Library Disciple

Playing is something I’m not very good at anymore.
I’m not sure when it happened, but suddenly I got overwhelmingly serious.
It’s not a good thing.
My fun comes from going to the library and reading (of course), running  marathons, working in the garden or vacuuming my car (it’s still new and shiny).  Not exactly a barrel full of monkeys.

I try to have fun and play when I’m in my classroom, it’s the only way to get through the day.   I crack very corny jokes, talk to myself, dance and act out science and social studies concepts (I perform an excellent water cycle and you should see me as a hatching chick!)

I try to have fun with my daughter too.  Last weekend we decided to clip (shave) our dog and ended up in hysterics on the lawn after seeing our handiwork (our once beautiful Golden Retriever now looks  like a sheep sheered with a weed whacker).  We usually find something to laugh about from our day - does that count as play?

I used to have fun going out to eat, watching t.v., socializing and traveling,  but in my current incarnation I’m stuck in a  fuddy-duddy rut.  Since I am often made aware of this weakness, I was interested in the latest news from the Library Journal about a “Play Symposium”.  The moderator was Liz Dansforth, a LJ Game blogger and Librarian at Pima County Public Library in Tucson, AZ.  The goal of the event was to encourage libraries to take a more playful approach with information and learning.

I was off and running to see what kind of fun they were having in Pima County.  I wasn’t disappointed.  They’re having lots of fun and playing with history, art, film, politics and even books.  Maybe if I lived in Tucson my Buffalo seriousness would thaw and I could have fun again?  If it did, I might hang up my gardening gloves and run down to the library to:

• Watch “Welcome to Shelbyville” a documentary about contemporary immigration  - I know that doesn’t sound like too much fun but I’m just warming up and maybe they have popcorn?

• Enjoy the Centenarian Oral History Project in honor of Arizona’s 100th Birthday (Valentine’s Day 2012).  To celebrate they are interviewing 100 year old residents that have spent their lives in Pima County.  Check out the great interview with William McNerney,  a 101 year old resident of Tuscon.

• But my favorite?  Spring Freecycle - a spring cleaning swap.  This taps into yard sale fun AND it’s free, that’s my idea of a good playdate!  People bring in anything from their house that’s in good shape and swap it for other people’s junk - talk about win-win!  I laughed out loud when I read, “participants are asked not to bring any large items, such as refrigerators or motorcycles.”

Is play really necessary when we get older?
Why not just cut it out of the schedule and get more done?

• play help us relax and reduce stress, a factor that is critical to our health...maybe checking out all the new books at the library is play, it certainly is relaxing, even if I can’t read them all.
• play allows us to be creative and express ourselves...that’s why I like playing in the garden and writing this blog everyday.
• play helps us learn and solve problems, trying too hard to figure everything out rarely works, playing around with ideas and letting them stew on the brain’s back burner can be more effective.
• play helps us build skills; when we gain competence at a task we feel more confident and have more fun.
• play helps us connect with others, build relationships and join communities of support. Like the having a playdate with thousands of other runners during a marathon.

So, play doesn’t necessarily mean recreation or entertainment.  To play is to be engaged in a pleasurable, mostly unstructured, activity that allows us to be creative, to experiment, to learn and to connect with others.  

Maybe I’m not doing so bad after all (but I still want to visit Pima County).

Thanks Dad!

My dad taught me how to work hard.  He taught me how good it feels to do a job well and while I didn’t necessarily appreciate learning how stack wood or rake leaves as a teenager, I can see that my adult work ethic comes from watching my dad work.  

My dad worked for IBM and other computer companies for decades, he is the ultimate salesman and makes friends with everyone everywhere (the waitress, the guy at the hardware store, the farmer next door and the checkout girl).  

George W. Casey, Jr.at the children's room at Fort Hood

This year he retired for about 5 minutes before getting a full time job at Lowe’s.  Now he’s learning how to drive the forklift, unloading delivery trucks and setting up sales displays (he’s 69 yrs. old) and loving it.  He drops into his recliner at the end of the day feeling the satisfaction of a good day’s work (usually the equivalent of a week’s work).

Dads are usually the behind the scenes guys...doing their own thing and staying out of the day-to-day trivialities that moms get the pleasure of dealing with.  But their actions offer kids powerful messages about what’s important and how to live.  The Fort Hood Library offered a bittersweet Dad story that are reminded me how lucky I am to have my dad around.

George W. Casey, Jr.may have been the Chief of Staff of the US Army (he retired in April)  but once upon a time he also was an Army brat  with a brave dad.  His father, George W. Casey, Sr. died in a helicopter crash in  Vietnam in 1970.   

Three years after Casey Sr. died, Fort Hood named renamed their library the Casey Memorial Library.  Last year the library opened a new children’s wing and Casey Jr. stopped by on his way to Washington D.C. to read Dr. Seuss to a group of  kids.  He told the kids to read so they could get really smart and get to the top.  

The library at Fort Hood offers kids a place to read, learn and hang out and gives them a place to escape the stress of having a deployed parent.  Anther time, during a question/answer session with kids at the “Good Grief Camp” he talked about his memories of his dad at the beach and teaching him how to play sports.  When he was asked what he would tell his father if he could see him again, he replied, “I really miss you.”

A few other things my dad taught me?  Close the curtains, wear a belt, read the Hardy Boys, get the oil changed in the car, make an effort and don’t be late.  Beside the curtains, I’ve taken all his lessons to heart.  Thanks Dad.

Library Fever

Creepy

“Resilient” should be carved in stone above the door of the New York Society Library.  Its first 40 years saw more action than most cities see in a lifetime.  But there is a limit to how much a library can take.  The Society Library’s limit came in 1803 when librarian Jonathon Forbes closed the doors to all subscribers for three months.  

Closing the library seems like a radical move and three months is a lifetime when you’re waiting to get your hands on the latest bestseller.  What could have caused Forbes to take such radical action, to deny his patrons access to intellectual stimulation and fellowship ?  The words would strike fear in the hearts of all who heard them in the 1800s, especially those in the close living quarters of big cities...  

Yellow Fever.

Yellow Fever was a horrific virus that spread through cities in North America in waves.  Thousands of citizens in Philadelphia suffered and died after a major epidemic in 1793.  George Washington and his colleagues, who had recently moved the Federal Government to Philly, were so alarmed by the outbreak that they fled the city and headed for their estates (imagine the media coverage that brave move would have garnered today).  

When New York heard the reports of thousands of citizens dying from a plague that turned its victims a shade of yellow (caused by jaundice) and weakened them with bouts of vomiting black bile until they expired, they rushed to shut  ports and set up quarantines.  Sadly, viruses have a way of getting around quarantines, and the summers of 1795, 1799 and 1803 hit New Yorkers hard.  The 1803 epidemic was so severe that it led to the establishment of the first NY Board of Health.  But preventing large scale epidemics was a new challenge for America, it’s hard to protect your citizens when you don’t know the enemy.  The Board of Health did their best to react to each outbreak but little to prevent new epidemics or to discover the causes of the horrendous illness.  John Pintard, a trustee of the Society Library, became the first City Health Inspector, which may have led to Forbes decision to temporarily close the library.

Little did anyone know that Yellow Fever was (and still is) a virus spread by mosquitoes.  It can not be passed from one human to another.  Avoiding mosquitoes is the most effective way to prevent the virus.  It wasn’t until the late 1800s that doctors and scientists finally figured out the culprit and it took until 1900 for Walter Reed and the Reed Commission to prove that the vector was the ubiquitous mosquito.  Meanwhile, New York City continued to suffer.

More than 100,000 people died from Yellow Fever outbreaks in North America, which seems like a huge number until you learn that 200,000 people in Africa and Latin America continue to contract Yellow Fever today, leading to 30,000 deaths each year.  According to the World Health Organization, Yellow Fever infections have increased over the past 20 years due to declining immunity in the population which is more transient than ever.  This shocking trend is more disturbing because of the availability of a low cost vaccine.  

The WHO operates the Yellow Fever Initiative in Africa, where the most outbreaks have been reported.  Their recommendations include infant vaccinations and mass vaccination in response to reported cases.  

So, as it turns out, Jonathan Fobes didn’t need to close the library...all he had to do was close the window.  But in Africa they aren’t that lucky.

How's That For Reform?

Photo from Bonnevillemariner.com

John Scott and his Yale buddies were worried about their community.  Even though their town was growing and business was booming, they noticed a lack of intellectually curiosity, people they met didn’t seem to be particularly interested in serious conversation anymore and everyone was paying too much attention to having fun and feeling good.

Sound familiar?

The dumbing down of America is certainly a familiar lament of our modern times.  But  John and his friends are not modern guys.  They lived 250 years ago, in New York City, before America existed.  I read their intriguing story in the book  The New York Society Library:  250 Years by Henry Cooper and Jenny Lawerence.  

To keep their minds from turning to the sensuous pleasures around them,  William Livingston, John Scott and William Smith decided to meet each week to discuss serious ideas and publish their opinions in a journal called “The Independent Reflector”.  And so the Society for Improving in Useful Knowledge was born (colonial bloggers).  By 1754 the small group had grown and the men decided to start a subscription for a “useful, ornamental publick” library that “anyone” (relatively speaking) could join.  The Society’s collection, nicknamed,’ The City Library’, was created in City Hall on Wall Street.  Membership was a whopping ten shilling a year.  In 1772 they received a charter from King George.   

It’s hard for me to imagine New York, a city more American than peanut butter, as a British Colony.
But it’s even harder to imagine what happened to New York City in 1776. George Washington lost the Battle of Long Island and British troops flooded the city.  It was soon the Tory capital of America and remained so for the duration of the war.   Fires raveged the city and soldiers looted the library, using book pages for rifle wadding and as trade for grog.

After seven long years the war ended and amazingly the library emerged in tact.  Hidden books were slowly returned to their shelves from hiding places and private homes around the city.  The City Library was then granted a monumental reward for it’s years of service and suffering; it became the original Library of Congress.  

In 1785 New York City was America’s first Federal Capital.  City Hall became Federal Hall and Congress, including President Washington and VP John Adams moved in and got to work.  The new members of the government frequented the upstairs library, which now included 3,100 books and 239 members.  You may be familiar with some of its regular customers:  Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr,  Chief Justice John Jay and Rufus King.  Always fastidious, the library still has records of what the men checked out (Burr borrowed a volume of Swift).

Alas,  fame and fortune are fleeting and the City Library was left behind on the noisy streets of NYC when the Federal Government moved to Philadelphia in 1790.  The City Government moved back to City Hall and the Library was born again as the New York Society Library.  By 1793 the library had 892 members and 5,000 volumes and it was finally time to build a place of their own.  The library trustees, all city big wigs, leased land on Nassau Street, five blocks from City Hall,  and started building what would be the library’s home for the next 40 years.

So the next time someone complains that the library is slow to adapt, tell them about the New York Society Library that started as a British men’s club for serious thinkers, received a charter from King George, hunkered down to survive the Revolutionary War and the occupation of  NYC, served its new country as the Library of Congress and then began an illustrious career, now in its 3rd century.  

I’d call that pretty flexible.  

Consuming the Library

Photo from Richochet Ideas slideshow

The snazzy youtube video that chronicles the transformation of Rangeview Libraries to “Anythink” libraries helped me warm up to the idea of “launching a library as a competitive brand” (in the words of their design company, Richochet Ideas).  As a woman in the video put it, “we’re in competition, whether we like it or not.”

I have to grudgingly admit that she’s right.  100 years ago media choice were few and far between, just getting news was a thrill, forget choosing between devices, mediums and superstores.  Maybe Andrew Carnegie would have been just as happy with a Nook or an iPhone!  Perish the thought...Carnegie in his smoking jacket,  clicking through Good to Great or getting the latest stock prices on his phone.  Maybe he would have spent his fortune setting up WiFi hotspots instead of helping towns create libraries.

For me, there is a tremendous inherent value in the library as a physical place, a sanctuary, a respite.  Our need for a library is greater than ever because of the constant media stream that assaults every waking moment.  But, alas, I am a spokesperson for the minority.  Modern Americans are consumers and they love to be entertained.  The old fashioned library doesn’t have much to offer along those lines.  So, if I accept that in 2011 the library is an underdog (another quote from the video), and that people have to be sold on how and why the library is important and should exist, then I must admit that the Anythink motto and accompanying squiggle logo is brilliant.

Anythink means considering anything and everything... the possibilities are endless, go where you want to go, be who you want to be...and find out how to do it at the library.  Anythink introduces patrons to the library as a portal to their future, any future, any time, any where.  In one word it sums up how I feel about reading (but I’ve never had the need to sum up reading one word besides ‘books’).

The squiggle logo is pretty clever too.  On the library computers a cartoon of a squirrel discovering the world (and the moon) pops up whenever patrons log on.  The squiggle begins as a cloud but then morphs into an ocean, a kite and dinosaurs as the rocketship squirrel explores his possibilities.  According to Wikipedia, “The animation signifies the many things a doodle can become and the sparks of imagination available to anyone who visits an Anythink library”.  Focusing on the ‘big idea’ of a library is something that Anythink has nailed.

My favorite part of the Anythink branding are the clever posters and flags that lead patrons down the garden path to what’s available at the library.  The posters prompt library customers to “think” about something, anything. You can check them out on Ricochet’s website but here’s a sample...

“Any bullet
Any sacrifice
Any war
Any why           
Searching for facts?  Truth?  Reasons?  A guide can help you unravel any conflict in recorded history...”

“Any accusation
Any culprit
Any twist
Anyone’s guess
Want Mystery?  We can help you find it.  From classic and modern to young adult and early teens...”

No doubt about it...Anythink is appealing, you can feel it pulling you in and working its marketing magic.  Citizens of Rangeview agree;  library cardholders are up 28%.

Creepy Marketing?

Anything Wright Farms is hip, modern, fresh and plastered with advertising, logos and slogans to help the public understand why they should even bother with the library (see yesterday’s post).  They are getting rave reviews from libraries across the country who are also desperate to hang onto their relevance with a new generation.  

Anythink has created a fun vibe that creates a positive emotional link with their patrons.  Their marketing campaign has successfully sold the idea of the library -  libraries everywhere are ready to jump on the bandwagon.

Which leads me to why I think the whole thing is just a little creepy.

• Anythink Wright Farms has no history and no connection to the past.  In fact ‘Wright Farms’ is actually a district that includes three subdivisions and operates the library, parks, sewers and landscaping within the city of Thornton.  What the library offers in amenities and positive feelings it lacks in authenticity.  

• I know the library is new and every building and town has to start somewhere, but because the library was created by a marketing firm it feels a bit contrived.  Most library histories include stories of people who gave their fortunes or their time or their efforts to create a gift for their community (even if it was to glorify their own name).  To me the creation of a library should be different than the building of a grocery store, a bank or even a school, its “brand” should be a representation of the people who built it and the people it serves.  The Anythink library doesn’t necessarily represent the people in the Wright Farms community, it could be ‘any’where in the country.  It’s lovely but generic (think Starbucks).

• The Anythink brand was developed to ‘give people a reason to embrace’ the library.  I know I don’t live in a metropolitan area, but in my small village people embrace the library because they value reading, they want to encourage their children to learn, they want to study, get out of the house, find a job, read a magazine or sit in an air conditioned building.  It makes me uneasy that our culture now has to launch a marketing campaign to explain why reading, gathering, learning or talking are good things.  But, on the other hand, we also have to explain why people should eat fruit and veggies so I guess, at least, we’re consistent.

Despite my misgivings, Anythink is making big waves in the library world and inspiring librarians to think about and present the library in a whole new way.  In May, Michelle Obama awarded Pam Sandlian Smith with the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Services at the White House and last year she was awarded Librarian of the Year by the state of Colorado.  Both awards spread the Anythink good news like dandelion seeds across the lawn.  While a new approach offers hope for the future of the library, I hope we keep some of the old boring libraries around as well, even if I’m the only one in them.

Selling the Library

I’ve been wrestling with my opinion of the Anythink Wright Farms in Colorado.  It’s hard to tell by the name, but Anythink Wright Farms is a library, part of the Anythink library brand.  Yes, you read that right, a library brand.  

Before I could form my opinion too much, I had to do a little research on branding (English majors don’t much of an education in marketing).  The definition of branding on about.com is “getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.”  A good brand delivers your organization’s message credibly, creates an emotional link, motivates your buyers and establishes loyalty.

I am a pretty rotten consumer.  I usually (always) buy the cheapest thing I can get my hands on...I’m not embarrassed to shop at Dollar General, the Salvation Army or yard sales if I can get a good deal (which I always can).  But two brands that I am loyal to, and will pay a little more for, are Honda and Nike.  Both companies are extremely good at delivering the promise that their brand offers to consumers consistently.  Successfully defining your brand as a company involves examining your values, thinking about your mission and determining your product’s personality.

When Pam Sandian Smith decided to create (and trademark) the Anythink brand for the Rangeview Library District in Colorado she was helping the community see how the library could solve “any” problem they were “thinking” about.  At first I was a little disturbed that the library had to be sold like a bag of Cheetos, but then I remember how old I was.  I remembered that I learned how amazing the library was many moons ago when all we could do after school was watch Gilligan’s Island or do our homework.  In comparison, the library was like a amusement park.  Now the library has TONS of competition...the Internet, video games, cable television, I-pods, smart phones...kids have an amusement park waiting for them when they open their front door.  Smith has to demonstrate to them (and their ‘younger than me’ parents) why the library was still cool and worth visiting.

Here’s how they established a new library brand:  

• First they threw out everything about the old Adams County library (except the books) and hired Richochet Ideas, a creative consulting company.  They came up with a hip logo (a squiggle with potential), cool slogan (A Revolution in  Rangeview Libraries) and the overarching “Anythink” brand that permeates every aspect of the library experience.  

• They built an modern, flexible space for people to gather, play, hang out and be seen in (maybe near the indoor/outdoor fireplace) and they included a public park next door.  Of course, it is also LEED certified.

• They scrapped the circulation desk and set up stands for roving librarians, now called Guides, to perch at when they weren’t roaming the floor looking for customers who needed help.  They also scrapped late fees for overdue materials.

• Dewey was history.  Gone are the decimal points and lengthy number codes.  Wordthink is in - a system of organizing books that is similar to the bookstore.  Can you just imagine the signs (incorporating the Anythink brand) that help patrons locate their book?

• Little conveniences and attractions are sprinkled everywhere...a cafe for refreshment, a tree house in the children’s room and word games on their website.

Smith used her love of style and design to completely reinvent the library...there is nothing old, conservative or boring about it.  It is an amazing space that most communities would drool over.  In fact it reminds me of shopping at Hollister or Abercrombie...everything is beautiful, fun and makes you want more.  

Could ‘any’ thing be wrong with that?  I need a little more time to ‘think’ about it...come back tomorrow and see if you agree with any of my conclusions.