The Life of a Book

I once had a friend tell me they were looking for a book at the library and to their dismay it was listed as damaged. “Oh, that happens all the time,” I said. They were shocked.

As a children’s librarian, I often personify books and have come to believe they have their own lives and destinies. Some have wonderful, long lives full of many journeys to peoples’ homes. Some are savoured by a few friends. And some, unfortunately, meet an untimely end early in life.

It is the nature of the public library beast that books often meet a sad end. When a book crosses my desk with a worn cover, a barely visible barcode, a ripped spine, or with pages that are missing, falling out, or covered in tape, then it has been well loved, but it can’t take any more. This book has fulfilled its long and wonderful destiny.

Where do those small tears at the bottom of picture book pages come from? Tiny hands trying to turn the page at the spine of the book rather than the corner of the page. This book is now primed for an untimely end. Those tiny tears are begging to be ripped more. I often imagine youngsters looking at those little rips thinking, “Oh, someone started this job, let me help them finish.” And so that page is removed from the book. Once again, this is the nature of public libraries, and this book has likely met its fate.

Library staff members have an arsenal of special tape and magic glue that we use to mend damaged books as best we can, but sometimes books are beyond repair. Occasionally books come to us with poor bindings, and two cracks of the spine is all it takes for that book to crumble. When children come for library tours I caution them to tell a librarian immediately if a book is damaged. “We can fix lots of things,” I tell them, “but we can’t fix a book if no one tells us it’s broken.”

So what happens to those books that fulfill their destiny? Some do get recycled. More often than not, they go to the library book sale and find a new home. Those books that are savoured by a few friends, but aren’t used very frequently, embark on a new journey. Collingwood Public Library boxes up books that are still in good condition, but not used by our patrons, and donates them to Better World Books, an organization that sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. 

All is not lost, though. When possible, the library replaces well-loved books with fresh editions. We try to re-order books that have met their end too soon. And so the journey begins again.

--Ashley Kulchycki

Who's in charge?

You've probably seen this scene before, many times: A disgruntled customer walks up to a service counter and shouts, "I want to speak to the person in charge!"

But in a public library, who is in charge?

For all practical purposes, the library manager--the CEO--is in charge of the day-to-day operations, but the CEO also answers to a higher authority.

The key piece of legislation here is the Ontario Public Libraries Act.  The Act states that each municipality must provide its citizens with public library service. If is it a small municipality and feels it cannot afford to support a library of its own, it must contract with a neighbouring municipality, so that its constituents will have library access.  This used to be a fairly common practice in small rural communities, but since the round of municipal amalgamations in 2001, it has become less common and perhaps less necessary.

Library governance is vested in a group of library trustees. The trustees, who form the Library Board, are volunteers who are appointed by municipal council for a four-year term of office concurrent with the term of Council.  Trustees have to apply to be on the Board, just like any other job, and Council sifts through the resumes submitted and chooses the applicants they think will best serve the community in this capacity. Council also appoints one or more of its own members to sit on the Board, but the councillors cannot form a majority.

The Board is responsible for the big picture.  They decide on policy, create the budget, set operational goals, and plan for future library service.  They also hire and evaluate the performance of the library's CEO.  The Act requires that every library in Ontario have a CEO, though the title sounds a little pompous, and some libraries prefer to substitute the term "chief librarian" or "library director."  The CEO is responsible for taking the Library Board's big picture and translating this into practical day-to-day actions. For example, if the Board determines that its goal is to offer more services to senior citizens, then it is the CEO's responsibility to decide how that will be accomplished--what programs will be offered, what library materials purchased--and all within the confines of an agreed budget and current levels of staffing.

We are blessed with a very active and involved Library Board here in Collingwood.  They have very impressive credentials. If a community gets the volunteers it deserves, then we are a very fortunate community indeed.  You can find out more about our Board and our library policies on our website. The Board meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month, and Board meetings are open to the public. Minutes of past Board meetings are also public documents and can be found on our website. Our Board is starting to work on a four-year strategic plan for the library, so you will probably be hearing more from them in the coming months as they seek public input on the future of library service in Collingwood

So who is in charge? Ultimately, you are, since it was you who elected your Mayor and Council, and it was they who appointed your library board of trustees. If you are keenly interested in public libraries, consider putting your name forward as a trustee during the next municipal election.

Library Trends

In my last post I noted the financial difficulties libraries in the U.K. are having and singled out the Library of Birmingham as an example.  Birmingham was in the news again this week and Birmingham Council came under fire when it was announced that the library was asking for donations of recently published books, since, due to public saving cuts, they were no longer purchasing new books or newspapers.

Not all library trends are so dismal. Some changes are exciting and unexpected.  Recently, the American Library Association created a Center for the Future of Libraries to try and keep on top of what was trending in order to try and predict how these trends might affect library service.  The director of the new center, Miguel Figueroa, wrote in the March/April 2015 edition of American Libraries, "...it's nearly impossible to accurately predict the future. But we can identify trends, and they can be key to understanding what the future might bring. Identifying and organizing trends helps us think about the changes happening in the world and the potential effects they will have on our future. Awareness and understanding of trends can help us actively plan for our own work [as librarians] and for the work with the communities we serve...."  To that end, the Center for the Future of Libraries has created an online "trend library," which you can view here.

Some of the trends identified are fairly obvious--makerspaces, income inequalities, aging populations, digital natives (as opposed to digital immigrants)--but others are not so obvious--changes in American dining habits for example (fast casual), haptic technology, community resiliency in the face of disaster, and "the Internet of things."  It is an interesting website. Check it out to see what may (or may not) affect libraries in the future.