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Looking Back, Reaching Forward Birmingham Public Library Annual Report – 2005/2006 Mission Statement: The mission of the Birmingham Public Library is to provide the highest quality library service to our citizens for lifelong learning, cultural enrichment and enjoyment. In your packet you will find a handout Looking Back on a Year of Service. This brochure details many of the accomplishments we made this past year. They are things for which you can be very proud. I know I am. As you examine the list, note that 99.99% of the listings are “service” generated initiatives that ultimately support the library’s mission. Service is what we give, but how that service is delivered has changed dramatically in the last decade and will continue to change in the coming years. Our job is to reach forward with the best tools we can afford and deliver the best service possible. This is my emphasis for this year. Dr. Wendy Schultz wrote in a recent article: “Libraries are not just collections of documents and books, they are conversations. They are convocations of people, ideas and artifacts in dynamic change.” She goes further to say that libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities. Listen to these terms - Web 2.0, Weblogs, Instant Messaging, (IM), Blogosphere, WiFi, and Wikis, Are any of these familiar to you. These terms are only a few of those that will become a part of the new vocabulary of librarians. And guess what! This growing vocabulary is not ours alone. It belongs to the world. While we are attempting to decipher this new world-wide language, we are also experiencing the difficulties generated by sharing languages across several generations. Our employees, fall into one of three categories: Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964); Generation X (Gen X - born between 1961 and 1981); and Generation Y (Gen Y - born between 1972 and 2003). Gen Xs and Gen Ys overlap somewhat in age and attitude, and together are often called NextGens. Library services and library languages were different when each of these groups of employees entered the profession. I, for example, am a Baby Boomer. When I began working as the Branch Head at the East Ensley Library in 1978, I was stamping date-due cards with pencil stampers and separating the cards with an alpha/numeric sorter. Later, as Head Librarian of the Smithfield Branch in the early 80s, I checked items out by using the Recordak machine. T-cards were still stamped, but they were sorted with a long metal pick that could have been used successfully as a weapon. In 1988 when I became the Coordinator of the Avondale Region, I had my first encounter with the Leading Edge Computer. I thought I had finally arrived in Tomorowland. Next came the 1990s. I served as both Associate Director of Branches and Central during this period. This decade ushered in the “Information Super Highway,” and Generation X was becoming established in their library careers. A profession that was once moving and changing slowly was about to spring into fast forward. The Information Super Highway, which began in 1968 as a prototype for the Federal Government, rapidly changed the roadmap of librarianship. And from that point to now, libraries have not had the luxury of looking back. The approach of the next century brought the excitement and expectations of Y2K. There were those who were concerned about the capability of the computer to recognize that the world was leaving one century and entering another. Would it make the leap from 1999 to 2000? What would happen to the clocks? Would medical equipment function when the change was made? Would the books that were checked out in 1999 successfully be accounted for in 2000? Miraculously, all was well when the century changed and brought with it Generation Y. With this new millennium, the library staff found itself with three diverse generations driving down the Information Super Highway - together – at various speeds – and with different equipment. The Information Super Highway, with its many connections commonly known now as the World Wide Web (www), is used around the clock by millions all over the world. In 2005 some 74 million Americans used email daily. And guess what? Unlike libraries, there is no strong central management. There are no cataloging or Dewey rules to make sure that every little detail is handled correctly. Now, think of merging this multi-layered, unmanaged Internet with a well-organized systematically cataloged library system. That’s like mixing oil and water. No wonder librarians have had such a difficult time trying to use this free-flowing stream of knowledge. We are trained to categorize, classify, and organize, and we have traditionally encouraged our public to learn how to do things our way. Well, times have changed. And what lies ahead is . . . more change. The public is already there, and we need to stay ahead in order to keep up. So much is changing. Our hold on the organization of information, our public’s, needs, the delivery systems and the tools we use to accomplish our work. To add to the challenge, we have these different generations trying to work through all of this change together. In the future some features of our library work will remain the same. The Library’s mission “to provide the highest quality service to our citizens for lifelong learning, cultural enrichment, and enjoyment” is timeless and will remain relevant. The “Service Excellence” slogan that we launched when I became Director in 2002 will also be relevant as we move forward in this profession. I predict that “service excellence” will be the measure that establishes the library’s place in the community for decades to come. While our methods of providing the informational/cultural/recreational needs for our public will change, we must always strive to serve with excellence. NextGens, who will our future leaders, must be prepared to make some tough decisions. They will be faced with traditional practices and attitudes that may no longer make sense for some of their service delivery needs. Gen X will probably go along with some of GenY’s decisions. But, for those few Boomers who will remain, making certain transitions or releasing the hold on their traditions might be very difficult. In an article by Rick Anderson, Director of Resource Acquisition, University of Nevada, Reno Libraries, there are three things that threaten the library’s existence. The first is having and keeping the “just in case” collections. It is probable that future branch libraries will no longer build a comprehensive collection of print materials in anticipation of the users’ needs. Second, most libraries are insufficiently staffed for teaching. The staff/patron ratio does not allow for the teaching that is necessary. Anderson maintains that “we need to focus our efforts not on teaching but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they want. He feels that if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed - not our patrons.” (Now that’s his thinking.) Third, he contends that we must rid ourselves of the “come to us” model of library service. We must make our services accessible in whatever form the patron needs.
1 Schultz, Wendy. (2006). “To a Temporary Place in Time: On the Way to the Library Experience of the Future.” NextSpace, the OCLC Newsletter, 2, 11. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/6.htm 2 Burns, Enid. ClickZ Networks, ClickZ Stats (2005). “Search Usage Spikes as a Daily Online Habit.” November 20, 2005. Retrieved from ClickZ network October 25, 2006 http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3565561 3 Anderson, Rick. (2006). “Away From the “Icebergs”: Row Your Library Boat into the Web 2.0 Environment.” NextSpace, the OCLC Newsletter, 2, 7. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm
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