August 28, 1991 - Author Biography Files

As everybody knows -- or at least I hope they do by now -- libraries buy lots of reference books. There are many, many sources of information available these days, and over the past year, the Douglas Public Library District has made a concerted effort to gather at least a core collection of them.

But what people may not know is that sometimes libraries also create their own reference sources.

Gina Woods, the new branch manager of our Oakes Mill Library in the Lone Tree development, was the former manager of the "Professional Information Center" -- a special library within the SouthEast Metropolitan Board of Cooperative Services (SEMBCS).

Shortly after she started her job there, a teacher came in asking for biographical information about popular children's authors. About 40 of them.

So Gina did a sweeping search of biographical reference books and computer databases. She even wrote the publishers, asking for promotional material about the authors. By the time the second teacher came in, Gina realized that this kind of request was going to recur, so she started saving the results of her searches.

The Professional Information Center is no more; it suffered from a round of recent SEMBCS budget cuts. But fortunately for us, Gina -- and her files on more than 380 popular children's and Young Adult authors -- are very much around. The "Author Biography Files" occupy two file cabinet drawers at the Oakes Mill Library.

Thanks to the wonders of telefacsimile (FAX) technology, all of that information is instantly available from any of our other libraries as well.

I found out about this new reference source when I was doing some background study on Bret Ellis Easton, author of the young adult classic, "Less Than Zero," and his more recent, and very controversial, "American Psycho." I was amazed by how much I learned not only about what Ellis had written, but how he felt about it.

Or perhaps you've heard of Crescent Dragonwagon, author of "This Is the Bread I Baked for Ned," "I Hate My sister Maggie," "Margaret Ziegler Is Horse-Crazy," and others. How does anybody get a name like "Crescent Dragonwagon"? Gina's Author Biography Files includes the text of an interview with the writer, who used be named Ellen. But that means "the Queen." It was the 'sixties, and Ellen was decidedly anti-authoritarian. So she just gave herself a new name: Crescent, or "the growing."

As for the last name, she was about to marry a young man (once "Mark," then "Crispin") and they were trying to come up with a good, new, last name for themselves. After a long time without coming up with anything, Crescent said, "Maybe we're taking ourselves too seriously, maybe we should pick something completely frivolous." He said, "Like what?" She said, "Oh, uh, um, like Dragonwagon." Since then, she has said that we wishes she had chosen something a little less flashy.

These kinds of data can be hard to come by. And as Sharon McElmeel put it in her book "An Author a Month (For Nickels)": "There is no doubt in my mind that sharing ... information about authors, illustrators, and the books themselves has a direct impact on the joy, enthusiasm, and eagerness ... children bring to their ... reading ..."

As Gina puts it, "There's something wonderfully humanizing about learning something about the person who wrote a book you've enjoyed. I hope all of our patrons will have fun discovering some of the interesting things that are in the files."

The files, parents may note, also provide a quick way for children to gather information for school reports.

Next week I'll talk about another reference source DPLD staff have developed: local history notebooks.

August 21, 1991 - The decline of idleness

Occasionally science does something it can be proud of, breaking new ground and bringing a little piece of mind to the rest of us.

I'm speaking of the new branch of biology known as "time-budget analysis." According to a report in the Denver Post (August 9, 1991), the patient practitioners of this exciting new discipline have discovered that most animals (even those busy little bees and beavers) spend over 50% of their time just lying around.

How do we know this? Because animal time-budget analysts have spent hours lying around watching them. And they got paid to do it.

Even the Anna hummingbird spends 82% of its time resting. The lion is a classic lounger: 75% of his time is devoted to the demanding work of exuding a royal air.

One of the most compelling arguments for evolution I've seen lately is that the gorilla only rests 51% of the time; the chimpanzee, a mere 23 percent. This behavior is suspiciously people-like.

According to the Post, relative to other animals "human beings spend anywhere from two to four times as many hours working, particularly if family, household and social duties are taken into account."

I've been thinking long and hard about this for three or four minutes now, and I've reached a startling conclusion: RESTING IS OUR NATURAL STATE. Yes. Based on all the available evidence, work is utterly UNnatural (unless you're a rock pipit or female anolis lizard, which I would be willing to bet you are not).

So are we going to take this slur on our species standing up? The mighty walrus can put in a full day's work and still have two thirds of his day to bask his tusks in the sun. Okay, you're thinking, we only "work" about 8 hours a day -- but tell me that what YOU do for the other 16 could be described as "resting." People are smarter than walruses, right? So how come we have to be so busy all the time?

Please note that time-budget analysts stress that "animal inactivity ... serves a broad variety of purposes." That's EXACTLY what I tell my wife when I'm supposed to be changing the kitty litter, but I'm sprawled on the couch with a comic book instead. "Sure," I tell her, "it looks like I'm just flicking a page every now and then, but in reality, I am serving a broad variety of purposes, and as soon as the time-budget analysts figure out what they are, I'd be happy to share them with you."

What's wrong with us? We race pellmell from one life milestone to another, like the jump rope chant of children: "First grade, second grade, third grade ... sophomore, junior, senior, graduate school, medical school, work, work, parent, grandparent, dead, dead." What's the hurry?

Do we really need more money, a bigger house, a newer car, or bigger muscles?

Years ago, I wrote what is still one of my favorite lines in any short story: "He had the strong, deeply tanned hands of a man who had done a lot of heavy reading outdoors." What this country needs is a new idea of what's attractive. Or at least some leisure time to think about it.

You may not have noticed, but summer is almost over. Probably some of you have been doing useful things like painting your house, or changing your oil, or putting in extra hours at the office, or running marathons. What's the point?

Slow down! Now! Get up right this minute, go out in the back yard, or a park, and lie down!

If you feel the need to pretend that you're doing something, I guess you could take a book or magazine with you. In fact, you might try Witold Rybczynski's new book "Waiting for the Weekend," which should be in your library -- a major leisure center -- soon. Or you could scan the excerpts from the book in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly. Rybczynski has much to say about the decline of idleness in America, and he says it very well.

Maybe what we all need most is to let loose our animal selves for awhile, to set a new standard for lack of achievement.

It's only natural.

August 14, 1991 - Bats and bookmobiles

When I was about 10 years old, I found a paper bag hidden in the rafters behind my closet, beyond a little door. The bag was stuffed with old letters.

The letters turned out to be from a boy in the army, written to the daughter of the family who had lived in the house before us. At the bottom of the bag was a telegram: he had been killed in action.

That's sad. But that wasn't the story I told my sister, Mary. She was about four at the time, maybe five. No, -- and I'm not saying I'm proud of this -- I told her the letters had been written by bats. We'd had bats in the house a couple of times, I was her big brother, and she believed me wholeheartedly.

I didn't think about this for years afterward, and I doubt Mary did either, until one day in high school. A teacher commented that the one thing that separated humankind from the rest of the animals was that animals couldn't write. My sister's hand shot into the air and she blurted, "Bats can!"

Even before her 16-year-old peers started laughing, and as her face began to redden, Mary suddenly realized that her big brother was not entirely reliable. I was away at college by then, which may have saved my life.

Sometimes, you hear things when you're young, or when you're not so young, that you buy into absolutely. It can be a rude awakening to find out that you were utterly and completely wrong.

I had a feeling something like that when I got back the report about our survey of rural residents (which I mentioned in my July 24, 1991 column). One of the Library Trustees had suggested that before we spent a lot of money on a bookmobile, that we try to find out just what people in the outlying areas really wanted in the way of library service. I was sure that the bookmobile would be the preferred choice.

But overwhelmingly (by about 70% to 30%), survey respondents wanted us to improve existing services at existing locations, rather than launching something new.

I was also surprised to discover that rural residents were more likely to have library cards than people who live near our branches, and more likely to use them.

But when I spent some time interviewing our rural library users myself, I began to understand. People who live outside the towns are used to driving. They plan weekly trips to pick up groceries, and in the name of efficiency, they schedule a lot of other things at the same time. For a lot of them, one of those things is a library visit.

When we asked survey participants if they thought they would actually use a bookmobile, most people said no. When I asked some of the people I know why that might be, they told me they were already using one (or more) of our branches, and they weren't too keen on adding yet another trip somewhere else every week, especially since a bookmobile wouldn't have as many library materials as a branch anyhow.

Given those circumstances, the Library Board will re-consider purchasing a bookmobile. I have recommended that they use the money originally set aside for the bookmobile to buy more materials for our branches, and develop a mail-order service for the homebound.

We'll be announcing a public hearing on the subject soon, just to make sure we hear from the people who didn't happen to get surveyed, and I haven't happened to talk to.

Meanwhile, I'm pleased to announce that beginning August 12, we have doubled the hours of our smallest branch: the Louviers Library will be open on Monday afternoons, from 3 to 7, AND its usual Thursday afternoon, also from 3 to 7.

I probably shouldn't mention that we've had some trouble with bats at Louviers. But I've written them some stern letters, and things are better now.

You didn't know bats can read?

August 7, 1991 - Charles Fort

"Conservatism is our opposition," wrote Charles Fort.

"But I am in considerable sympathy with conservatives. I am often lazy, myself. It's evenings, when I'm somewhat played out, when I'm likely to be most conservative. Everything that is highest and noblest in my composition is most pronounced when I'm not good for much. I may be quite savage, mornings: but, as my energy plays out, I become nobler and nobler, and lazier, and conservativer. Most likely my last utterance will be a platitude, if I've been dying long enough. If not, I shall probably laugh."

You'd don't find writing like that very often. I had to go to Santa Fe to find this particular sample. I was combing through the shelves of a used book store on E. Palace (the establishment of Nicholas Potter, if you're ever down that way), when I saw a hardback entitled "The Books of Charles Fort." I bought it on the spot. It cost fifteen bucks -- but that got me 1,062 pages of outrageous writing and a 62 page index with entries like "Wheat, mysterious appearance of."

I've been talking about Charles Fort ever since, and reading him to anybody who will sit still long enough to listen.

But I read him when I was a kid, too. On the crammed bookshelf by my bed, nestled next to "Stranger than Science," I had a paperback version of "Lo!", one of Fort's four books. "The Book of the Damned," "New Lands," and "Wild Talents" were the others. All of them are out of print now.

Nobody I've spoken with seems to know anything about Fort. That's a shame.

Charles Hoy Fort (born in Albany, New York in 1874, died in the Bronx in 1932) was a collector. But he didn't collect things; he collected what he called "the widest possible diversity of data." His idea was to find relationships among apparently unrelated facts, and thereby, perhaps, to stumble across or invent a new cosmic order or law or formula.

And some of his data were pretty peculiar. Quoting extensively from everything from international scientific journals to small local newspapers, he produced story after story of rains of live frogs, clouds of exhausted insects that suddenly appeared from nowhere, inexplicable disappearances of people that -- coincidentally? -- coincided with inexplicable appearances of other things.

In his writing, Fort amassed staggering quantities of odd stuff, phenomena that just can't be reconciled with anything reasonable. Then he came up with explanations so patently unreasonable -- but compelling -- that you can't tell if he was serious or not.

As he admitted, "I can't quite define my motive, because to this day it has not been decided whether I am a humorist or a scientist."

Fort has often been cited by science fiction writers as a major intellectual influence. He had a freshness to his insights and his thinking, a willingness to view the universe from every conceivable angle. On the one hand, his gathering and description of data was orderly, succinct, and objective. On the other hand, his theories were just too entertaining, and his attitude too irreverent, for Fort to be well-regarded by the general public. Experts are, or are supposed to be, serious.

His recurrent theme was that everything is inter-related, that coincidences are anything but coincidental: a belief that he sometimes called theological, sometimes scientific, and sometimes, just an idle fancy that he could, or could not, support with confidence, depending on his mood and the direction of the immediate paragraph.

One of the things that bothers me most about this age (and most others) is the blank incuriosity of too many people about almost everything. We don't want to hear about choices that upset too many of our prejudices. So instead, we ignore information that doesn't confirm what we already believe.

Charles Fort still provides a rollicking antidote to intellectual complacency. He was a man who would have heartily endorsed the sentiment attributed to Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road -- take it."

May 1, 1991 - KKK

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine went to the Anne Frank Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Natural History.

It touched her, changed her. She said that what she learned from the trip was this: people must not be silent when human ghouls are on the march.

It was that experience that triggered her response to the notice in the newspaper: the Ku Klux Klan was going to stage a march through downtown Denver. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League responded quickly -- "stay away," they advised. "Go to the Anne Frank Exhibit instead."

But my friend felt that belied the whole point of Anne Frank's message. She believed -- and not without cost -- that it was her humanitarian duty to show up, to visibly protest what she believed was the naked bigotry of the KKK and the Aryan Nation.
So she went to the counter-KKK demonstration.

Her first surprise came when she discovered that there were many, many more people than the 40 people she expected, or, for that matter, the 600 people later reported by the media.

No way, she said. Two thousand. Minimum.

She said that she wound up standing next to a more experienced protester who offered some surprisingly useful advice. The crowd started chanting, "No Nazis! No KKK! No Fascist USA!"

The protester told her to say just "No Nazis!" then pause while the rest of the crowd picked up the middle chant. Then, shout, "No Fascist USA!"

"If you shout everything," said the more seasoned soul, "you lose your voice in just a few hours."

Many people have been disturbed by the attention given the KKK and Aryan Nation advocates. The public should have stayed away, say some people.

But my friend had a different perspective.

"There was a moment," she said, "when I looked around me and there were white people, and African-Americans, and Chicanos, and Asians, and Native Americans, and they were all standing together. And someone told me that the Bloods and the Crips had declared a truce that day, just so they could all stand together against racism.

"And I thought .... what a great thing these KKK and Aryan Nation people had done. What else could have brought so many people together, finding themselves on the same side, when before all they knew about were their differences?"

Then my friend described something else.

For the first time in her life, she said, she found herself part of a mob. The mob has its own mind, she said, something different than the sum of its parts.

She found herself circling with several other smaller mobs around the cornered KKK marchers. At one point, she said, there were three groups of at least 200 to 400 people each, who had surrounded the skinheads. The counter-demonstraters were shouting their slogans, and my friend looked down and saw the fear, the real terror, of the KKK and Aryan Nation young people who suddenly found themselves utterly outnumbered by people who viewed them as scum, as anathema.

"I don't like to see young people who are scared," said my friend. "I don't care what they believe."

"But," she added after a moment, "maybe in that instant they understood for the first time what it might be like to be a black person, or a Jew, or any of those people that they had targeted, and to be surrounded by a gang of people who only wanted to ... hurt them. Maybe kill them."

She remembered hearing a policeman, on horseback, announce over a megaphone: "We've lost control."

The bus that finally showed up to take the marchers away was a last, desperate attempt on the part of the authorities to prevent carnage. It worked; it separated the opposing forces.

This issue is not simple. There are no quick solutions to conflict between people, not ever.

But if these issues seem important to you, you have options.

Start doing some research. The Douglas Public Library District has a number of titles worthy of your consideration. You might start with "Blood in the Face: the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture," by James Ridgeway.

If you read the paper at all, consider this: it could be that you can't just uncritically accept the things you read in the paper. Maybe it takes a little more time, a little more effort, a little more investment of yourself, to figure out what's right.

Maybe the future of this country depends on it.

July 31, 1991 - Six month district report card

Last night something happened to me that has never happened before. I sat down to write this column and ... absolutely nothing came to mind.

It was about time for a funny one, I thought. But you know, sometimes you just don't feel funny.

Sometimes, you feel like taking a vacation. And tomorrow, as it happens, I'm taking my family down to Santa Fe for the weekend. But last night, I just sat there in front of my computer screen for almost an hour. Didn't type a word. Finally, at nine o'clock, I read a comic book and went to bed.

When I marveled about this inexplicable writer's block to one of my Board members today, he suggested that I should tell people how the Library District has done so far this year. After all, we're a little over half way through 1991 -- now's a good time to check our progress.

Well, it's not funny. But it's not a bad idea for a column. So...

I started my job here on March 29, 1990. On April 19, 1990, the Library Board of Trustees approved some key elements of a long range plan. All of them were ambitious: the library was at that time a county department, and faced a severe funding crisis in 1991.

But the citizens of Douglas County voted to create a library district. So how well has it done?

The first key goal of the Long Range Plan was to expand library hours from five days a week to seven. On March 25, 1991, we did just that. It took a lot more people -- and training them was hectic -- but I happen to think we hired some remarkably talented folks.

Our second goal was to increase the size of our collection. At the end of 1990, we owned 104,644 volumes. As of July 23, we own 122,025 volumes -- an increase of 17,385, or 16.61 percent.

Our third goal was to promote and expand community and cultural events. This has been a record year for library programming, from the well-received travel series at the Parker Library, to the Douglas County School art show at Castle Rock, last fall's music festival at Oakes Mill, and our district-wide writer's contest.

Our fourth goal was to improve automation and networking. At the end of 1990, we had just four public computer catalog terminals in the entire library system. Now, we have thirteen, as well as a dial-in computer line. We also purchased and installed a completely upgraded computer that we manage in-house -- a move that will save us about $100,000 a year. We will be adding another eight terminals (four for the public) within the next four weeks.

Our fifth goal was "to build a new library in northern Douglas County." Opening on August 12 will be our storefront library, located at 52 W. Springer Drive in Highlands Ranch (phone number: 791-7703). Its hours will be the same as those of our other libraries.

The sixth goal was to establish an "outreach" service -- a courier or bookmobile program. First, back in May, we got daily delivery going among the existing library branches. The second part of our outreach effort, particularly the delivery of materials to people in rural or outlying areas, is still being analyzed. But we should be able to announce something within a month.

The last goal was to renovate existing library facilities, specifically, to build on to the Parker Library, finish and provide access to the basement at Oakes Mill, and renovate the space at the Philip S. Miller Library when Social Services and Tri-County Health move out sometime next year. All of these projects have been slated for 1992. (We didn't quite have the money for it this year.)

How has the public responded to all of these changes?

Nationwide, library use has increased by about 3 percent over the past five years. So far, in just the first six months of 1992, the use of the Parker Library (based on the number of materials checked out) has increased by 24.2 percent over the first six months of last year. The use of the Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock has jumped by 26.4 percent. The use of the Oakes Mill Library has rocketed by 40.1 percent!

Overall, throughout the entire district, library use has increased by 28.6 percent over last year -- over nine times the national average.

So, on behalf of the Douglas Public Library District, I thank the many voters and library workers who made all of these great strides possible. It's an exciting time to be in Douglas County.

But I'm still going to Santa Fe.

July 24, 1991 - Rural outreach

At our house, a day without mail is like a day without sunshine. And thanks to Suzanne's many hundreds of free subscriptions, most days are positively blinding.

Frankly, I'm still a little intimidated by the sheer variety of things available by post. Like most men, I suspect, I tend to walk into a store, find something that is more or less like what I want, see if I can afford it, and if I can, walk out the door with it.

Generally speaking, I don't clip coupons, I don't read ads, and the only catalog I regularly peruse at home has to do with personal computer software. Even then, I toss it out as soon as I've looked at it.

But Suzanne saves her catalogs. She rereads them. She circles things and writes cryptic messages in the margins.

Occasionally, she even orders something, which is always promptly delivered right to our door.

Just lately I've wondered just how many people in Douglas County have similar habits. In particular, I've been wondering whether people in rural areas do more shopping by mail than people who live closer to town.

This isn't just idle musing. By the end of the year, we'd like to improve our library services to the many people in the outlying part of the county -- specifically rural southern Douglas County and the Roxborough area. We'd also like to start directly serving people who are homebound.

The question is: what's the best, most satisfying, most cost-effective way to deliver those services?

In an effort to find out, we engaged the services of a company in the business of research and sales development services (in a word, polling) to call a random but statistically valid sample of people in our outlying areas and ask them what would work best for them.

These are some of the choices the Library Board will be considering:

(a) A bookmobile. This is the traditional alternative: fill up a bus with books and drive it all over the place. That way people can browse for what they want, which we know from other surveys is the way most people prefer to look for things. This is the most expensive option.

(b) A "deposit" collection. The idea here is to seek an agreement with some other agency -- an elementary school, for instance -- and beef up its collection of materials with things from elsewhere in the library district. From time to time, we could freshen up the materials by swapping them with those of another branch. We would also, in all likelihood, provide some extra staff or money to the "host" agency. But it probably wouldn't cost as much as a bookmobile.

(c) Improved services at our existing branches. Maybe the people we're wondering about travel to our branches already, and maybe they'd be happier spending their tax money to make good services better, rather than starting a new, but more restricted service.
(d) Some kind of automated service -- a way to let people with personal computers or access to one of our terminals (and maybe we would need to put some more public terminals in non-library locations) pick out items which we could then mail to them.

(e) And, finally, a mail order book business. The idea here is that we would produce a monthly catalog of our new materials, with pictures of the book covers and short descriptions of the items, and mail it out to people. Then, patrons could either phone in a request, or mail it in. In turn, we would either mail the item back to them, or otherwise arrange for its delivery. Would this be cheaper than a bookmobile? Probably -- but it would require us to develop some new in-house expertise in desktop publishing.

In addition to asking about these service options, we have also asked people some other questions: do you have a personal computer? Do you do much shopping by mail? How often do you drive to town, and which town is it?

By the time this is printed, our research company will have already spoken with about 400 people around the county.

If you were one of the people we called, we thank you for your comments and time.

But if you did not get contacted by phone about this, don't feel left out. Just give me or your local library branch a call (I'm at 688-5157) and tell us which of these choices sounds good to you. If any.

That's catalog choice (a), (b), (c), (d), or (e).

Shipping not included. Visa and Mastercard accepted.