualized this new kind of
library publication, Frank had to
ask a lot of hard questions about what library journalism and scholarly
publication does and doesn’t do. Asking the right
questions
about libraries and then finding honest answers not only strengthens
specific institutions but the whole library profession as well.
I recognized the importance of this
generalization again a few weeks
ago. Like many of you, I serve on the boards of various
not-for-profit agencies. One of these boards recently
interviewed
two finalists for the position of new executive director.
One CEO candidate focused on the
details of how to do
“it.” The presentation and answers to
board questions
produced a succession of “how I was successful”
anecdotes,
a picture of a directorship that solved problems by the numbers and
through management by great attention to detail. The
candidate’s promise: “I will duplicate my
pattern of
success for this organization.” All of us on the
board
believed the candidate.
My paraphrase of the second
candidate’s opening statement is
this: “I presume that you as a board do not want to talk
about
all the details of institutional management. I
wouldn’t be
a finalist if your search hadn’t already found out that I am
a
successful manager and leader. I want to talk with you about
what
needs to be done to change this organization, how you as a board and I
as CEO will decide when and how to undertake that work, and the changes
we need to make to obtain the resources to do what we want to
do.
And, I want to discuss some steps we need to take to measure our
successes.” All of us on the board believed the
candidate.
In short, one job candidate promised us
traditional, simple
“success.” The other candidate promised
us the
difficult work – and the fun - of trying to answer dozens of
hard
questions about the organization’s present way of doing
business
and its future. One candidate promised us continuity along
known
pathways. The other offered us the discontinuity of great
changes
that would strain the board, CEO and staff.
One candidate offered us sure,
definable activity along a known
path. The other offered us a future in which success will be
hard
to achieve but where our impact will be institutional impact will be
real, important and measurable. One candidate offered us
questions with relatively simple answers. The other offered
us a
future in which we will ask difficult questions with no immediate
answers and lots of hard work to find meaningful answers.
Are there right but hard questions to
ask about specific libraries and
our profession as a whole? Are there questions for library
leaders that can help us redefine old problems and think in new ways
about the future?
Rather obviously, I answer yes to both
of these questions.
And,
as we start our new e-journal, I want to ask a few right but hard
questions that I hope our subscribers will help us answer in the months
and years ahead.
1. First, how can we continue to have
so many mediocre libraries that
set next to the many great libraries that stand out like bright stars
over our North American hemisphere?
My wife and I have visited hundreds of
different libraries on four
continents and have photographed dozens. Many of them
–
college, public, school and special, by modern standards, barely serve
even the most minimal library and information needs of their
constituencies. Others – and not just those with
lots of
money – deliver innovative, community-serving library
“services that knock your sox off” – to
quote the
cliché phrase from one recent management book.
Library journalists do not write about
mediocrity or failure.
Neither do library scholars. Business students consider such
issues constantly. So do the social sciences and
sciences.
So, maybe we ought to begin by asking a very hard set of questions
about quality.
How do I measure library quality?
And, is my library mediocre
or
great in the services it delivers to its legal or chosen
constituencies? How do I know that? And, the last in this
brief
series: Does our profession have a collective responsibility to help
overcome the illness of mediocrity in libraries where we detect it?
2. My second question concerns
criticality. If libraries are
so
important in the scheme of our representative, democratic culture, why
won’t “the public,” our civic leaders and
our elected
officials regard them as a “critical service” just
as
important as police, fire fighters and utilities?”
Criticality is nearly always a factor
in our pleas for more public
support. Last week at a meeting of civic leaders working on
after-school education, that is providing help in reading, health and
technology to poor children, I asserted that we ought to declare these
kids’ education, both in and after school, “a
critical
service” to our society. A fellow board member
responded,
“We can’t say that. We’re not a
critical
service.” I responded, “So you agree that the
governor
should cut our budget for after-school care. He believes our
work
is not critical either.”
I think most library professionals
believe implicitly that our services
”are critical in a democracy.” Certainly
we hear that
phrasing at conferences and see it in our journals so frequently that
it is a standard professional cliché.
Going down that path of argument,
however, has powerful
implications. If we fought for and won the
“critical
institution” label for libraries, we would have to assume
heavy
public responsibilities. In the mysterious mix of parents,
schools, social setting and libraries, what role do we play in the
teaching of reading readiness, community literacy for newcomers,
providing the correct information to support kid and adult research and
successful careers after college? How can we document those
roles? How can we measure them?
Along with the question of influence,
we need to ask, do we really want
to define libraries as “critical” in the
educational or
community building process? “Beware! You may get
what you
most desire!” is a cliché but one applicable to
the issue
of the library’s status in society. Whether in the
private
or public sector, being regarded as critically relevant means that the
institution is in play politically, whether that attention is wanted or
not. The commodification of information - and workplace
literacy
– seems to be drawing all libraries more and more into
politics,
whether we want it or not.
3. Finally, in this most
technologically dependent of nations,
isn’t it time to declare library development and quality
performance a matter of national interest?
How does something become a matter of
national policy? Here
are
three examples:
- The Interstate Highway
System exists because President Dwight
Eisenhower declared their construction a military necessity in the Cold
War. Ike made smooth highways, built to exacting standards,
that
connected all major population, transportation points and military
bases, a matter of national interest.
- And, federal taxpayers
started paying for the Environmental
Protection Agency and programs like Brown Fields cleanup and setting
and maintaining air and water quality standards because Congress
eventually declared the nation’s environment a matter of
national
interest.
- And, as a third example, the
nation’s schools were
integrated because of action by the Federal Courts.
African-Americans for almost a century fought in the courts to make
schools that served black children equal in quality to those that
served white students. Brown v the Board of Education of
Topeka,
KS (1954), was a culmination of decades of civil rights work along with
the beginning of declaring school integration as a necessity to achieve
school quality a matter of national interest.
Presidential
leadership, Congressional
leadership and the Supreme Court’s legal mandates are the
mechanisms by which sectors of the American economy and culture become
matters of national interest.
I am one of those library advocates who
believes that it is time for
American librarians to build coalitions with other educational
institutions and citizen organizations to move library funding out of
its archaic, competitive localism and the funding backwash of all but a
few enlightened state governments into the bright light of the national
interest. When libraries become a national interest, they
will
also become a matter for federal funding, and we will begin to get rid
of some of silly and harmful inequities in library funding and services
that plague our commonwealth-building activities.
The US is way behind a few other
countries in making libraries a matter
of national interest. Even where rich funding hasn’t always
followed, nations working on libraries as a matter of national interest
have made major strides in setting up cooperative projects and quality
standards that have few comparisons in the disparate regional, state
and local polices of the United States. Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Great Britain and Canada
all are moving through different streams of consciousness in their
national support for libraries. The US will get to their
often
sophisticated positions on libraries -- someday.
These are only a few of the right but
hard questions that professional
librarians ought to be asking and trying to answer. It is
such
questions and their answers that will set out our vision for our future
and revise the standards for the way we try to improve and to measure
library service quality in America’s 21st century libraries.
How should we deal with mediocrity in
our midst? How are
libraries different both in terms of quality service outcomes and the
professional performance necessary to achieve those results?
Is
professional library services outside the federal government of
sufficient importance economically and culturally to need to be made
part of national policy? And, a summary question that would
require a whole essay on its own, how should libraries measure not just
what they do but the successful results that come from what they do?
These kinds of questions require
thinking and action that will begin
only when communities of library professionals begin to ask and try to
answer the right but hard questions. Thinking about such
issues,
I think, is a good way to help launch a new kind of professional
e-journal. Those of us associated with the venture wish
ourselves
luck and hope that we will win your loyalty through the coming
months. If we do, all of us can become a learning community
that
uses our electronic tools to move our profession forward. |
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