As an outreach librarian, I try to figure out why people aren’t coming to the library. Some of these reasons are obvious: can’t park, bad hours, building too cold, don’t read…. When I get to answers like “don’t read” my next question is always “why not?” The answers are all over the map, but the one that drives me the craziest — since I work with a lot of seniors — is “can’t find large print titles in anything that interests me”. Now, our library has maybe a thousand large print titles, even some new ones, which is not a bad collection for a library our size. It’s mostly fiction. Non-fiction circulates less, and it’s also harder to get. Our largest request that comes to me is “more computer books in large type” followed by “more poetry” If you’re blind in the US, you can get books on tape delivered to you for free, but you often can’t choose the exact titles [think Netflix] and you don’t get the tactile experience of reading which many people really like. According to the Royal National Institute of the Blind in the UK 96% of all books are not available in large print, audio or braille editions. They have started a Right to Read campaign complete with arresting graphics and sound clip by Michael Palin, to raise people’s awareness of lack of access to reading materials for the blind and otherwise visually impaired. [pscott]
Month: November 2004
a few from OCLC
OCLC has really been doing some outreach. First off, remember that they have a blog. Second of all, they have managed to work out a co-branded Yahoo toolbar with a worldcat search embedded in it. I’d send you to the OCLC link but it’s an annoying requesting-all-your-personal-info page, so I’ll just link to Gary Price’s comments and links about it. Lastly, and my favorite, they’ve got some top titles lists. Top ten, top 1000, top 1000 with all the cover art [giant page].
Maybe someone could give me some data, what level of markeet penetration does OCLC have? When they say “top 1000 titles owned by libraries” what is the difference between saying that and “top 1000 titles owned by OCLC libraries”? According to their site, they have 52,000 libraries worldwide [9134 outside the US], and according to the ALA, there are at least twice that many libraries in the US alone. The nearest “OCLC library” to me that has the #2 book, the Bible, is 40 miles from here. From there, I also found Project Gutenberg’s Top 100 lists which tells a different story, somewhat.
Buffalo/Erie County PL opinion
I sent around some email about the Buffalo PL crisis yesterday and got this interesting note back from a Buffalo non-librarian resident.
The library closing here is political brinkmanship by the county executive. He wants an increase in the sales tax but has to go through this. It might happen to some extent, for a brief period of time. They are threatening to close the zoo, the symphony, etc. You know those things that the middle class and weathly have come to expect. There is a legitmate question as to whether there are too many libraries with the reduced population. But that is a different question requiring a different discussion…. The church we are attending, along with others, are aggressively advocating on behalf of the libraries.
internet librarians + feed
Some of my favorite librarians gather in Monterey for Internet Librarian. Want to read about their various exploits? You can subscribe to the feed here.
libraries in Buffalo are more popular than ever, so why are they closing?
You can’t put it more plainly than this “After January 1, 2005: Your Library Will Close” Buffalo and Erie County NY libraries are looking at 80% budget cuts. They have very good advocacy pages set up like this “contact your legislature” page, but is it too late? I know that sometimes libraries consider closing [along with turning off the OPAC] as a tactic to raise awareness of funding cuts and their affect on libraries, but having a budget that is cut 80% really does seem like an irrecoverable budget slashing, doesn’t it? The budget is being debated and acted on this week, contact your local officials. As a side note, do you know why the county needs more money? It’s not because citizens are getting a tax break, it’s to cover rising Medicare costs.