Idaho Librarian
Volume 56, No. 2

American Library Association Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels delivered the Keynote “Meeting the Challenge: Tough Questions for Tough Times” at the Idaho Library Association 2004 Annual Fall Conference, Wednesday, October 6, during which he said that, with the ALA’s 64,000 members, he had “64,000 people telling him how to do it right.”  The following day, new ILA Editor Philip A. Homan stole an hour between workshops to ask Fiels a few tough questions and presents the interview in this issue of the Idaho Librarian.

 What was your education?  You have the MLS.  What is your background in libraries?

 Well, let me see.  I’ll give you the capsule.  I was, as we said last night, a philosophy undergraduate major, which made me able to be philosophical about not being able to earn any money.  I did go to library school under a national defense scholarship, which was kind of interesting.  I think it was a good investment of federal money.  I became a school librarian for five years outside of Buffalo.  I worked in a little junior high school next to a steel plant which was very ethnically diverse.

In what part of Buffalo?  What town?

 Lackawanna.  The Bethlehem Steel plant.  After five years, I decided to ...  I was ...  It was pretty difficult.  Because ....  And that’s why I think I have a lot of empathy for school librarians.  Because you’re just ....  We wouldn’t even send a book across the tracks from the high school to that school because they’d lose it or they were afraid they would lose it.  So it was a very sort of isolated position.  I think I learned a lot about what you can do in terms of making a difference in a kid’s life.  

But after five years, I was ready to move on.  So I went to ALA, got an offer from the Michigan City Public Library in Indiana.  Worked as a public service librarian at a medium-size public library, served a population of about 35,000 people.  A very progressive library.  Three fabulous years there.  I really, I think ....  We implemented an automated system, we went to OCLC, we built a new building that won the architectural prize nationally that year.  It was just a very, very progressive library with just great staff.

 What do you mean that you went to ALA?

  I went to ALA.  I got in my car, and drove to Chicago, and applied for another job.  That’s when I became an ALA member, was when I was finally ready to make a step forward in my career.  So then, after Michigan City, I went back to the University of Denver for a year of advanced study.  And I thought I was going to settle somewhere in the Rocky Mountain area, and lo and behold ended up at the ALA conference interviewing with E. J. Josey and ended up moving back to Albany and getting a job at the New York State Library in library development there.  

 I worked two years under a grant and then became a consultant for the New Jersey State Library.  I did technology planning and public library planning, were my two specialty areas.  And that was at the time when the public library planning process was just becoming widely accepted and there was a lot of interest in public library planning.  Then I became a regional system administrator when new multi-type systems were established in New Jersey, and I did that for five years.  And what we did was to, for the first time ever, bring together school libraries, college and university libraries, public libraries, special libraries, together in a network.  We set up a CD-ROM catalog, began to do interlibrary loan and delivery.  So it was a great and exciting job.

 The State Library’s in Trenton?

  In Trenton.  And then the regional office I served ....  Northwestern New Jersey was my region, and I was no longer then at the State Library.  This was the director of a non-profit corporation.  But you go from the day when you’re in an office sitting with a card table in the middle of a room and a phone plugged into the wall all the way to building a vibrant program of cooperative resource-sharing services.  I then became director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and was in Boston for ten years prior to coming to ALA.  

As head of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, I was responsible for state and federal programs in Massachusetts.  I had a commission appointed by the governor, and we administered federal funds.  We administered state aid to public libraries, regional librarian systems, automated networking, state-wide database licensing.  And then during my tenure, we developed a strategic plan and established a multi-type system in Massachusetts, which basically allowed libraries of all types to begin working together.  We got a lot of state funding.  I also operated the library for the blind, and got a lot of construction money.  We rebuilt more than half of the public libraries during the ten years I was there.  Then two years ago I came to ALA.  So that’s more than you ever wanted to know.

 So your history with ALA has been quite long then, kind of an official connection with ALA.

  I’ve been active in the ASCLA Division, which is the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, particularly in the section having to do with multi-type networking.

 But as an officer, as an employee.

 Only two years.

 So now did you grow up in Buffalo?  Where did you get your Bachelor’s, as well as your Master’s?

 University of Buffalo is where.  I got my Bachelor’s degree and my library degree from the University of Buffalo.

 So you grew up in Buffalo.

 I did, indeed.

 I just recently got my ....  I’ve been a librarian for two years.  I got my degree at St. John’s in Queens, New York.

 Welcome to Idaho, then.

  Well, I grew up in Idaho.  I grew up in the Magic Valley, but I was fifteen years in The Bronx.  Got my library degree and decided I wanted to come home.  But one of the questions that I have had and some of my fellow students have had is kind of the nature of the ALA as an organization.  Is it a professional organization, or is it a lobby?  And are they opposed, necessarily?  Can they be both?  Do they both fulfill two separate needs of the profession?

 Well, I would say that the answer is “Yes.”  And I’d say that you might even throw in a third, because sometimes you can say, “Is it an association of librarians, or is it an association of libraries?”  It’s the American Library Association, but obviously a lot of what we do is to promote the best practice in the profession and things like professional education, trying to ensure that standards are met.  So I think that ALA is a big, big umbrella.  You’ve got 11 divisions, you’ve got 17 roundtables, you’ve got 5,500 people active on committees.  The thing about ALA is that it’s on one hand a big organization, so it has the clout to be able to do things nationally, such as court cases and things to try and advance the interests of libraries and protect public access to information, which is a big, big thrust of ALA, and a lot of resources go into that.  At the same time, for most people, ALA is the little bunch of people that you ran into who share some of your common problems and concerns.  So the nice thing about it is that it’s small enough so that everyone can find a home.  At least that was my feeling.  

When I first got involved in ALA in the late ‘70s, I was working with people that were working in the same kind of service areas that I was.  And it was great to run into people from different states, who maybe were doing similar kinds of projects, to be able to find out how they’d solved problems and, just to be honest with you, to have somebody to commiserate with on occasion or somebody who would occasionally give you a good idea that you could go back with.  So ALA is 64,000 people, but for most members, it’s that group of people that they’re working with.  And I think one of the things we want to do is to extend that certain sense of little houses, if I can call it that, to give an electronic environment, so that, for instance, if you’re coming on as a group of people who are transplants from the East Coast to Idaho who are working in academic libraries ....  What’s your area of specialization?

 Both reference and cataloging.

 So, I mean, for instance, let’s say you were involved in virtual reference.  You have the ability to find a group of people who may be, be it in Louisiana, they may be in Maine, who share kind of common interests and to work together to advance the practice of what it is that you’re trying to achieve.

 Is there any move to have regional annual conferences instead of the single annual conference?  To kind of make the organization more user friendly?

Well, the reality is that each of the chapters has a conference, and I think the way that I would really see this working is that ALA would become more involved in partnering with the chapters, because ALA chapters are very important to the success of the organization.

 You mean the state chapters?

 The state chapters.  I think that what I would like to see is that, if, in any way, we are able to provide more useful content to the state chapters, to help them to attract more people to come to the state chapter conferences and use that as a method, I think, of working better.  And that’s something that we’ve made some progress on over the last maybe five years.  Gerald Hodges was the chapter relations person who really made a lot of progress in reaching back out to the chapters.  I think we have a long way to go on that.  I think that if we were to do regional ALA conferences, we might be competing with the chapters, and we don’t want to do that.  Let’s build on the strength that we already have.  The other advantage to the chapters is half the people at this conference are not ALA members.  So if you’re talking about what’s a group that might potentially be reasonable prospects of people who might be interested because they’re active at the state level to become active at the national level, it’s clear that this is a good place to be supportive because it helps ALA’s strength and, again, it helps the chapter.  A strong chapter, I think, makes a strong association.  That’s at least my feeling.  

he other thing is that a lot of the divisions do institutes which are regional.  For instance ALSC, which is the association for children, just did a regional institute in Minneapolis.  They had 200 people come to that.  And they move around quite a bit.  In some instances, they’ll repeat an institute in more than one site.  I think always the trick is to try and complement what the chapters are doing rather than just going out and saying, “Oh, we’re going to try and do this,” and we really need to be very sensitive to what’s going to work best for the chapters.

 Well, are there ALA members who are very active in their divisions but will never go to an annual meeting?

No, I would say not.  I think most people active in the divisions are also active in the association.  Remember that, at a Midwinter meeting, you might have 2,500 committee meetings occurring over the course of five days.  Perhaps three quarters of those meetings are divisional meetings, because ALA only has 35 committees.  Every thing else is divisions.

 And the Midwinter meeting is the business meeting?

 Right.  The same amount of business is transacted at Annual, but at Midwinter you don’t actually have the program content.  So the real goal is to let people get together.  We had a discussion this morning that was kind of interesting.  People tend to think of committee business as something that’s dull, but most of the committees, what they’re doing is trying to … people are getting together saying, “What do we need to do that’s going to help us to do a better job?”  So almost all the committees are working on, whether it’s clearing houses, or publications, or guides, or resource development, I would say 90 percent of the committee work of ALA has to do with either developing continuing education for members, and it’s all member developed, or producing resources and other products that are going to help people to do their job better.

 So it would be accurate to say, then, that as an organization of librarians the ALA is a professional organization, helping those librarians to meet their needs.

 Right.

 As an association of libraries the ALA is an advocacy organization.

 Correct.

Okay, well then, that makes sense.  I never understood that distinction.

 Again, that’s a pretty straightforward way of stating it.

 Now what is the difference between your role as Executive Director and the role of the President?

 Well, the President is the leader of the organization.  I’ve worked with Mitch Freedman, with Carla Hayden, and now with Carol Brey.  The President is elected from the membership.  They’re the spokesperson for ALA.  It’s very unusual ....  Usually I don’t do a lot of media interaction, because the President, really, is the person who speaks for the members.  We work very closely with the President to make sure that he or she has the information they need.  They do a lot of travel and a lot of media appearances.  They’ll be on the Today Show talking about the Newbery books and about libraries.  When there are national stories, such as the thing with Carla Hayden and Ashcroft, the President really is the spokesperson for the Association.  I’m the Chief Executive Officer, so my job, as I see it, is to develop and align organizational resources in order to achieve the goals and mission of the organization.

 So it’s similar to the distinction between a monarch and a prime minister.

 That would be one way of putting it.  Right.  And although, again, I think our monarch is particularly active, the President is really very much involved in ...

 More in a PR role.

  It’s really a spokesperson in that it’s a little different from just public relations, because a lot of times we’re dealing with substantive issues.  And the President really speaks.  And the good news is they bring a perspective, then, because they’re in a library.  They’re not ....  I mean, I’m not in the library at this point, so I have to depend on the members to really provide the content and the perspective.  My job is really just to try and effectively implement the things that the members feel are important.

 I think you made that distinction, that point, clear yesterday in your Keynote.

 That’s a contribution that you personally could make that maybe another director wouldn’t be able to make because of his or her background.

 Again, I couldn’t ....  I would never ....  we’ve had a great string of people.  I think I do bring some particular perspective and interest.  And, again, coming from Massachusetts and New Jersey, people tend to think of them as urbanized areas, but, for instance, Massachusetts has 200 libraries that serve communities under 10,000 people and probably a hundred that serve communities under twelve hundred.  So I think it was a good opportunity for me to try and balance ....  You’ve got Boston with 600,000 people, and then you’ve got a hundred communities with less than a thousand people in them.  All of them have libraries.  So I think it was a good proving ground for trying to figure out how do you develop a program that meets the needs of big libraries?  You’ve got Harvard University, and then, on the other hand, you’ve got a library in Gosnold.  The population is 98.

 So quite diverse.

 Exactly.

 You mention diversity as kind of a responsibility of libraries and leading the way in diversity as one of the most important things that we can do in our goal to serve everyone who walks through our doors, according, of course, to our mission, as an academic library, a special library.  But it appears that the library profession is one of the least diverse professions in the country because of the majority of women in the profession to men.  Is that true, and do you have any percentage of women to men in the library profession?

 I think at this point the figure that I’ve heard is that it’s about 80 percent women.  Now, let me say, that, for instance, there are many other professions.  I mean, doctors are still primarily males.  Nurses are still primarily females.  So I think that there are a number of other professions that have similar kinds of issues that they’re trying to deal with.  Obviously, part of the job is to break down sexual stereotypes and to really make an open and welcoming profession that welcomes people of all types.  I think the diversity issue is particularly important in light of the library’s mission, which is to meet the needs of its community.  And I define community as being ....  It could be a city, as in the case of a public library, or a county.  I could be a college or university.  It could be a school or a corporation or a non-profit corporation.  The demographics within this country are changing, and they’re changing significantly.  You have significant populations of people who may speak languages other than English.  It’s always been a tradition, certainly on the part of public libraries, going back to the 1800s, to reach out to, you know, the Polish factory workers in the mill down the street.  But very often it was the blue-blood ladies of the community reaching out and extending.  I think that that notion of making the library ....  

The library is a tremendous instrument of equal opportunity in this country.  I mean, you always are hearing stories about, you know, I was poor, I went to the library ....  There’s just so many of those stories.  And I think that the key here is that we have wonderful people in the profession, and I wouldn’t in any way suggest that we don’t have a great group of people.  But we need to really actively go out and recruit people who can speak Spanish in addition to speaking English, people who have community roots so that they can help us better to serve the communities.  If you look at a branch system in a major urban library, you may have neighborhoods where the per capita income is the highest in the state.  Another neighborhood, it may be the lowest in the state.  One neighborhood might have a lot of people speaking Vietnamese.  Another neighborhood’s got people speaking Spanish.  The beauty of, in this case, a public library is that each of these branches can have a program that’s adapted to meet the needs of that community, because it wants to do as much as it can.

  So it’s not so much diversity as diversities.  Every library will have a different diversity whose needs need to be met.

  Right.  And, again, I think that the overall library as a community are benefited.  I think the library really needs to be a leader in saying, “We’ve got people of color who are in administrative positions.  We have people who can speak Spanish who are actively involved in the development of a library.”  I think we do have a responsibility to provide leadership, and I think that I see a lot of libraries moving much more quickly than other municipal or county entities to make sure the boards are diverse.  And then we’re really trying to meet the community needs, and I think that’s something that’s fundamental to, certainly, public libraries and very much, I think, also the case with academic and school libraries.

 And the recruitment of men you see as part of that?  Our attempt to recruit men into the profession, as well.

 I think we’re trying to recruit diversity without any particular targets in mind here.  One of the interesting things about the profession is that very often it is a second career choice, and I think that recognizing that very often you’ve got people that have been teachers, maybe they’ve been lawyers, maybe they’ve been other professions, very often, as time goes on, come to realize that they’re interested in librarianship because of what it represents.  And I think we also have to acknowledge the fact that one of the reasons that librarianship as a whole is a little bit older as a profession is that many people do come to it as a second profession because they decide that it’s something they’re interested in.  And I think that’s a great strength, as well, because you’re getting people with experience out in the real world becoming librarians.  It’s not just fresh graduates coming out of school.  We need those, but I think we have a real strength in the profession.

 A case in point.  I think my academic background in graduate school will help to become a better academic librarian.  I came with some experience.

 On this issue of recruitment, you had mentioned that it’s important not only to recognize outstanding service but also to acknowledge poor service in libraries.  And I wonder whether this touches on the issue of accountability in the profession?  Can the library and librarian accountability have something to do with the kind of poor economic situation that we find ourselves in?  I mean, could we do a better job in serving the public and proving our worth?

 Yes.  The comment that I made about quality is really almost a challenge more than anything else, because we know that there are many libraries that don’t have large budgets that are doing a good job.  I mean, that’s one of reasons that, for instance, a librarian is so critical.  Because you know that when we get an energetic person who cares about their community that they can make a dollar stretch further than anyone else.  I think from an accountability standpoint we have a challenge, because you can’t administer your community a test every year.  So it’s a little different from schools, for there you’re doing pre- and post-testing.  The interesting thing is that where they do pre- and post-testing, they have pretty consistent results, I mean extremely consistent results, in being able to show that use of a library contributes significantly to student achievement.  In Massachusetts, the study we had showed that it was good for a full letter grade.  That if you had two students, each of which was a B student, and one of those students had access to a good school library, that that student would go from being a B to being an A student.  It was a full letter grade in terms of the impact.  I think that the challenge is to keep pushing on that so that we begin to do as good a job as we can of documenting the economic impact of the library.  

We know that, for instance, the typical library generates probably four times its book value.  I use the term “book value,” being that if the library buys a book for $25, that it is generally able to incur probably a hundred dollars in value by circulating that book.  Most books circulate to three or four people over the course of a year.  So that a library ....  There’s some economic models that begin to suggest ....  But I think that we’re going to need to look at a number of different sort of economic models in order to build a better picture of the economic impact.  I think the educational impact is something that we need to do some work on.  We’ve done a much better job of being able to go into schools, because, again, you’ve got students that we test at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year.  You can put a library in or take a library out, and then analyze the impact of that.  It’s much more difficult to do that in the case of a community.

 Do you think those libraries which have been measured in some way and have been proved to be effective, do you think they attract funds?  I mean, do those libraries do a better job at demonstrating their worth, that they deserve more attention?

 Let me put it this way:  It can’t hurt.  I don’t have any statistical data to make any kind of a generalization, but you and I know that there’s usually a lot of goodwill toward the library.  The question is how do you take that to the next level?  And I think that where the library is trying to demonstrate that it’s concerned about outcomes, that understands government is increasingly talking about outcome-based ...

Outcome-based education.

 I think we need to be able to operate in all of those worlds.  And I wouldn’t suggest that ....  Let me put it this way.  You’ve got a number of tools that you can use to get the job done.  I think being able to use this kind of accountability is another tool to help further that.  And it certainly is never going to hurt the argument.  As long as you’ve got somebody who’s willing to challenge you based on the fact that, well, you know, how can you prove this?  But you certainly want to be in a position to be able to answer that.

 Keith, as an academic librarian at the Eli M. Oboler Library, we are particularly aware of the issues of intellectual freedom, censorship.  And I have long thought that wouldn’t it be better for us to emphasize our role in the freedom of information and making a contribution to intellectual freedom in that way?  Because whether ....  I wonder ....  Intellectual freedom would exist even without libraries, at least in democratic countries.  Intellectual freedom would be impaired, because people wouldn’t have access to the information to make reasonable or rational decisions and have reasonable opinions.  I wonder whether we wouldn’t be better and gain some points by emphasizing what specific role we as librarians can make toward intellectual freedom rather than emphasizing intellectual freedom the way we do?

 Well, I guess that I think that I wouldn’t be critical of approaches up till now, because I think that things like the Library Bill of Rights are ....  You know, at this point that’s been in existence now for almost 60 years.  And then they really ....  With each passing decade, I think, they become certain basic tenets.  I do think that your suggestion that we continue to figure out how to talk about how we support intellectual freedom is, in fact, probably what does occur.  I’m not always sure that the message that gets out is the message that we’re sending out as an association.  But, let me put it this way.  I’ve heard people say, “Oh, well, ALA believes in this” or “ALA believes in that.”  In most instances, that is someone’s assessment of what ALA has said.  But if you look at what ALA has said, I think that there is a lot of care taken to try and craft the message.  You know what it’s like when you deal sometimes with the media.  You may be taken out of context.  When you talk with a reporter, you always look at the newspaper with a great deal of excitement the next morning, because sometimes you find that the reporter’s take is going to be a little bit different, and you may trying to emphasize one point or to fit what you’re doing into a broader story.  So that I do think that sometimes ALA is mischaracterized, and I think that that’s something that we always have to try and work against.

 I wonder how much of that, though, is our own fault, our own responsibility, and this touches on the issue of library advocacy and defending ourselves in the public arena.  You know, the current presidential campaign seems to suggest that the country is pretty evenly divided.

 Right.

 Do some Americans see librarians as enemies in the culture war?  And, a case in point, I mean, we have Celebrity READ posters of Dr. Ruth, of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Rosie O’Donnell, and Whoopi Goldberg, but I’ve seen none of Dr. Laura, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or the First Lady.  Do some people see us pretty lopsided?  And I wonder if we couldn’t do a better in defending our contributions if we ...

Well, let me say at this point that I think that ALA has done a great job, certainly during the last couple of years, in working with Laura Bush and the current administration in order to increase support for libraries.  I think we have to be honest about the fact that Laura Bush has been a good friend to libraries.  That while sometimes we disagree on certain issues, that doesn’t mean that we don’t treat each other with respect.  I know my background in Massachusetts was that we built a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who supported libraries.  The most important thing is that people care about libraries, that people care about making sure that American people have the best possible library service we can get them.  I

 have found in my experience that it is both Democrats and Republicans who believe in that.  I’ve seen many people from both sides of the aisle, whether they’re Democratic state officials, whether they’re Republican state officials, whether they’re ....  I was involved with people who were on ....  Democratic state committee people who were on the Republican state committee.  Libraries were a great middle ground for people who were concerned about education and concerned about the future of our communities.  So I do think we need to be very careful to send a message out that’s very inclusive.

 I just wonder, though, if we don’t appear to people as being lopsided or non-inclusive?

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that.  The only thing I can say is that ALA really is an open door.  I’ve talked with, for instance, a lot of trustees, who may be, you know, in many instances, maybe older public library trustees.  They may be a little bit more conservative than librarians.  I think we need to be very welcoming to these people.  And, again, the positions of the Association are, as much as we can make them, supposed to represent the positions of the members.  So, the only thing I can encourage is that there’s plenty of people who are Republicans or more conservative who are interested in libraries.  Please join.  Please get involved in the dialogue.

 Would you say that the majority of the membership are liberal or conservative?

 Well, I wouldn’t be able to characterize that.  I would say that, you know, it’s certainly fair to say that because most librarians operate out of a public sector, I think there is a tendency to be sympathetic to the needs for government to be actively involved in such things as public education and the like.  In so far as that’s an issue, people are going to be supporting anyone, I think, who’s supportive of education and certainly supportive of libraries.  And I think it’s for the candidates to choose.  I’ve certainly known many Republican legislators and congressmen and Senators who are pro-library, and I think that it’s really their responsibility to choose whether they’re going to support the things that we try and support, and I hope that they will.  I think libraries provide an unusual opportunity for sort of bi-partisan engagement, and I really do think ....  I agree with you.  We really need to push and exploit that.

 And maybe get some of these Celebrity READ posters of some of these other, conservative, icons.  Although I don’t know whether they’d consent to do it.

 Well, all I can say is that if you’ve got suggestions, ALA Graphics is always looking for suggestions.

 You bet.  I can make a few.

Please do.  We need to hear from people.

 We have Mel Gibson, so that’s certainly one on the conservative end.

 We just celebrated Banned Books Week, and this is an issue that I’m interested in.  It touches kind of on what some, I think, have seen as the lopsided nature of library collections, now, as opposed to the profession.  But I have read some news articles about—and I’m sure that you’re aware of this—George Grant’s biography of Margaret Sanger, Killer Angel.  An evangelical Christian couple had given, donated a copy to the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, and the librarians on certain grounds declined the gift.  And the couple, I believe, then went to the media and raised a cry of censorship.  The library was defended by the Intellectual Freedom Committee.  When does selection become censorship?  It’s a very difficult issue.  I wonder, are there books which aren’t getting into our collections because we selectors don’t want them there?  We’re not actively going out as vigorously as we should and getting the books which we don’t agree with but that we need to balance our collections?

 The only thing that I can say is that I can’t really comment on local selection policies, and I wouldn’t comment on the Toledo case in this particular instance.  I do believe—and this goes back to the diversity issue—that it’s very important for a library to reflect its community.  And I think that means that the library needs to be active in trying to determine what the needs and the interests of the community are and that the library needs to serve all of the information needs of all community members.  To me, that is an important goal, and that would tend to suggest, if anything, that we need to err on the side of inclusion.  That’s my view.

 What is the difference, though, between needs and wants?  I mean, we try to include all the desires of the community, but are there resources which we as librarians deem that our community needs because they need to know about these things?  They don’t want to know about them, but they need to be exposed to these different issues.  And isn’t that perhaps a bit arrogant on our part?

 Well, that’s certainly a traditional model, if you go back into the Victorian era, when libraries were first formed.  Very frequently you read the missions of the early libraries or discussions, and it was to extend the benefits of good literature.  And many of the arguments around the First World War—and then, again, this is primarily the public libraries—concerned whether popular novels should be admitted into the collection, whether it was appropriate to pander to the interests of the populace.  I think that after the Second World War we made enormous progress in trying to move away from that to a model that said the library should be meeting the needs and not passing judgment on the needs of a community.  

The problem always is that a library has limited resources, limited storage capability.  It costs more to store a book than it does to purchase it over the course of a couple of years.  So that selectors are always trying to make a decision as to what’s the best collection in relationship to a limited resource base and a community whose needs are usually going to be larger than a selector can hope to meet.  I don’t have a comment on that, other than that’s one of the great challenges of providing library service.  In an academic setting you have faculty committees.  Selection is very much decentralized.  If a mathematics bibliographer were purchasing mathematics texts that were perceived as not meeting the needs of the mathematics faculty, they would probably run into some problems very quickly.  There’s not a similar mechanism, usually, within a public library setting.

 It does depend on the type of library.

 Right.

 Finally, Keith, do you have any advice for a new editor of a state library journal?

 I think that, first of all, to congratulate you for taking on a tough job, because I have had the pleasure of serving as an editor, however briefly, and it’s always tough to get interesting stuff from people.  I think that the only thing I can say is to talk with people.  I mean, it’s the same message—this whole think of collection development, or being an association Executive Director, or being the editor of a newsletter—find out what people like, and don’t be afraid to give it to them.  

One of the things that I think, the more successful newsletters I’ve seen are much better at making adaptive use of stuff that comes from other sources, and I think that some of the best newsletters I’ve seen have really been able to draw from maybe other newsletters from other state associations.  I think providing a variety of content is really kind of critical.  I think if you can get people interested in giving you stuff so that you can highlight what’s happening in local libraries, you’re going to have something that people are going to turn to and see if there’s something about them in it.  That’s not philosophical advice.  It’s practical advice.  You’re taking on a tough job, because you want something that people, when they get it, they’re going to be interest in opening up if it’s electronic or opening it up if it’s a printed publication.  And I think talking about them is a good way of getting people to open the front cover and see what’s in the inside.  And that your challenge is how do you get that kind of information?  So information about people taking new jobs and whatever, I think, from my standpoint, is a good way.

I know that in American Libraries, I always used to open it up and see if anybody I knew had gotten a new job or whatever.  The other thing is really working with, a lot of times, neighboring state association newsletters may have interesting articles.  I think the goal is if you can borrow stuff from them and cite them and you can generate stuff that they’re borrowing, everybody’s going to profit from that, as well.  Connecticut, I think, was one that was particularly good in terms of getting a lot of excerpts from other neighboring states’ newsletters, and it really made for interesting content.

 Well, Sir, thank you very much.

My pleasure.  This was fun.