Category: Libraries

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“Be Curious, Not Judgmental” about This Quote?

Be curious, not judgmental.

Every once in a while, we run across something that immediately strikes a chord. On the surface, we get it and it appeals to us. What’s rarer is finding something that immediately strikes a chord and then continues to surprise us with layers of lessons.

“Be curious, not judgmental.”

This simple quote is attributed to Walt Whitman. No less a celebrity than Ted Lasso (the eponymous character in the Disney+ series) gave ol’ Walt credit in a much loved scene that has spurred sales of “Be curious, not judgmental” paraphernalia. Lovely quote. Lovely scene. Certainly, as Ted suggests (and demonstrates, we should all ask lots of questions before forming our opinions. After all, an uninformed opinion is not going to be a useful opinion and may get us in trouble.

And yet this quote has more significance than simply providing a clear and simple assertion of wise advice.

You would think that some “curious” people would ask a few appropriate questions:

      • Did Walt Whitman really say this?
      • If so, when, where, in what poem or letter or speech?
      • If not, who said it?

Sadly, not many people took ol’ Ted’s lesson to heart and asked these questions. It takes a bit of digging, but among publicly available resources, only Snopes seems to have taken up the challenge, and the answers seem to be.

      • Probably not.
      • Nowhere that anyone can find.
      • We don’t really know.

Normally, this would frustrate me. I want a quote properly attributed and it bugs me when memes appear on FB, Twitter, or other social media platforms that either misattribute famous quotes or completely make up quotes for famous people. For example, the internet is filled with memes that attribute the following quote to Thomas Jefferson: “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” However, according to the Thomas Jefferson Library at Monticello, Mr. Jefferson never said or wrote these words. 

Generally, I succumb to suspicions of disinformation and deliberate manipulation of public opinion when I encounter such memes. If anyone objects, privately or publicly, to such memes, the person who posted the meme will likely dismiss the objections as pedantic – and the meme will stay posted to be shared and further spread the mis/disinformation. 

Whether or not misquotes such as the Jefferson misquote “matter” is a subject for debate and I may come back to it in another post. (I think they do because people are more likely to base opinions on how they feel about a subject than what they know about it – in fact what they know is more likely to be determined by how they feel than they other way around – and attributing a fake political message to a hero figure will increase its appeal to a target audience.) 

In the specific case of “Be curious, not judgmental,” however, I would conclude that the political and social consequences of misattribution are minor. No one is picking sides or challenging someone else based on this quote. No one will take the quote more or less seriously whether it is attributed to Walt Whitman, or for that matter Ben Franklin, Newt Gingrich, or Homer. 

In which case, why not simply attribute it to Ted Lasso? He may not have been the first to say it, but he made it famous. And in so doing, he accidentally showed us how we may all become entranced by an idea without actually living it.

So if someone makes a t-shirt that says, 

Be curious, not judgmental.
(not Walt Whitman) via Ted Lasso 

I’ll buy it.

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Podcasts on Library Leadership and Community Engagement

What are your favorite podcasts for staying current on library news and trends? I look for podcasts that focus on Community Engagement or Transformative Leadership in libraries. Here are a few that consistently include material relevant to one or the other (or both) of those subjects. If you know of another great podcast that addresses these issues, let me know using the “Contact me” link on the right.

Call Number with American Libraries presents “conversations with librarians, authors, thinkers, and scholars about topics from the library world and beyond.” Host Phil Morehart, communications manager for the American Library Association, is professional and focused on the topics, which he and his guests explore systematically and in depth. The length of each episode varies dramatically from 15 minutes to 45 minutes, though you should expect just over 30 minutes. The range in length seems to be a function of subject matter, the number of guests, and whether or not it’s a sponsored podcast. Many podcasts are not only purposeful but also fun, such as the late 2021 podcasts on Zombies (in October) and food (in November). Call Number is a great general-subject podcast for librarians and occasionally touches on topics related to community engagement, management, and transformational leadership.

Libraries Lead in the New Normal addresses strategic library leadership issues. It’s a little irregular, disorganized, and long-winded, but it is also highly relevant and insightful for library leaders. Many discussions look at how libraries fit in their communities and the role libraries play in society. Each podcast is 45 minutes to an hour long and includes one or more practicing librarians as guests. The hosts (R. David Lankes and Mike Eisenberg) ramble a bit, but the casualness also makes the podcasts entertaining and, again, the topics are fundamental to librarianship and the guests are interesting.

Library Leadership Podcast tends to adhere to important, day-to-day concerns about library management such as “Beating Burnout” and “Talking So Your Boss Will Listen”. It is tightly organized and professionally presented – it comes out regularly, the topics and the questions are  prepared in advance, and the host (Adriane Herrick Juarez) does a good job of staying focused. Each podcast is about 15 minutes long and consists of an interview with one librarian.

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Libraries: Community Information Centers during an Emergency

In an emergency, whether the emergency is a tornado or a pandemic, in most communities everyone knows who takes care of what:

      • Order and traffic, rule enforcement: The local police department.
      • Safety and rescue: The local fire department.
      • First aid and medical attention: The local first aid squad, clinics and hospitals.
      • Shelter: Schools and community centers.
      • Coordinating it all: Town Hall.
      • Keeping the public informed: ????? (Hint: Why not the local library?)

With the demise of local newspapers, most communities, whether the population is 3,000 or 300,000, have no place to turn for reliable information accumulation and dissemination. During the COVID pandemic, initially Americans experienced an information vacuum at the state and national level. National leaders declined to provide direction and released confusing, contradictory, and sometimes downright false information. A few state leaders, such as Governor Cuomo, became particularly famous for filling the information vacuum. However, who fills the information vacuum at the local level, especially for emergencies, such as flooding, fires, earthquakes, or tornados? Why not the local library?

Emergency action is usually well planned and coordinated. The police and fire departments as well as other first responders  work with local government to prepare for emergencies. They know what to do, they practice doing it, and they’re good at it. Thanks to that preparation, people get rescued, order is maintained, and emergency facilities are set up where and when they are needed. In addition, volunteers step forward to clear debris, fill sand bags, and help distribute food, water, and blankets.

But who informs the public? How do local residents know which roads are closed or where to go for those emergency supplies of food, water, and blankets? Who tells volunteers where they are most needed? As rules and policies change, who makes sure that average citizen knows what’s going on? Police and fire crews are all busy being first responders and there is nothing in their training or experience that familiarizes them with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Nixle/NextDoor, or even email to effectively communicate with the entire community on an ongoing basis. Someone needs to fill the information gap, regardless of information platform. Why not libraries?

The little town of Cranbury, NJ where I live was hit by tropical storm Henri on August 22, 2021. We didn’t suffer any wind damage, but we got pounded by 9 inches of rain in an hour. The rain was so intense little Cranbury (population about 3,000) was mentioned on the PBS NewsHour and CNN coverage of Henri the following day. In addition, many towns upstream from Cranbury’s beautiful lake got almost as much rain as we did, which of course, meant we not only suffered from flooding due to the rain that fell in our own town but also from the rain that fell in other towns when it flowed down to us through the watershed. The mayor, local volunteers, and Cranbury’s Office of Emergency Management did a great job of handling the flooding, rescuing stranded motorists, and helping our neighbors and businesses near the lake. But communication was a problem. And still is.

No one knew which roads were closed and, once we found out which ones were closed, we didn’t know when they were reopened. For those of us who had to go to work, there was no way to find alternate routes with any certainty. No one really knew where to go for help, and since it was Sunday the town hall was closed. If you were personal friends with the mayor or someone on the township committee or if you knew a volunteer in the fire department, you could call them, but few of them knew the whole picture – or even many details beyond what they personally were working on. Unfortunately, if you didn’t know someone, other than for a 911 life-threatening emergency, you were out of luck. We have great first responders and an excellent library. We should put them together.

Just as the police department, the fire department, the mayor, and others spring into action in an emergency, why can’t the local library staff spring into action to provide information services? Information is what libraries are for, isn’t it, the accumulation and dissemination of information? And librarians can do most of this kind of work from home – no need to go out into the pandemic, the rain, or the wind like other first responders.

Most towns have an Office of Emergency Management (OEM) that prepares for emergencies and lays out which township organization will take responsibility for which services. Libraries should join in the planning and, whether the emergency is a storm hitting at 4:00am on a Sunday morning (like Henri) or a pandemic rolling out over many months, the library staff can quickly set up information accumulation and dissemination services, both for the first responders and the public. If library staff are part of the OEM, it would be expected of them, and first responders would coordinate with them. It would be the library’s job to figure out how to collect the information and disseminate it effectively to the entire community.

Turning the library into the community’s emergency information center benefits the police, the fire department, the medical workers, and the town hall staff as well as the community members because the first responders can focus on their jobs and the community has a place to turn for reliable, curated information.

I have no data on this but I am willing to guess that if you ask most Americans where they turn for information in an emergency, they do not think of the library. They should. Information is the heart and soul of what libraries offer their communities. Libraries should be so plugged into their communities that whenever the community needs information, especially in an emergency, the first place everyone in the community thinks of is the library.

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Communication: Leadership’s Binding Agent

You’ve hired people with all the right skills, talent, and experience and you’ve given them the tools they need to perform their functions. And yet, patron services just aren’t clicking. Project pieces don’t fit together. And unresolved friction is the norm. Maybe patrons aren’t complaining, but the library’s image isn’t exactly shining either. In the end, some of those valuable people on your team-that’s-not-a-team leave, and you discover they aren’t necessarily leaving for better positions. They just want to work someplace else.

Where do you begin looking for the root cause behind the disfunction on a library team (or any team)? How do you know what to fix?

A good place to begin is communication, and look to yourself for figuring out what to fix. Let’s face it, survey after survey shows that librarians completing the Myers-Briggs personality profile (or almost any other personality profile) score high on introversion. That’s neither good nor bad. That’s just a fact, and as a library leader it’s something that you need to be aware of and work on, especially in your own communication.

Good leaders need to be good communicators in three ways:

      1. Outbound communication: Enlightening and listening to higher level management, the board, or the larger community, including patrons.
      2. Direction oriented communication: Talking to peers and staff about what your team’s overall objective is and how success will be recognized.
      3. Day-to-day communication: Staying on top of progress on tasks and coordinating problem solving.

These are interrelated communications, of course. Problem solving, for example, will always be conducted in the context of objectives. Weakness in any of these levels of communication, however, could spell failure.

A library team that does not listen to the larger community (especially listening to people who do not currently use the library) cannot possibly expect to meet the needs and interests of the community at a high level of satisfaction because it simply will not know what those needs and interests are. Library leaders are responsible for making sure that the community is heard and understood. Otherwise, the library will miss opportunities or produce services that few in the community want or need.

Similarly, library leaders need to coordinate library or department activities with their peers within and outside the library. They also need to make sure that the people who work with them understand what the goals are and why they are important. Workers who are disconnected from the finished product are not likely to care whether they do their work well or efficiently, but team members who know why they are working on a project will derive greater satisfaction from doing the job well. People are far more likely to care about how well they do their jobs if they understand the consequences of both doing well and doing poorly.

Finally, operations can quickly get bogged down in minor unresolved issues. Leaders need to empower team members to quickly make decisions by communicating and coordinating with each other, but leaders also need to make sure that team members are resolving the problems. Without at least some oversight, some problems may simply be ignored because each person thinks it’s someone else’s problem – or at least that it’s not their responsibility. It’s a basic management skill required of leaders at all levels to stay attuned to the emergence of issues within their team and the need to resolve them. How they are resolved (within the context of the team’s objective) is less important than that they are resolved and that everyone affected by the resolution is aware of it and why it worked out the way it did.

Ultimately, I would argue that having a team with a perfect balance of skills or having a team on which everyone is friendly and gets along is less important than having a team that communicates well. It is possible to fill most skill gaps and to get past many personal awkwardnesses, if the team can communicate well professionally. Communication is the tool that binds teams together and makes them strong. Assuring the team can and does communicate is your responsibility as the team leader. If communication is a problem on the team you lead, address this first and many other problems will take care of themselves.

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Outreach, Marketing & Engagement in Public Libraries

Librarians frequently use the terms outreach, marketing and engagement interchangeably. Many people, not just librarians, do. However, the terms are fundamentally different, and the underlying philosophy of how a library works and participates in its community affects which term applies. It is essential for librarians, especially library leadership, to understand the differences.

Outreach: The primary – almost exclusive – function of outreach is to increase awareness within an audience. Libraries conduct outreach to make community members aware of their services and programs. The underlying objective of outreach is to increase attendance or use of existing services and programs developed by the library for the audience. Usually this is accomplished Outreach is fundamentally a PR function consisting of outbound, unidirectional communication from the library to the community.through unidirectional communications such as posters in the library, e- newsletters, social media posts, handouts available through the circulation or reference desks and blurbs or articles in local news outlets. Outreach is fundamentally a PR function. It consists of outbound, unidirectional communication from the library to thecommunity.

Marketing: The function of marketing is rarely used by libraries. Marketing has three essential parts. First, marketing is a proactive effort to identify distinct audiences within a community. These audience might be defined, for example, by age, language, education level, gender identity, political views, reading habits or any combination of characteristics. Next, marketing requires the institution to make a proactive effort to understand the wants and needs of each group it serves and what motivates the people who make up that group. Young adults uncertain about their gender identities have information interests and reading / browsing habits that are different from the information interests and reading / browsing habits of retirees with grandchildren and health problems.

Marketing also assumes that there are segments of the community that the library does not reach well, and, because they are part of the community, we should connect with them. Marketing then assumes that we may not know the people in these groups as well as we think, and we need to understand them to provide them with the programs and services they want. Therefore, we librarians need to identify the various groups in our communities, and then we need to understand them. 

Second, marketing uses what it has learned about the various segments of its community to change existing programs or develop new ones that meet the needs and interests of those segments.

The last, and not least, component of marketing is much like outreach. Marketing includes letting the community know about all these great programs and services that the library has developed for it based on what the library has learned about the various segments of the community.

Marketing is a continuous cycle of learning about the community, how it is changing and what new segments are emerging, and then adjusting the library’s mix of programs and services to meet the community’s current needs and interests. Outreach is just a piece of marketing.

Engagement: Both outreach and marketing start with predetermined assumptions about the role of the library in the community and those assumptions are made by the library. Engagement allows the community to have a bigger say in the role of the library in the community.

Engagement, like marketing, starts with identifying the constituencies within a community and then goes to them and asks them about their aspirations for their community. The community, not the library, is the center of the discussion. Instead of asking what the community wants from the library, which is the classic marketing question, the basic engagement question is what does the community want for itself. The library then has to figure out how to facilitate those aspirations.

Sometimes the best way to facilitate a community With engagement, the community, not the library, is the center of the discussion.aspiration will require the library to develop programs and services within the library with input from the community, but many times the best way for the library to facilitate a community aspiration will be to empower individuals or other organizations within the community to work towards related goals. Richard Harwood of the Harwood Institute refers to this as “turning outward”. Instead of the library looking at itself as an institution first, the library looks first and primarily at the community for a definition of what the library is and does.

The ALA has developed a program called Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC). LTC is an engagement program for libraries and includes tools and training for library staff. LTC (engagement) makes it possible for libraries to work with their communities to develop programs and services in conjunction with the community to achieve aspirations defined by the communities.

Libraries that engage with their communities not only provide programs and services defined and created by their communities, they also facilitate work done by others.

“Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services,
great libraries build communities.“
R. David Lankes

 

Outreach, therefore, is fundamentally the PR function of marketing. Marketing is fundamentally the cyclical process of learning about a library’s community, building and revising library programs and services to meet the needs of the community and then using outreach to make the public aware of those programs and services. Engagement, however, puts the community front and center and calls on the library not only to build library programs and services but also to enable and participate in programs and services developed by the community itself or by other institutions. Engagement makes the library a member of the community.

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Social Media as a Platform for Information Literacy Education by Libraries

Social Media is periodically used by political and social actors to arouse emotional responses to misinformation and disinformation to sow division and enhance loyalty to their own causes.

Public libraries are in a unique position to counter this practice by using the same social media tools to develop information literacy and critical thinking in the general public. A few carefully crafted, interactive campaigns could be used to engage community members and encourage them to

    • Appreciate the benefits of distinguishing between demonstrable fact, emotionally titillating fiction and beliefs.
    • Evaluate the context in which information is provided.
    • Consider the objectives, priorities and potential biases of sources.
    • Understand their own objectives in seeking, selecting and using information.

Such a campaign would require a combination of witty memes and skillfully crafted interactive tools that would both engage members of the public and instruct them in information literacy and critical thinking.

Done right, a social media campaign could develop information literacy in the public and enhance the brand of libraries as sources for and advocates of reliable, fact based information.

How would this be accomplished?

To begin with, public libraries are good at providing information, so the instinct is to take a “This is a fact and that is not” (we are the authority) approach to service. However, these days information changes and spreads at a rate that renders this approach impractical. As an alternative, consider the old adage, “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to catch fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” Public libraries need to teach information literacy to the public rather than attempt to be information literacy for their communities. This has the added advantage of keeping libraries out of the fray. We can certainly have our opinions, but we make it clear that as institutions we are teaching choice, not taking sides.

In addition, public libraries need to reconsider the classroom paradigm. When teaching information literacy, classrooms are fine for K-12 or academic libraries where students are a captive audience and receptive to the instruction via classroom approach. The general public, especially working adults with kids, however, are not likely to embrace giving up an evening or a series of evenings to go to the library, sit in a classroom and be instructed on something as esoteric as information literacy.

Teach me about writing a will? Fine.
Teach me how to avoid a propaganda rabbit hole?
That’s not going to happen to me, so why waste my time?
Besides, I hated school
and I have no desire to sit in a classroom again.

Social media is a viable option. It reaches the community in their spare time wherever they happen to be, even if it’s just the 15 minutes they’re on the bus to the train station or waiting for their daughter to get out of soccer practice. It’s interactive so it can take advantage of basic pedagogical principles, and it can be entertaining so it keeps them engaged.

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Social Media Marketing: Using Your Library Outreach Budget Effectively

In the age of COVID, libraries have turned increasingly to social media to get the word out about ongoing activities. Patrons are no longer coming into the library building, so how do we tell them about all the stuff going on in virtual library space? A small social media marketing budget can increase the effectiveness of outreach by over 1,000%. This post presents a simple case study of inexpensive, effective social media marketing that can be applied to most public and academic libraries.

Many libraries have turned to Facebook (FB) posts to announce events, programs and services. We must ask, however, are libraries really reaching their patrons by merely posting their announcements on Facebook?

Illustration of how to estimate the number of Facebook users in a communityIf a library serves a community of 50,000 residents, maybe 1,000 (2%) of them follow the library on FB. Worse (and many libraries don’t realize this) few FB posts reach even half of the people who follow the library. In fact, in most cases a library is lucky if any given post reaches 20% of its FB followers.

How to Estimate reach of Unboosted Facebook PostGiven that math, in a community of 50,000 people, only 200 (0.4%) residents will see any given post. If a library announces a big event, such as an interactive webinar on keeping kids engaged with school during the pandemic, the library will reach only a tiny percentage of the community with its announcement. Furthermore, many of those who are reached may not be parents of elementary school age kids. If a third of the people reached by the post are too young or too old to have children, out of 50,000 residents only about 80 people who might possibly be interested will see the announcement.

What if there were a way to reach many more interested residents for as little as $50 per week?

Targeted boosting of Facebook posts is a possible solution. Targeted boosting on FB allows libraries to make sure that community residents meeting selected demographic characteristics see library posts. The boost for each post can be targeted differently depending on the audience for the library service being promoted.

For example, I advised NCC Japan on how to improve their outreach to their approximately 750 FB followers. NCC Japan works with Japan Studies scholars and librarians in the USA and Japan to find and exchange academic resources. People who know about NCC are enthusiastic about its services but not all know the full gamut of services available through NCC. Typically, each FB post reached only 100 to 125 followers.

In NCC Japan’s case, for $2 per day over a five day period in April 2020, we boosted one FB post. Doing so made sure that the post reached 538of their 750 Facebook followers who logged onto Facebook during those five days. By boosting this post we more than quadrupled the reach.

I also advised NCC Japan to boost some of their posts to Facebook users who had never heard of NCC before but might be interested in its programs and content.

How to estimate the reach of a targeted boosted post.For $10 per day over a five day period, NCC Japan boosted a post to reach more than 17,000 Facebook users who were selected based on geography,  education, profession and academic interest. None of the 17,000 who saw the boosted NCC FB post were current followers of NCC. Over 700 people engaged with the post, clicking through to NCC Japan’s FB page, and many became NCC FB followers. Even those who did not engage with the ad at least had NCC’s name and logo presented to them, which will make them more receptive to future NCC boosted posts.

One time advertisements are usually not enough to attract all the possible people who might be interested in a particular library program or event. However, each boosted FB post will reach far more of those people than a post that is not boosted, especially if the objective is to reach people who are not currently engaging with the library but could be. Over time, more of those unengaged community members will become engaged community members.

If libraries consider the labor and other resource costs that are spent on programs, dedicating a small budget to promoting greater awareness of and participation in events and programs is an excellent investment. If it costs $500 to organize an event and 100 people attend, the cost is $5 per person. If a $50 promotional budget is added and 10 more people attend, the cost per person is still $5, but 10 more people have participated. If more than 10 additional people participate, the cost per person begins to shrink. Furthermore, of course, when new people attend an event, it is possible to promote additional events and get them even more involved in the library.

It is not enough to simply post on social media. It must be done effectively. One of the remarkable things about social media marketing is just how inexpensive it is. Effective social media marketing simply requires a small budget, some expertise and practice.


1. These are gross estimates that will vary dramatically from community to community. A little research should produce more accurate figures for any given community.

2. Pew Research. 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/

3. IBID

4. US Census. 2019. QuickFacts United States. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 Accessed Jan 12, 2021

5. Act for Youth. U.S. Teen Demographics. http://actforyouth.net/adolescence/demographics/ Accessed Jan 12, 2021

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Marketing: Libraries Shouldn’t Spend a Nickel Without It

Marketing is not about being heard and understood. Marketing is about asking, listening and understanding.

Look at the job descriptions for marketing positions at many libraries and you will see requirements for experience with social media, press releases, and brochure, poster and signage design. Unfortunately, that is not marketing. Those activities are for creative design and outreach professionals, not marketers.

Libraries already do a good deal of casual marketing. For example, they talk to their patrons regularly and they have all kinds of data on how many times patrons checked out any given book over any time frame you can imagine. Unfortunately, information collected this way is difficult to analyze systematically and much of it cannot readily be shared with others for action. It’s also limited to people who are already visiting the library regularly, often leaving out over 50% of the community.

Using only those sources, a library has trouble answering the following questions: 

    • Who in the community is not coming to the library? And why?
    • How do different groups in the community go about finding information instead of coming to the library?
    • Which media are most effective in reaching current – and potential – patrons?
    • If the library had x-number of people turn out for an event, is that a good result or a terrible result?

Marketing is the tool libraries use to discover stuff they don’t know. This “stuff” includes patrons that the librarians have never met, needs and interests of current patrons that the patrons have never talked about, and the answers to the question: Why do some members of the community never in their entire lives walk through the doors of a library? In addition, marketing can provide insights (other than instinct) in how to effectively resolve those questions.

Finally, marketing spots trends and changes in behavior before they catch the library by surprise. 

Marketing means understanding patrons first, so the library can build collections and design services that meet the needs and interests of the patrons. And then, last but not least, marketing allows libraries to reach out to patrons effectively to tell them how the library meets their needs and satisfies their interests so they will come to the library.

Marketing identifies possibilities so librarians can turn them into realities.

Before any of those creative and outreach projects described in the job description at the beginning of this post can be completed successfully, libraries need to learn a good deal about their current patrons and the people in the community who do not yet visit the library regularly but should.

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What is the Role of a Library in a Pandemic?

The fundamental mission around which everything a library does is the accumulation and dissemination of information for its community.

A secondary objective of a library is to provide a certain amount of entertainment. 

We can debate the details of these assertions at another time, but if you grant me that “accumulation and dissemination of information” is at least a fundamental mission of all libraries, we can continue.

We can also assume that people need information and entertainment to survive an emergency, especially a pandemic. They need information so they know what to do – how to respond to the pandemic – and they need to have confidence in that information so they do not panic. In addition, community members need entertainment so they can survive emotionally as well as physically.

Finally, let us take as a given that in a pandemic, library buildings will close. In the current pandemic, many states have ordered libraries to close their doors. Many libraries in other states have voluntarily curtailed in-building operations.

Does closing the building mean that libraries have to cease operations? Of course not. That’s absurd. Libraries can still offer much of what makes libraries libraries through online services. It takes some adaptation, to be sure, but it can be done. 

I have listed below some ideas of what a library can do while it is still “open for business” even while the library building is closed.

1. Communicate library activities to the community. This can and should be done aggressively by all means available. 

    • The cheapest and easiest way to let the community know what a library is doing is to post it on the library’s web site! Use basic marketing principles around placement and messaging (do not, for example, have a message that says “the library is closed until further notice” right next to a message that says “come to these online meetings.” From the patron’s point of view, that’s very confusing. The building may be closed, but the library is open. It’s that simple.
    • Facebook is a great way to get word out to much of the community. For a few dollars (literally about $10), it is possible to put announcements that “The Building is Closed, But the Library is Still Open” in front of thousands of community members who are stuck at home browsing Facebook. Direct them to your Facebook page and your web site where they can find out all the other details.
    • The visual nature of Instagram makes it a tool good for generating interest in and excitement about library activities.
    • Email is also cheap. Send a note to members about changes to policy (due dates have been extended, blocked cards have been unblocked, etc) and in the same email, tell them about all the things going on at the library. Get patrons to sign up for a monthly newsletter that provides updates on past and upcoming activities. Send out a vibrant, low text, high-imagery newsletter sharing past and upcoming events.
    • Newspapers are still being published, online and in print. Make the library a story and get the newspaper to cover it (both online and in print!).
    • Have the mayor and other public officials mention in their announcements that the library is still functioning online and encourage community members to visit the library’s home page for information about resources and activities that are available.

2. Move book clubs and other groups online. Don’t cancel anything! GoToMeeting, WebEx, and Zoom are just three of multiple online meeting services available to libraries that make virtual meetings possible. I belong to a literary group at my neighborhood library. We don’t read specific books each month, we talk about different genres and aspects of literature. The average age of members may well be around 60, but everyone quickly learned how to participate using a virtual meeting tool and everyone has been grateful to have the human contact during the stay-at-home period. It’s possible to chat while knitting in a virtual meeting. ESL sessions can be conducted online. Even chess is possible. D&D would be easy. Perhaps board games would be a challenge.

3. Add (online) events. Take advantage of online resources to add events, especially for kids. Pandemics – any emergency requiring people to stay home – are especially hard on kids and parents with small children. The more events you have that can keep kids entertained, the happier the kids will be – and the happier the parents will be that they have an active and supportive library. I know a librarian who organized an art group for teens that produced spectacular imagery. Another library added reader’s advisory services via FB in which a librarian would interact with multiple patrons looking for books to read.

4. Expand existing online services. When people are stuck at home, unable to go to theaters or the gym, they look to the internet for services. Some need more variety than what is available through paid services. Others simply can’t afford them. Most libraries have access to magazines, ebooks, and streaming video. These can all be expanded. Team up with other libraries through the county or state or the ALA to negotiate for greater availability of titles and less restrictive limits on the number and length of time digital assets can be accessed.

5. Expand internet access services. Libraries are often the primary source for internet access for students and adults who do not have high speed internet access at home. They made need access to broadband internet access through the library just to access the library’s online services, but they are also likely to need it for school or work, not to mention entertainment. Even when the library is closed, the library can facilitate internet access by

    • Extending WiFi services deep into the parking lot. If patrons have access to a car, they can sit in the parking lot and use the internet.
    • Lending WiFi hot spots. Obviously, anything that is being lent by the library requires the object be moved from the library to the patron, which can be an infection transmission mechanism. However, if the sterilization procedures can be worked out, libraries that can lend WiFi hot spots to patrons will do a great favor to high school students preparing for college (or college students trying to wrap up courses for graduation).

6. Provide community updates. People want and need to know what’s going on. Cable news and even regional newspapers are pretty good at covering state and national news. But what about local news and information that provide actionable knowledge to residents? Often it comes from many sources. Often community members only get part of the news they need. The library should consolidate it on their web site. No commentary. No editing. Just post it.

    • Updates from the mayor’s office.
    • Notices and updates from the police department.
    • Updates from the county health department.
    • Anything else that applies directly to the decisions being made by community members such as:
      • Testing locations.
      • Lists of businesses providing curbside pickup.
      • News about non-library community activities.
      • Stories about good-deeds in the community.
      • Stories about scams or people abusing the crisis.

7. Post information on the disease (or other emergency). Find basic, factual, non-Wikipedia sources of information about the disease, how it spreads, where it came from, what it does inside our bodies, etc. Libraries should NOT attempt to digest this information and write their own material about it. Instead, create a reading list of magazine and journal articles, books, videos (lots of videos), and webinars, all of which should be available through the library, with links for ready access. Librarians should use all of their information literacy skills to sift through the available information to find the most current, reliable information. Be sure that the information is in a form the library’s community can readily digest – the latest peer reviewed journal article in Lancet on the way the virus affects protein replication in lung cells may be useful to a practicing physician, but it will not help an accountant or a mom understand what they are facing. The library may want to break out the information according to age group so parents can share (and learn) with their children.

Remember, it’s all about the patrons. Don’t forget who your patrons are. If you have a large Spanish or Mandarin speaking community, be sure to offer these services in Spanish or Chinese as well. In many ways, these communities are the most shut off from reliable information and will depend upon the services of the library more than majority language communities.

Stay in touch with the community. While the building is closed, direct person-to-person contact with the community may be curtailed. The library staff, especially the executive director and the department heads, need to stay in touch with members of the community to identify needs the library can fill and or things that it could do better.

In a pandemic, as in any emergency, access to current, reliable information is essential for productive debate and coordinated, unified public response. Make the library what it is supposed to be: A center for reliable information for the community it serves.

Author’s note: This blog post is dated in mid-May 2020. However, it draws extensively on conversations held over the last five years in which I asked, “What is the role of a library in an emergency (such as a blizzard)?” Beginning a year ago, influenced by years of exposure to Bill Gates’ warnings about the likelihood of a global pandemic, I refined that question to “What would the role of a library be in a pandemic?” In early February of 2020, as reports of the Chinese COVID-19 outbreak spreading to other countries began appearing in the news, I proposed to the library where I worked that we begin a basic information campaign around flu avoidance (washing hands, coughing into sleeves, etc). Then in early March of 2020, as reports of the virus in Washington State and New York City appeared in the news, I asked my pandemic question of a group of library leadership graduate students at Rutgers University. In the Rutgers discussion and in the conversations last year about the role of libraries in a pandemic, I proposed many of the ideas presented here. Of course, I got lots of thoughtful feedback then and I welcome more thoughtful comments here now.