February 24, 1993 - DC Media Center annual report

Sometime back, I reported on a study that found the most reliable predictor of academic success (grades K-12) was a well-funded school library or media center. That surprised some people, especially those grown-ups who used to get sent to the school library as punishment.

As for me, there was no punishment I bore more gladly.

Fortunately, today's school media center has a much better image than in the old days. In the most successful schools, the media center is a full and active partner in the teaching and learning process. Rather than being a sort of mini-public library, the vital school media center is a collection of materials and technologies that directly supports the curriculum.

I recently had the opportunity to review the annual report of Douglas County's Media Program, as prepared by Carol Paul, District Media Coordinator. It tells an impressive story.

In the K-6 level, the number of items checked out went up by 4,825 items -- a 6.5 percent increase over the previous year. In grades 7 through 12, the percentage increase was 1.8 -- 300 items more than last year. The collection of the District Media Center (located in Castle Rock) rose by 277 items, representing a jump of 67 percent.

As Carol notes, "In short, the circulation statistics reflect a consistent increase in use K-12 and a substantial increase in the use of District Media Center materials."

I was very interested in the pattern of use at the various grade levels. Based on a statistical count conducted over a 2 week period in November, Carol extrapolated some annual figures.

She found that in grades K-6, print materials (books, magazines, pamphlets, etc.) were used far more than non-print materials (filmstrips, videos, computer software). In fact, slightly over 96 percent of the materials used by students were print-based.

At the 7-12 grade level, however, the numbers are slightly different. Non-print materials make up a little over 17 percent of the circulation activity -- filmstrips, videos, and "miscellaneous" (software, records, books with tapes) accounting for most of the difference.

Another interesting difference is reflected in the use of non-fiction versus fiction. In grades K-6, the children checked out over twice as much fiction as non-fiction. But in grades 7- 12, things had swung around. Non-fiction accounted for almost 60 percent of the circulation.

Carol calculated another interesting figure. In grades K-6, the average number of items checked out per student was just under 9. For the older students, it dropped to just under 3.

All of this makes good sense, of course. You would expect younger children to spend more of their time soaking up good stories, although it's clear that they're finding some non-fiction of interest, too. And as children grow older, they naturally spend more time using non-fiction materials to work on school projects. And it is well known in the library profession that even avid readers tend to slack off in their teen years.

Carol also details the number of visits by students to the school media centers: a 66.2 percent increase at the K-6 level (or 12,507 students); a 95.3 percent increase at the 7-12 level (or 8,898 students); and various class visits.

At Douglas County, it would appear that the teachers and students have come to recognize the great value of a lively school media program, serving, as Carol puts it, "as the focal points of our instructional programs."

Congratulations, Douglas County Media Center staff, on a very good year!

February 17, 1993 - in praise of competence

The secret to success is to surround yourself with competence.

This week we're pulling together all the final pieces of our Oakes Mill and Philip S. Miller renovation projects.

To a certain extent, it's been, well, why mince words? It's been Chaos. Just by way of example, for a couple of weeks, I had no ceiling. I lived in a gentle rain of (non-asbestos) fire retardant dust.

Just beyond my office, the reference collection, periodicals, and paperbacks were crammed into a new center aisle. In many respects, working at the Philip S. Miller Library was much like moving all the stuff from a large house into a small apartment, while simultaneously remodeling the apartment, and holding a formal party every night.

At the Oakes Mill Library, a quarter of the library was without shelves for weeks. And there were people pounding under the floor. The wall behind the circulation desk -- where most of the library's business is condcuted -- was being patched, then painted. By the time this column comes out, the library will even have been without power for an entire day -- if not more.

And yet, somehow, the DPLD went on.

Throughout it all, the staffs at the two libraries mostly kept good humor. Most important of all, they kept providing service -- keeping the library open, maintaining story times, answering reference questions, helping people find a good mystery, ordering new books.

Sure, there was some grumbling and confusion, on the part of the public and staff alike. Some people don't deal well with utter messiness.

The way I see it, it's an acquired taste. I like Chaos. There's an energy about it, the strange glimmer of unsuspected possibilities. More often than not, it brings out the best in people.

Take Gina Woods, Oakes Mill Branch Manager, who pulled in her husband one night to assemble some temporary metal shelves. And laughed when in the middle of a particularly cacophonous story time, one young patron pulled the fire alarm.

Or consider Donna Harrison, Technical Services Manager, who marshalled her crew to complete the move into new, barely refurbished quarters in a little under two days -- a feat matched only by the two day creation of a spanking new reference room, ramrodded by Holly Deni, Philip S. Miller Branch Manager.

I don't mean to leave anybody out. I could tell similar stories about everybody who works at the library. We had people slapping books on trucks, hefting computer equipment, running vacuum cleaners, and just generally getting the job done.

Then there were our contractors. Dennis Kovatavich, a Franktown resident, and Jamie Roupp, from the Lone Tree development, were responsible for most of the action. They were here every day, including most Saturdays, cleaning up, inspecting progress, doing things they hadn't even promised to do and never asked to get paid for. They have something you don't hear much about any more -- a fierce pride in their work.

There was Ernie the electrician -- possibly the most gentlemanly tradesman I've met in some time. There was Paul Preister, rolling in his highly customized furniture exactly on schedule. There was Curt Farmer, who even after a near fatal car accident showed up, a cane in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, to completely rewire the building for computers, vastly simplifying the support of the system.

I am surrounded by competence, and I suspect all the people who demonstrate this competence never hear it often enough.

So the next time you're in either of these vastly improved libraries, do me a favor. Ask for a tour, and when it's done, take a minute to thank the staff. And if you ever run across any of the contractors I've mentioned, shake their hands. Take it from me: they deserve it.

February 10, 1993 - Carl's retirement

Next week, my former boss, Carl Volkmann, will retire as director of Lincoln Library, the public library of Springfield, Illinois.

I served under Carl first as a Circulation Department Head (from 1982 to 1984), then as Assistant Director (1985 to 1987), when I went to Greeley, Colorado to assume my own directorship.

For five key years, Carl Volkmann was sage advisor to me, and friend, and mentor. He also played a mean game of tennis. He's still a friend, still a mentor. (I can't speak to his tennis these days.)

But the real story of Carl Volkmann's tenure as director of the Lincoln Library is this: Carl was a preacher's kid. I believe his father's father was a minister, too. And there was never any doubt in Carl's family that he, the oldest son, would follow in the family profession.

So Carl went off to Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa -- a good Lutheran school. He soon became president of his dormitory. Even then, people looked up to him.

Just months from graduation, Carl faced an excruciating dilemma. He didn't want to be a minister. The thought of standing up in front of a congregation every week to deliver a sermon was more than this intensely idealistic, deeply religious, somewhat stage- shy young man could face.

But he confronted his father -- and his father's disappointment. Instead of the ministry, Carl chose another path.

Five jumps later -- from school teacher, to Aquisitions Librarian, to Young Adult Librarian, to Associate Director in charge of Personnel, to Director -- Carl had attained the prestigious position of leader of one of the country's finest libraries.

How did it happen? More than anyone I know, Carl has the rare ability to listen not just to people's words -- but to their hearts.

At my first interview with him, I was very impressed, and a little overwhelmed, by his attentiveness. He had this trick: he'd look at you with these big, unblinking eyes, amplified by his glasses. Like an owl, he'd ... blink.

But there was an expectancy about it. You could feel that he believed in you, believed you were just about to say something really important.

So you said it. You had to.

I remember the day I interviewed for the position as his Assistant Director."You'll find other people with more experience," I said. "But you won't find anybody better qualified."

It was an outrageous statement, with barely a shred of supporting evidence. But Carl took a gamble on me. He gave me the job.

Later, he was always there with just the right word to point out my inevitable beginner's mistakes.

And when I did something right, I could sense the pride radiating from him, as if he'd invented me. He did invent me.

But maybe that wasn't so unusual after all. He had promoted many others in the library, launching their careers with the same trusting yet thoughtful attention he gave to mine. I don't know of any time when Carl made a hiring MISTAKE. I wish I could say the same.

I'm struck by one irony of his career. It seems to me that throughout his painstaking and conscientious stewardship of the library, Carl has delivered a magnificent, beautifully articulated sermon on the value of public service, the importance of high professional and personal ethics, and the crucial role of the public library in the cultural life of a community.

I bet his father would have been proud of him. As for me, I'm privileged to count myself among Carl's grateful congregation.

January 27, 1993 - Year Round Reading Program

This is a time of significant national, state, and local change. Under Clinton, we have a new presidential philosophy. Under Amendment One, we have a new and more stringent set of government controls. And in the wake of the defeat of Amendment Six and the local school bond, we have a school district that must find ways to contain costs without sacrificing quality.

One of the school district's response to these "challenges" (the euphemism of the nineties, I fear) is the notion of year round schooling.

The traditional school schedule was established when many American lives still revolved around farming. Parents just couldn't spare their children twelve months of the year. So schools -- then as now -- adapted themselves to societal pressures.

To the school district, year round schooling represents a way to save money by getting more use out of existing buildings. And to parents, it represents another "challenge" -- as childcare and vacation schedules are juggled to suit.

But what about public libraries? According to our own tradition, summer is when we hold our all-out reading programs. We talk to local businesses to get them to sponsor the program. We pull in interesting speakers. We host exciting events. Literally thousands of children come to the library in the summer. Our circulation statistics reach their annual peak.

In many respects, the Douglas Public Library District's Summer Reading Program is our recruitment drive. It's a wonderful opportunity to turn on kids to the glorious possibilities of reading, especially reading for fun.

So we ask ourselves: how will year round schooling affect public library use? How can the local public library best respond to the latest shift in the cultural calendar?

Well, one possibility is a year round reading program. So we're going to conduct an experiment. It will be sponsored by the American Library Association, participating area McDonalds, and the Douglas Public Library District.

On January 31, we'll have a couple of open house/sign up parties for a pilot project we're calling "Together Is Better." The parties will be held at the Parker and Philip S. Miller branches. Ronald McDonald, McDonald's clown, will be present. (Call for times: Parker at 841-3503 and Philip S. Miller at 688-5157.)

Beginning February 1, 1993, DPLD staff will be making visits to seven elementary schools: Northridge, Cherokee Trail, Eagle Ridge, Rockridge, Acres Green, Sedalia, and Roxborough. While all of these schools are not yet year round, they will be.

Each child will get a special "Together is Better...Let's Read!" brochure. The brochure has spaces for 24 titles. That's how many books we hope they can read by the time the program ends on May 31, 1993.

The program has prizes, too. Of course, reading is its own reward, but participants can also earn a Happy Meal and a certificate.

I'd like to publicly thank the owner-operators of participating McDonald stores -- the Front Range McDonalds (on 841 S. Holly St.), Castle Rock McDonald's (at 995 N. Park), and Parker McDonald's (at 10950 S. Parker Road).

They know that when a whole community is "challenged" -- it takes all of us to meet it.

January 20, 1993 - Amendment 2 and CLA boycott of Colorado Springs

Neighbors -- even good neighbors -- don't always agree with each other. But the difference between good neighbors and bad is that good neighbors try to work things out.

For instance, suppose that one night your neighbors throw a party. Suppose it gets pretty loud. If you happen to be a good neighbor, you probably won't call the police. You'll put up with it for a night.

But if all of a sudden your neighbor is having a party EVERY night -- your response is likely to change. You'll be less tolerant, more judgmental.

If you don't talk to each other, the situation is likely to escalate. The next thing you know, you're dumping garbage across each other's fences and making obscene phone calls.

In many respects, a public library is most like a remarkably well-behaved neighborhood. You'll find some books -- just as you'll find some neighbors -- that are chock full of completely wrong-headed notions. (These are the ones that hold different opinions from yours.)

And there are books whose viewpoints are remarkably lucid, well- argued, so obviously right that you wonder they don't have more friends. (These are the books expressing opinions that are very similar to yours.)

But somehow, all these books manage to co-exist more or less peaceably in the sedate streets of your local library. Sure, they occasionally have nasty things to say about each other, but it's understood that the freedom to gossip is one of the characteristics of this particular neighborhood. Nobody has to move out.

Libraries are good neighborhoods.

But things aren't always so rosy. Sometimes issues spring up that divide neighborhoods. One such issue is Amendment 2.

Before last November, the Board of the Colorado Library Association adopted a resolution against Amendment 2 which stated in part, "The Colorado Library Association wishes to demonstrate consistency of purpose and continuing opposition to a discrimination which could have a chilling effect on collections concerning and service to such a targeted group."

Amendment 2 passed anyhow, by a 53% majority. The CLA doesn't have a lot of clout.

Several weeks ago, the CLA Board voted to boycott Colorado counties that supported Amendment 2. What does that mean, exactly? The CLA canceled its contracts with two Colorado Springs hotels slated to be the sites for the 1994 and 1995 annual conferences.

This proved to be a relatively controversial stance, prompting Denver Public Library Director Rick Ashton to write an open letter to the CLA Board (appearing in the January 9 editorial page of the #Denver Post#) chastising them for their vote.

I got a protest call myself. The man said that it was absurd to think that Amendment 2 would have any effect whatsoever on libraries. The same day, I received a written complaint about a book, a murder mystery whose main characters happened to be lesbians. That was the complaint.

So the CLA, it seems to me, had a point.

But I'd like to stress the difference between a Library and a Librarian. The CLA is a voluntary organization of librarians. And the people who belong to it have about the same differences of opinions you'll find in any other group. The Board took a stand -- but it doesn't represent a vote of all the librarians who belong to the CLA.

Even if it did, the vote of a group of librarians doesn't change either the constitution of library collections, or the fundamental mission of the public library.

People -- including librarians -- have a right to vote for the things they like. They also have the right to boycott the things they don't. Either one is part of democracy in action.

At the Douglas Public Library District, we'll continue to provide materials on both sides of this -- and many other -- issues.

January 13, 1993 - 1992 statistics don't tell whole story

There are many ways to measure a library. But probably the most important library activities are hard to put a number to.

Surely the best result a library could hope for is that through its resources, one or two happy souls per year achieved real wisdom. I'd like to see a number like that in a library statistical report. I wish I knew how to get it.

I'd also like to see a chart showing the number of children that formed a lasting love of reading over the past twelve months. It could be graphed against the total population of children in the area. A really successful library would get the two groups to merge.

I'd like to be able to count the number of people who found friends or a sense of community at the library, maybe through a conversation struck over the copy machine, the tax forms, the home repair videos, the children's book bins, or even the comic books.

I'd especially enjoy knowing how many patrons discovered some passionate new interest, who found through their local library important new information that generated new hope, new courage, and urged them on to new achievements.

A potentially illuminating statistic would be the percentage of groups who were offended by some library materials. This could be a very helpful way to spot gaps in our collection. Sometimes the only way you know you've really been thoroughly objective is when people on both sides of an issue are mad at you.

And it would be good to know how many of our taxpayers, on an annual basis, found through the library a moment of peace, of innocent diversion, or of laughter. They deserve such moments.

But I just don't have numbers like that.

All I've got are numbers about such things as, for instance, the increase of population in Douglas County since 1984, as compared to the number of items those people have checked out from the library.

But since I've got them, I may as well pass them on. In 1984 there were an estimated 37,325 people in the county. They checked out 113,188 items, or about three items per person.

By 1992, there were 69,399 people in the county. They checked out 692,146 items--roughly ten items per person.

To look at it another way, the population of Douglas County between 1984 and 1992 jumped by about 86 percent. But the number of items checked out of Douglas County libraries soared by 512 percent.

I can also report that in 1989, the library's collection had about 65,000 items. By the end of 1992, the collection had jumped to 165,000 items. That's an increase of roughly 154 percent in just the past three years.

I also have numbers about branch activity in 1992. The Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock accounted for 32% of all our business; the Parker Library for 31.8%; the Oakes Mill Library for 12.6%, the Louviers Library (our smallest building and collection) for .8%, and the Highlands Ranch Library (our youngest library) for 23 percent. Taken all together, library use (again as measured by the number of books, magazines, audiocassettes, and all other library materials checked out) was up by 36% over 1991.

All that's good news, I guess. And as I've mentioned before, nearly 70% of the residents of the entire county have--and use-- a library card. The more usual percentage elsewhere around the United States is forty to fifty-five percent patron registration. So there's more than one kind of growth going on here.

But all this stuff is just statistics.

Did the library touch your life in some significant way in 1992? If so, I'd like to ask you to jot down whatever it was and send it to me, either care of the library (961 S. Plum Creek Blvd., Castle Rock CO 80104), or to this newspaper. I'd like to know. I'm sure the Library Trustees would find your experiences of interest as well.

When it comes right down to it, libraries aren't about numbers. They're about people.

January 6, 1993 - Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be librarians

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about librarianship as a job.

Somehow I just know that librarianship isn't most kids' top career choice. Willie Nelson even wrote a song about it: "Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be librarians." (I think that's how it went.)

But in a time of ever-narrowing areas of work and study, librarianship is the only field I know of where you can specialize in being a generalist.

One of my friends works on an assembly line where his job is to turn one screw on one piece of an unidentifiable product, then the next screw on the next piece...

One of my old college professors' whole reputation, all of his interests and most of his endeavors revolve around one book - he's an authority on "Beowulf." Both of these people get paid for what they do, but not enough, not to my way of thinking. What arid lives!

In libraries we deal with more subjects in one day - sometimes in one hour - than most people encounter in their whole lives. We're also surrounded by books, magazines, records, cassettes, videos, films, sculptures, paintings - a veritable cornucopia of culture.

But maybe the best part of working in libraries is the people. First, there are our "customers," by long library tradition called "patrons." You'll never find a nicer, smarter, more diverse, more interested, interesting, involved bunch of people anywhere.

Second, there's the library staff: I've tried my hand at many kinds of work, but I have never met more professional workers. By professional, I don't mean "possessing an advanced degree." That has nothing to do with it. I've known doctors who were unprofessional, and dishwashers who were so professional they approached artistry. Professionalism is a quality of individuals, not occupations; it's marked by the willingness to take the extra step, to see that the patron/client/customer finds exactly what he or she wants; a desire to do the job right. Library workers are the brightest, most conscientious (and often funniest) people I have ever run across.

Third, the working conditions are great. I once had a job swinging a pick-ax at the bottom of a rocky pit (leveling the ground for septic tank systems). Librarians work in comfortable, usually very attractive buildings. And the tools of the trade -- books -- are a pleasure to handle, unlikely to cause painful and unsightly blisters.

What about the long term career outlook for librarians?

Well, whether you're interested in the human side of the job (telling stories to children, answering reference questions, planning programs), or the technological end (building user-friendly interfaces to information retrieval systems, installing various data networks to bridge buildings or geographic barriers), there's plenty of work to be done.

What really drives business, politics, government? Information. And in a world where all the traditional barriers are crumbling, and literacy is an ever more essential skill, the key industry of the future is information science -- the gathering, organization, and delivery of relevant data. Information Science is just another word for Librarianship.

I truly believe that librarians will be absolutely pivotal in the next century.

But the deepest reward of librarianship is this: there's a profound sense of satisfaction that comes from finding the right book, the right answer to somebody's desperate question. To be a librarian is to ally yourself with curiosity and knowledge in a world rife with apathy and ignorance.

Many young people will opt for the pursuit of big bucks and inner desperation. But if you want more, if you want riches beyond measure, go for the best: be a librarian.