[Publib] Missing the Boat (or Getting Wet, at least)

[Backwage at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/13/2009 6:34:38 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lchlebanowski at avondale.org writes:

Well, I find that very curious since libraries all  over the country are 
seeing an incredible increase in the number of visitors.  Maybe it's your 
workplace...


It is.  My workplace is a combination of average Joes (who do not go  to 
the library) and some much brighter folk, who do.  
 
What would save us would be if my pal Ricardo had been in today.  He  goes 
almost every evening--he lives quite close to a branch.  If you  average 
that out, then everybody in my office goes to the library once a week or  so.  
 
But that isn't true.  It just isn't.  Some people go often, most  don't go. 
 
 
Got a few nastygrams about this posting.  I'm used to getting people  upset 
with hard news.  It's my job.  I tell my people that the  unionized sector 
of the construction market is about 15 percent to perhaps  17.  And 
shrinking.  They tell me if I keep writing that, I'm  fired.  I've been writing it 
for twenty years.  [I've also been  advising them of what to do to keep the 
numbers up.]  What do they say in  response to my unfair and entirely 
accurate criticism?  That they hold  the upper portion of the market.  That they do 
the lion's share of the  important work.  All true.  But that wasn't the 
question.   The question was, "Why has the unionized share of the construction 
market shrunk  from fifty percent to a third of that in thirty years?"  
 
Let me ask you a question:  when you call a plumber or electrician  to your 
home, do you insist that this person be a union member?  You  don't care as 
long as the toilet flushes when you yank the handle.  Nor  does the plumber 
especially care if you have a job.  When he thinks of the  library, he 
imagines it to be a permanent institution that will go onward even  if he votes 
against the bond issue.  His kids play video games and night  and he watches 
television.  Don't like that?  I'm sure you've got  figures somewhere that 
show communities really using the heck out of their  libraries since the 
recession began.  I wrote recently of a library out in  Hemet where that was 
true.  Or seemed to be.  In fact, if the Hemet  library was packed (it was) 
then it held about the same number of people in one  of the movie theaters of 
the local multiplex, which has six.  And better  hours.  You say that you're 
not in business to compete with the  multiplex?  True.  And you weren't in 
business to compete  with vaudeville, either.  No, you don't have to compete 
with anything  do you?  Because you're the library, and the library is  
forever.  You hope.  And it will be forever, just as union  construction will 
be forever--in a very small niche market, and likely to be  unable to finance 
the retirement benefits of its own members.  
 
Out in Hemet they know better.  Ask the librarians there why they  can't 
finish the second floor of their nice, new library--that one that is  always 
packed with patrons.  If they love us so much, why are we  starving?  It's 
because they don't love us so much.  Maybe in nice  rich communities where the 
tax money flows like tap water.  East Brunswick  New Jersey.  Most of 
silicon valley.  Never-never lands like  that.  But a batting average takes in 
all the strikeouts, too.  
 
Here's a hint:  Whenever your own research shows you're doing peachy,  fire 
your analyst.  You need to listen to your enemies--the ones who say  the 
library is irrelevant.  Your enemy is always about half right.   There's a 
saying:  If you always think you are fat, you never will be; if  you never 
think you are fat, you always will be.  Right now the library  thinks the 
solution to being fat is to buy bigger pants.  Your problem is  figuring out which 
half is right.  
 
The analyst in me writes:  "If the library user population increased  over 
the past few months this is most likely because the original user figure  
was small, especially in comparison to local population, and the figures are  
suspect in any sense and at any time because they are collected by persons  
likely to profit from the inflation of the figures."  But then, I'm the  
type who wouldn't swear I had five fingers without counting them.
 
M. McGrorty
 
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