May 4, 1994 - homeschooling

In the ever-exciting world of public libraries, the debate is heating up: just what is our role in an environment where there are ever-swelling numbers of homeschoolers and charter schools students?

Here's the way I see it:

How do we respond to the needs of homeschoolers? Much as we respond to the needs of other students -- or for that matter, as we respond to any adult patron. People come in looking for stuff. If they find what they need, well and good. If they don't, they often ask for help. If, in the process of trying to help them, we discover that we can't provide very much on a topic, then naturally enough, we tend to view that as a problem.

So either we go looking for such materials, or the next time we see that they are available (in a catalog, at a publisher's exhibit, in a professional journal), we're inclined to pick them up.

It's inefficient, but it's real: we buy at least some of the books kids need for their schoolwork. We always have. We've just done it on a retail basis.

This is the process through which any public library becomes to some extent the public curriculum: a repository of information about the subjects our community tells us it is interested in.

How have charter schools changed this picture? In the past year, the children attending the Academy Charter School have had some library tours of our Philip S. Miller Library. Our staff has shown them how to use our computer catalog, and generally figure out where things are. We've had many class visits to the library since then. I'm expecting the same thing to happen in Parker now that the Core Knowledge Institute of Parker has been approved.

But we've always offered tours to students, or to any interested group. It's not a new service, just a new level of demand for the same service. Frankly, I find that encouraging. Now, we're just providing services wholesale.

One of the things that worries some public librarians is that by more consciously assuming this responsibility to support public education, two things will happen. First, we'll skew our collections in a direction that doesn't reflect our basic mission. Second, we'll undercut the good work of our colleagues in local school media centers.

But at the Douglas Public Library District, we've been watching our purchases fairly closely in this area. And in my opinion, our purchases have been perfectly appropriate for a public library.

We're not, for instance, buying workbooks. Nor are we buying enough copies of books to allow a whole class to use them at one time. The schools handle that.

On the other hand, just because people happen to be young enough to be in school, doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to find what they want in a public library. It's their library, too.

As far as our media center friends are concerned, I admit frankly that we cannot possibly be as precisely tailored to the needs of public school students as they are.

But our media centers are seeing the same kind of growth in demand and use that we are, and both of us have limits in funding and physical space. We can't do their job; they can't do ours.

But we sure can supplement each other. Larger, more active libraries at every level help each other, generating higher levels of reader enthusiasm, and providing a far richer reading environment.

We're not competitors. We're partners. For so important a task as educating our young, it just makes sense to take all the help you can get.

April 20, 1994 - color therapy

Several weeks ago, the News Press did an article on Jetta Feil, a woman who does "color vision therapy." In brief, Ms. Feil, a certified color vision therapist for Spectro-Optics (841-3103), has found that simply by using certain tinted acetate overlays, she can help people read more comfortably.

Some people, it seems, have significant difficulties with the printed page. The print "floats." In some cases, it even flickers or shakes on the page. As you might imagine, this makes it very difficult to stay focused, or to read for a long period. For some people too, the problem is made much worse by certain kinds of lighting, especially fluorescent lighting.

I found all this interesting, but here's something that's more interesting. The Douglas Public Library District only has three administrative offices; of the three, two of them house people for whom color vision therapy has already demonstrated its advantages.

One one side of me is our Personnel Manager. He says this problem of "floating print" has been with him all his life. He thought it floated for everybody. Amazingly, he managed to persevere long enough to get his doctorate -- which takes a lot of reading. Then, as an adult, he discovered that if he just set a piece of bluish acetate over a page, everything steadied down. His daughter has the same problem, but for her, the bluish acetate doesn't help. A greenish-colored sheet does.

On the other side of my office is my Administrative Assistant. Her son has been diagnosed as having some learning disabilities, especially in the area of reading. Recently he was tested for color vision problems, and found that one of the overlays suddenly made it much easier for him to read. His mom is getting him a pair of glasses with the tint built-in.

How common is this problem? It's hard to say. Ms. Feil says that as many as 10-15% of the population has some color vision problem. Fortunately, the problem is easily and quickly tested for, and it isn't all that expensive to correct.

If you'd like to find out more about this sometimes startlingly effective therapy, you are invited to attend either of two free information clinics, both sponsored by the Douglas Public Library District.


Jetta Feil, who has 17 years of teaching experience and a Master's degree in Education, will be available at the Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock from 2-5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, and at the Oakes Mill Library (in the Lone Tree subdivision, on the corner of Lone Tree Parkway and Yosemite) from 2-5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27. She will provide more information on color vision therapy, and, time permitting, provide some preliminary screening.

Children should be at least 6 years old -- old enough to accurately report differences in what they see on the page. Incidentally, many children begin to have reading difficulties in the 3rd grade -- just about the time the proportion of text to pictures starts to increase. At the same time, print tends to get smaller and closer together.

The library is happy to sponsor this clinic. After all, anything we can do to help people read more easily is a good idea. If you think you or your children might benefit from color vision therapy, we encourage you to stop by.

March 30, 1994 - lirpa sloof

I have been working as the director of the library since March 29, 1990. That means that I've been here four years.

After my first year as director, the staff and I put together something called an "upward evaluation form." In brief, the idea was to let the people I supervise tell my bosses how well or how poorly I was doing.

That's important. Short of privately interviewing each of the people I directly supervise, all that my bosses know about my performance is what they see in the newspapers or witness in committee meetings.

But upward evaluations can be tricky. They only work if people are honest. If, for instance, there's some aspect of supervision I'm really falling down on, not letting the Board know about it means that I'm getting away with it. It also means that the problem is likely to continue.

But, let's face it, some people fear the retribution of their bosses. Naturally enough, this tends to make people less honest.

It happens I just sent these forms out to our branch managers yesterday. I've asked them to have them in by the end of the month, when I'll pass them on to the Board of Trustee's Personnel Committee.

As I was talking to the Personnel Committee just recently, we came up with an innovative idea. Why not invite you, the public, to participate in my job evaluation as well? Why not expand the process to include the people who pay my salary?

So if you'd like to pass on your opinion of my performance over the past year as a library director, or your opinion of the library's performance in the past year, please call Ms. Lirpa Sloof, Head of the Personnel Committee of the Douglas Public Library District Board of Trustees. She can be reached at 840-2073. She's serious about this, and said to write that she will accept calls any time of the day or night. If you can't get through, then try Juli Lester, who can be reached at 841-0922 (her work number, so please call only during the day).
Aside from any particular concerns you may have about your local library, leave a message like one of these:

* He's doing an outstanding job. Give him a raise.

* He's doing an okay job. But he needs improvement in .... (caller's choice).

* Fire the bum. You mean we pay this guy?

I want to emphasize that Ms Sloof is not a librarian. Nor is she a member of our staff. She's a volunteer. A recent arrival in Douglas County and to our Board (she hails from Mordovia, originally), she is genuinely interested in getting a little public input about the quality of the person entrusted to run your library district.

Now mind, I'm not saying this is a public vote on whether or not I get to keep my job. On the other hand ... our Board really listens to the public.

So here's your chance. Please try to call BEFORE or ON Friday, April 1.

And here's looking forward to another year on the job. I hope.

February 2, 1994 - Mrs. Gilmore and reading with the enemy

Mrs. Gilmore, my fifth grade teacher, always said that good writing was good thinking, and good thinking is always charming and admirable. Ultimately, she believed that good writing lead to good friends.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Last week, I wrote about the CHILD proposal to establish a new "anti-obscenity" law. I also laid out some of the reasons I oppose it.

About a month before that, I wrote an article for a national library magazine about how a public library should strive to collect materials from all over the political and religious spectrum. I said that many public libraries don't collect representative materials from a so-called "fundamentalist Christian" perspective.

But there's a growing audience for such materials. And while no group has "special rights" to our collections, librarians have to be careful that they don't ignore certain groups altogether. I wrote, "Fundamentalist Christians have the same rights to our collection as any other minority: the opportunity to state their case, without endorsement or prejudice on our part."

At the time, I didn't think either piece was especially controversial, especially given the perspective of my profession. But apparently, I was wrong. I got two letters this week that expressed strong disapproval of my opinions. Both of them were from librarians.

One accused me of being liberal to the point of supporting pederasty. (She had read the first article.) The other wrote that I had "slapped the face" of gay and lesbian librarians with my "thoughtless bigotry." (She had read the second article.)

In other words, my colleagues have labeled me a left wing, godless, fundamentalist conservative. I'll admit to this: there aren't many of us left.

But seriously, how either one of these readers reached their conclusions I cannot imagine. I have myself concluded that some people are so eager to take offense that they can find it anywhere.

Still, it's pretty rare that I get any letters at all. And I've heard it said that every time somebody does write a letter, there are at least ten to a hundred more people who feel the same way. (Although in my case, so far, they kind of cancel each other out.)

I have noticed that it tends to be the people who get easily outraged that write the most letters. The more middle-of-the-road, thoughtful, tolerant folks see something in a newspaper or magazine and think, "That's interesting. A little off-the-wall, probably wrong, but interesting." And that's it.

But someone at one extreme or the other is INCENSED that anybody could entertain for an INSTANT such a preposterous, insulting, damaging, completely DANGEROUS notion. So they swing into action, rallying the troops, encouraging them to fire off a volley of indignant missives.

On the other hand, such letters make for entertaining newspapers and magazines. In fact, the editor of the magazine for which I wrote the second piece was thrilled that I'd gotten someone mad enough to pen a protest. A little controversy sells more issues. She'd been worried that her periodical had become too innocuous, too bland. No editor wants the epitaph: "Excited Little Response." If too many people agree with you, she told me, you probably haven't said much.

So Mrs. Gilmore, wherever you are now, I'm confused. People in the business are telling me that good writing makes enemies. I was worried that I was just writing badly.

But you were correct about one thing: the friends I do make are good ones.

January 26, 1994 - CHILD

My maternal grandfather was a free-thinker. In an overwhelmingly Republican county, he was a Democrat. In a town with a church on almost every corner, he was an agnostic.

It was a puzzlement to him that his youngest son turned out to be both a Republican and an Episcopalian.

My Uncle Bill is about the straightest-laced, most conservative member of my entire family. On the surface, he and I don't seem very much alike. He keeps his hair very short. Uncle Bill is the sort of man that even when he's not working, wears his company badge. His idea of "casual" is "T-shirt with wingtips." No matter: he has always been my favorite uncle.

We had dinner together recently. After the main course, we got to talking about the surprises of raising children. My Uncle Bill said something that should be memorized by everyone who thinks that he or she might one day reproduce.

He said, "You spend all your adult life as a parent trying to teach your children to think for themselves, and the minute they do, you wonder where you failed."

See why he's my favorite uncle?

Uncle Bill understands something many people -- conservative and liberal alike -- do not. There comes a time when your child is no longer a child. And at that point, the wise parent ... lets go. As painful as it is. Knowing that there WILL be mistakes.

This insight is something some people just never get. Here's an example: the "Coalition Helping to Insure Laws for Dignity," or "CHILD."

CHILD is a "conservative" group that is sponsoring a proposal for yet another Colorado constitutional amendment. They hope it will be on the ballot in the fall of 1994. If the Colorado Legislature votes it down, we'll probably see a petition drive. In brief, they want to toughen up Colorado's "obscenity" law.

Why? Well, that's a good question. The only literature I've seen from the group to date is a flier that claims Colorado is one of only two states that cannot "protect" its citizens against "the distribution of illegal obscenity." They also claim that "... most scientists who have performed research in the area have concluded that hardcore pornography leads to violence against both women and children, as well as sexual harassment in the workplace and the continuing treatment of women as second class citizens in our society."

The trouble is, both of those claims are lies. As we've seen in Douglas County, citizens are more than able to "protect" themselves from pornography collectively through zoning laws. Individually, they have another popular option: they can choose not to buy it.

I thought conservatives believed in LESS governmental interference in our private lives. Why do we need a new constitutional amendment?

But it's the second claim that worries me, and many other librarians. It happens that I've looked at some of the research on pornography myself. Guess what? "Most scientists" haven't been able to establish any link between pornography and sexual crimes at all, much less "the continuing treatment of women as second class citizens." (Just how many men are supposed to be reading this stuff, anyway?)

The insulting premise of this proposed constitutional amendment is that "the book made me do it." Let's think about that for a minute. If you enjoy reading about football, will you become a quarterback? If you like to read mysteries, are you destined to kill someone?

But suppose someone believed that reading mysteries was "harmful," and you just weren't mature enough to decide for yourself which books you could handle? Suppose that the law determined that even though you considered yourself a grown-up, in fact you were a CHILD, and that you needed to be "protected" from your own poor judgment?

As always, the question isn't "What IS hardcore pornography?" or even "What's offensive?" The real question is, "Who decides?" The proposed "obscenity amendment" isn't about "dignity" -- it's about control.

If you believe that we should put to popular vote the notion that the adult citizens of Colorado need additional protection against books no one is making them read in the first place, then I urge you to support the CHILD constitutional amendment.

Or perhaps you agree with my Uncle Bill that at some point you're old enough to make up your own mind -- even if other adults may not like your choices. And if so, I urge you instead to tell your state representative or senator that you do not wish to be treated like a CHILD.

In either case, do it soon. The CHILD proposal should be surfacing in the Colorado legislature in the next few weeks.

January 19, 1994 - baseball and art

Generally speaking, I believe that people should strive to know as much as possible. I believe that curiosity is a good thing. I admire enthusiasm for a subject -- almost any subject.

But there are a few areas of human effort about which I strive to maintain a near total ignorance. One of these areas is sports.

I suspect that it all goes back to my childhood in Illinois. In the neighborhood baseball games, I played right field. Deep, deep, right field -- somewhere, I think, in Indiana.

There are those who claim (and I suppose they're telling the truth) that they love the game of baseball. I've known otherwise fairly interesting people who have committed to memory vast databases of baseball trivia, and can reel it out for hours.

Mostly what I remember about baseball is an abiding sense of boredom, punctuated by the occasional, random bounce into my territory, and my burst of running, stooping, hurling the ball toward home plate ... and then more boredom.

Once somebody took me to a live baseball game in Chicago. I did enjoy watching the crowd. The hot dog was great -- as only a Chicago hot dog can be great. But the game itself was a major league yawner. And why anyone would want to subject themselves to watching baseball ON TV is utterly beyond my comprehension.

I have been informed that Denver now has its own baseball team. To tell you the absolute truth, I don't even know what its name is. I'm sure I've heard it before. And I COULD look it up. But baseball happens to fall into one of my areas of carefully preserved ignorance.

Nonethless, I do understand that this quirk of my character puts me in the distinct minority. We have lots of baseball fans, not only in Douglas County, but within the library district as a whole.

So from January 17 to January 22, the Philip S. Miller Library will proudly display a scale model of the Coors Field. Underwritten by Coors, this exhibit is the object of great curiosity and interest throughout the Denver metropolitan area -- we've already received a lot of phone calls about it.

Accompanying the exhibit will also be a display of books about baseball. I am confident that there will be an enthusiastic audience for both. Catch it if you can.

In addition to the Coors Field display, the Philip S. Miller Library is hosting an exhibit sponsored by the Douglas County Schools' "Adopt A School" program. It features student art work. You can see this one right now, and it will be running through February 25.

It happens that I have about as much artistic TALENT as I have interest in baseball. But there's a difference: art does interest me, and I have been very impressed over the past several years at the quality of the artwork produced by Douglas County students. This year's exhibit has some superb pieces. It's worth a look.

Following that exhibit, we'll have what branch manager Holly Deni calls "the ever-popular 'things found in our books' display." You can only begin to imagine.

Taken together, we've got a little something for everybody -- and the promise of other new and even controversial exhibits in the future.

At your public library, it pays to keep your eyes open. You never know when something might drop out of the sky and ... wake you up.

30 hour work week

There was a time, not long ago, that whenever I went on vacation, I immediately got sick. There are, I imagine, both physiological and psychological reasons for that.

When you travel, you get exposed to a larger germ pool. Psychologically, the reason you're on a vacation in the first place is because you're running out of reserves. Add the two together, and you may as well tape a little shingle of cardboard outside your sinuses, visible only to malicious microorganisms: "Kick me."

Well, this time, I'm pleased to report, my family vacation was surprisingly healthy. Despite a regional heat index (temperature plus humidity) of approximately 150 degrees, and one incident when we had to strip Perry (our four month old) down to diapers and sprinkle him with ice water, we all managed to have a very interesting and completely illness-free time. My wife and I have both long had an itch to see New England, and we finally got a chance to scratch it.

This time, I got sick when I got back.

It was no biggie, mind, just a summer flu that put me flat out for about three days. But while I was lying around, I got to thinking about our whole pattern of work, play, and worker health in the United States.

I've thought for a long time that much of what's wrong with America has a relatively easy fix. Put simply, I think it's time for us to adopt the 30 hour work week.

This idea isn't as wild as you may imagine. In fact, it has already garnered a great deal of international support. Unions in England, France, Italy, the United States, and even West Germany have all discussed and endorsed it.

Their reasons vary. The French and Germans (according to a piece in the October 27, 1993 issue of the Washington Post) argue that it would enable them to put more people to work at little increase in cost. Incidentally, that was exactly the same line of logic used here in the United States during the Depression, when we went from a six to a five day work week, then found it impossible -- and unnecessary -- to go back.

Some of the West German and American supporters took what may first appear a surprising stance: the 30 hour work week would both increase productivity and provide more leisure time for shopping.

According to an article in the January, 1994 issue of Managers Magazine, numerous studies have demonstrated that reducing both the work week and the work day quite frequently result in big increases in productivity. Why? The article's author suggests some oft-observed realities: "less stress, less absenteeism, less turnover, less personal business during work hours, and lower costs."

Despite all of the above, the truth is that more Americans are working LONGER hours each week than they have in fifty years. Add to this the creeping cost of housing, and you have a situation where grown-ups just don't have much time to spend raising their children. Or surely, not enough time.

Imagine making a living salary, or even enough to support house payments, in 30 hours a week. For a couple, that would free up at least 10 hours per parent per week. As I have noted here before, a national PTA study several years ago found that the average mother spends less than half an hour per day of direct time with each child; fathers, less than 15 minutes. Imagine re-investing that 10 hours of former work time in something of even greater value.

I believe this change will happen, perhaps as soon as the next ten years. And at first, no doubt, the 30 hour work week will prove more expensive: more people, more benefits, for the same total number of "man-hours."

But in very short order, I am confident that we Americans will again demonstrate our astonishing capacity for increased productivity, making the shorter work week a successful investment in both the economic and the cultural infrastructure of our nation.