Library Wish List for the FY

All I want for 2011 is…
Where to begin?

Books. Not that we don’t have any. What I mean is more of the books that people want to read. “Well, go out and buy them,” you might say.

I wish I could. The book budget is not in good shape this year. I was ordering 19 books a month up until a March. Then the money ran out.

We are getting quite a few law books courtesy of the local Chamber of Commerce. By law books I mean books that will help the non-lawyer understand and interpret the law, legal rights, legal forms, “legalese” (that funny way of talking that lawyers and judges employ) and other public information on legal matters that some might want to keep secret. Donations are always welcome. These books are new.

I wish we had more time to help library users. With their homework, their job applications, their unruly kids, their tiresome parents, their needs. What so many of our library users need is a short introduction to their library. We do our best when they apply for a card but with a long line it is often impossible to say it all. What we have. What we don’t have. Where things are. When they ask, we give an elevator speech about the library. We must be willing not only to deliver it at the drop of a hat, but to tailor it on the fly based on the particular needs and interests of the audience.

Last week I helped a couple of library users who wanted recorded books. They looked at our sizable books on CD and chose several. But we had no Agatha Christie. “What kind of operation are you running here?” the husband was ready to ask. “No Agatha Christie?” Before pointing out that thousands of mysteries have been written since our beloved Agatha passed away in 1976, I remembered the elevator speech. I lead him to a section adjacent to the books on CD. The Play-away section.

“I believe we have some Christie over hear on MP3…” I began.
“No, we don’t have an MP3 player,” he replied.
“Don’t need one. The book is on an MP3 player when you check it out.”
“Really?” He was pleasantly surprised and quickly snagged the last two that were on the shelf. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” his wife added. We should promote them more than we do but…

I shouldn’t have been so critical of the couples’ choices. At last count Ms. Christie has sold four billion books. That’s more than anyone else. She must have known something about her reading public. And it doesn’t hurt that Masterpiece Theater regularly sends up new productions of two of her noteworthy detectives: Poirot and Marple and our PBS stations are quick to snap them up.

The fact that I am writing a “2011 Wish List” in the middle of June is because public funding for libraries is a fitting topic any time of the year...but the fiscal year starts in July.

This blog appears in the Highland Community News June, 17, 2011 under the heading Library Corner by John Grimm