I watched a public lecture by Robert Dawson given at San Francisco
Public Library for the opening of a photographic exhibition "Public
Library: An American Commons" and it is just wonderful. I found it
moving. http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1006175801 I also discovered a
slideshow at
http://places.designobserver.com/slideshow/public-library-an-american-commons/26228/1768/
Mr. Dawson has been photographing all kinds of libraries around the
country for the last 15 or 20 years and some of his photos are great.
The spaces are always interesting, and in short, Mr. Dawson is obviously
a great lover of libraries so I appreciate his artistry.
What becomes clear from his work though, is how widespread the smaller
public libraries are. It provoked me into look up some statistics.
According to "Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2008"
by the Institute of Museum and Library Services
http://harvester.census.gov/imls/pubs/Publications/pls2008.pdf it turns
out that in public libraries, 56.6% have less than five FTE staff, while
72% have less than 10 FTE. (This assumes that I am reading everything
correctly, but I believe I am. p. 94) Of course, these statistics are
from 2008, before the economic meltdown, so we can assume even smaller
levels of staffing today.
I am sure that these libraries are having a very difficult time. The
huge changes in information are hitting all libraries, but especially
those with small staffs, who now have to do more and more with less and
less. While larger libraries may lose staffing, when you have 3 staff
and you lose one, that's a loss of 1/3. There are so many things that
could be done to help these small libraries and their patrons with open
source and open access, by building tools that would really help
everyone, but we seem to be concentrating on other tasks. When I look at
some of those people in these photos, I think: how is RDA supposed to
help them? How are they supposed to deal with it? What will they get in
return? Many in those small libraries are probably too busy with other
matters and will just ignore RDA until it hits them like a tornado or
tsunami. Unfortunately, we still have seen no business case justifying
what will clearly be sacrifices on the part of many.
In this talk and slideshow are some of the faces and places.
--
James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
Received on Thu May 19 2011 - 13:37:51 EDT