07.12.09
Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 8:55 am by Sean Fitzpatrick
Three weeks into a pilot campaign aimed at moving OCLC’s 2008 study From Awareness to Funding from theory to practice, OCLC hosted a session July 11 to talk about where the study has taken them since its publication one year ago and to discuss their new campaign: Geek the Library.
The purpose of Geek the Library is to show what Awareness calls “Probable Supporters,” or regular voters who are likely to vote in favor of library funding, how the library can engage them in their interests and create a transformational experience. The call to action? Get you geek on. Geek the library. Show your support.
Worm Geek
“Geeking” something is simply showing nerd-level passion. It’s cool to geek. The idea of the campaign is that whatever people geek, the library can engage them in that passion.
OCLC’s 2008 study showed that voters who perceive the library as a “transformational” force and not just an “informational” source are most likely to vote in support.
Of course, amid a global economic crisis where city budgets are being cut nationwide, voter support is more important now than ever. “As we all know, the world changed after we did this [2008] research,” said OCLC Vice President for the Americas and Global Vice President of Marketing Cathy De Rosa. What researchers at Leo Burnett found in a follow-up to the Awareness study was that people feel the future is uncertain and that the important behavioral shift has shown that people have moved from a “trade-up” to a “trade-off” mindset. This finding, while bad news for most of Leo Burnett’s high-profile clients, is good news for libraries. Leo Burnett’s follow-up study also showed a renewed focus among Americans on self-reliance, “almost to an early-American level” said De Rosa.
De Rosa suggested the findings of this year’s followup study only enhance those of last year’s. As people “trade off” luxuries for necessities, libraries see an increase in usage.
But moving the study from theory to practice took some action. “You can’t just take the words ‘information to transformation’ and apply them to libraries without some sort of campaign,” said OCLC Director of Branding and Marketing Services Jenny Johnson. The campaign aims to activate probable supporters’ “latent love” for libraries.
Geek the Library, a field campaign in southern Georgia and central Iowa covering 80 libraries and 1.1 million people, has four goals: to increase awareness for library funding, to change perceptions and attitudes of probable supporters and elected officials, to measure the potential to help lead to a reverse in the downward trend in library funding in the U.S., and to provide materials and learning to the public library community at no charge.
OCLC plans to report on the findings of this field study in March 2010.
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02.06.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:22 pm by Leonard Kniffel
Got a fax yesterday from Ken Miller, director of the Bayliss Public Library in Sault Sainte Marie, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near the Soo Locks. Ken and I were pages together a long time ago at the Detroit Public Library. “We received the attached letter with a $50 check,” Ken said. “I thought you might be interested in it because she said that she donated a like amount to one library in each state. That amounts to a $2,500 nationwide donation to libraries. It is one of the most unique things I have ever seen.” He went on to say, “And she thanks us! Wow.”
I ageee with Ken’s “wow” factor. Indeed, it is we who should be thanking her. So I’ve sent her story over to ALA’s Office for Library Advocacy, where we are collecting stories for “I Love Libraries”. And out goes a big Inside Scoop thank-you to the library angel who understands how one person makes a difference. Her letter to the Bayliss Library, in full:
Dear Librarians,
Today is my 50th birthday and I decided that rather than spend a lot of money on a party, I would mark this milestone by acknowledging some of my favorite things: the 50 states that make up our country, children, nature, and books (and of course, libraries!). To accomplish this goal, I am sending a check for $50 to a library in each state, and I am asking that the money be spent on nature books for children. If you can’t decide what to get, may I suggest one of my favorite subjects in nature: birds, or space-related topics/!
Thanks you for helping make this day extra special for me.
Sincerely,
Mary Alice Howard
Roslindale, Massachusetts
PS: A few years ago I had a wonderful visit to your town. I had wanted to see the locks since I was a kid and read my dad’s copy of Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling.
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12.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:42 am by Leonard Kniffel
“Forty-one states are likely to face budget shortfalls this year or next, forcing you to choose between reining in spending and raising taxes,” said President-elect Barack Obama at the National Governors Association meeting December 2 in Philadelphia. “Jobs are being cut. Programs for the needy are at risk. Libraries, parks, and historic sites are being closed,” he observed. “Right here in Philadelphia, over two hundred workers are being laid off, and hundreds more unfilled positions are being eliminated.”
Immediately, the ALA Council’s electronic list lit up with the news. “He said ‘libraries’!” everyone seemed to be saying. “He said libraries!” And, yes, it is a good thing that libraries are already on our new president’s radar. The governors meeting is intended to be a bipartisan delegation, and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden welcomed Alaska Governor and former election rival Sarah Palin by saying, “And Governor Palin, your being here today sends a powerful message that when campaigns end, we are all partners in progress. Thank you.”
It’s going to take all the bipartisanship the Obama team can muster for the new administration to reverse the cascading effect the economic meltdown of 2008, a cascade that threatens library funding across the nation. Obama told the governors, “We’re going to have to make hard choices in the months ahead about how to invest precious tax dollars and how to save them.” He asked for the governors’ cooperation in designing a recovery plan. “If we are listening to our governors, we’ll not only be doing what’s right for our states, we’ll be doing what’s right for our country.” And by implication, for our libraries.
Meanwhile, I think librarians need to take an different approach from those institutions standing in line with their hands out. We should concentrate on the myriad ways in which libraries are already a part of the solution to the economic crisis. I am composing an open letter to send to the president on Inauguration Day. So far, it goes something like this:
Dear President Obama,
As you become the 44th president of the United States of America, probably the last thing you need is more people telling you what they want you to do for them. From the Headquarters of the American Library Association in Chicago, it looks to me as if everybody is asking you for something, and librarians, of course, don’t want to miss the boat. But before we get in line with our demands, let me offer one modest suggestion for how to deal with this profession: Let us show you what we can do for you.
In 2005, before you keynoted the American Library Association’s Annual Conference here in Chicago, I sidled up to you in the green room with a tape recorder and asked you to talk about libraries. You focused thoughtfully on my questions, one of which was, “Can you tell us more about the effect libraries have had on you?” You answered that although people tend to think of libraries in terms of just being sources for reading material or research, it was a librarian at the New York Public Library in Manhattan who helped you find the community organizing job you were looking for. “I probably would not be in Chicago were it not for the Manhattan public library,” you said, adding that the librarian had identified lists of potential employers and, “I wrote to every organization; one of them wound up being an organization in Chicago that I got a job with.”
People all over the country are using libraries in larger numbers than ever before, partly for reading and research as they always have but also because libraries have become community solution centers where people are learning new skills, meeting their neighbors, and getting practical help with some of life’s essentials, such as managing their dwindling finances or, like you, finding a job.
Following our brief interview, you went on to deliver a keynote speech so clearly tailored to librarians that we immediately asked your staff for permission to adapt it as a cover story in the August 2005 issue of American Libraries. In it you said, “More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward….” Many of us walked away from that speech already saying, “Yes we can.”
We can continue to be the “sanctuaries of learning” that you remember. We can foster literacy, what you called “the most basic currency of the knowledge economy.” We can produce the highest achieving students when they attend schools with good library media centers. We can help parents prepare children for the workforce and for a lifetime of reading and learning. Libraries are central to community development, civic engagement, and scholarly excellence. Therefore, the librarians of this nation ask not what you can do for libraries but what libraries can do to help you solve the daunting problems we all face. We’re at your service.
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10.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:58 pm by Leonard Kniffel
I talked with Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, yesterday afternoon about the library funding outlook. The view from the man often credited with making library fundraising chic (as president of the New York Public Library for eight years from 1981 to 1989) was optimistic but modulated by some pretty shocking numbers.
“Whenever there has been a budget crisis,” Gregorian said, “libraries are affected immediately because municipalities always make cuts across the board, in order to be even-handed.” In his opinion, “that’s wrong because library budgets are so small relative to every other agency.” He also noted that during times of crisis, libraries are used more heavily. Everybody I’ve talked to recently about the current financial crisis has pointed this out, and we have the survey evidence to support it: library use is up, as it was during the Great Depression, which Gregorian pointed out. But like all parts of the cultural scene, libraries are going to be affected by the debacle on Wall Street, “whether we like it or not,” he said.
I was more than a little shocked when I asked Gregorian to tell me what kind of impact this disaster will have on philanthropy. “Oh yes, this year all the institutions will have major losses in their endowment,” he said. “I would not be surprised if we lose anywhere from $500 million to $600 million dollars on the endowment.” After lifting my jaw enough to speak, I asked when that would manifest itself in Carnegie Corporation’s giving level, and he said that the organization still has$30 million to give this year and those commitments are “our #1 piority.” He explained that because money is awarded on the basis of average earnings from previous 12 quarters, or a three-year average, the Corporation expects to meet those commitments. This year’s earning were low, Gregorian said, ”but for the last two or three years we were getting a 22% return.”
And beyond that? I asked him. He replied, “Foundations are losing their assets, and this will reflect, in our case, a year from now, maybe two years, we’ll be suffering the consequences.”
Gregorian’s main point during our conversation is that now is the time for us to make the case for libraries loud and clear, particularly here at ALA. Make the case for libraries, now, he said. “I don’t want libraries to go back to what they were in the 1970s, because when I came to New York…you needed a calculator and GPS to know which libraries are open what time and where and so on.” Librarians are wonderful because they always do more with less. As long as they don’t run out of less they’re fine, but we should also not run out of less, first not to accept less, but then not to run out of it. After all, like everything, giving is about priorities. I would just seize this. This is the time to alert about the importance of the library, not to assume the public knows it.
Geregorain urges us not to threaten to fold if we don’t get funded. ”When I came to the New York Public Library,” he siad, “there was a big ad put in the New York Times: ‘If you don’t help New York Public Library, it will become a big parking lot.’ Well, if you are dying, why should I help you? I’ll give you a good funeral. Librarians should insist that our existence is not in danger, can never be in danger. Our survival can never be in question. It’s the quality of our survival and quality of services, which is important to the public.” ”If you can make that case, nobody will put the library on the top of the cutting list but rather on the bottom,” he concluded.
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