Friday, January 05, 2007

MORE CULTURE LOSS: NOW DUMBING DOWN LIBRARIES TOO

If classics are no longer mentioned in schools, there will be no "demand" for them, of course

You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch. It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them. Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked them out in at least 24 months.

Public libraries have always weeded out old or unpopular books to make way for newer titles. But the region's largest library system is taking turnover to a new level. Like Borders and Barnes & Noble, Fairfax is responding aggressively to market preferences, calculating the system's return on its investment by each foot of space on the library shelves -- and figuring out which products will generate the biggest buzz. So books that people actually want are easy to find, but many books that no one is reading are gone -- even if they are classics. "We're being very ruthless," said Sam Clay, director of the 21-branch system since 1982. "A book is not forever. If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that's a cost."

That is the new reality for the Fairfax system and the future for other libraries. As books on tape, DVDs, computers and other electronic equipment crowd into branches, there is less room for plain old books. So librarians are making hard decisions and struggling with a new issue: whether the data-driven library of the future should cater to popular tastes or set a cultural standard, even as the demand for the classics wanes. Library officials say they will always stock Shakespeare's plays, "The Great Gatsby" and other venerable titles. And many of the books pulled from one Fairfax library can be found at another branch and delivered to a patron within a week. But in the effort to stay relevant in an age in which reference materials and novels can be found on the Internet and Oprah's Book Club helps set standards of popularity, libraries are not the cultural repositories they once were.

"I think the days of libraries saying, 'We must have that, because it's good for people,' are beyond us," said Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association and director of Princeton Public Library. "There is a sense in many public libraries that popular materials are what most of our communities desire. Everybody's got a favorite book they're trying to promote." That leaves some books endangered. In Fairfax, thousands of titles have been pulled from the shelves and become eligible for book sales.

Weeding books used to be sporadic. Now it's strategic. Clay and his employees established the two-year threshold 18 months ago, driven, they say, by a $2 million cut to the budget for books and materials and the demand for space. More computers and growing demand in branches for meeting space, story hours and other gatherings have left less room for books.

And nowadays, library patrons don't like to sit at big tables with strangers as they read or study. They want to be alone, creating a need for individual carrels that take up even more space. And the popularity of audiovisual materials that must be housed in 50-year-old branches built for smaller collections only adds to the crunch. To do more with less, Fairfax library officials have started running like businesses. Clay bought state-of-the art software that spits out data on each of the 3.1 million books in the county system -- including age, number of times checked out and when. There are also statistics on the percentages of shelf space taken up by mysteries, biographies and kids' books.

Every branch gets a printout of the data each month, including every title that hasn't circulated in the previous 24 months. It's up to librarians to decide whether a book stays. The librarians have discretion, but they also have targets, collection manager Julie Pringle said. "What comes in is based on what goes out," she said.

Classics such as Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" are among the titles that haven't been checked out in two years and could be eliminated. Librarians so far have decided to keep them.

As libraries clear out titles, they sweep in new ones as fast as they can. A two-month-old program called "Hot Picks" is boosting copies of bestsellers by tracking the number of holds requested by patrons. This month, every Fairfax branch will display new books more prominently, leaving even less space for older ones. "We don't want to keep what people don't use much of," Clay said. Circulation, a sign of prestige and a potential bargaining chip for new funding, is on pace to hit 11.6 million in the Fairfax system this year, part of a steady climb over the past three years.

No other system in the Washington area is tracking circulation as quickly -- or weeding so methodically. Montgomery County, a similar-size suburban system, has not emphasized weeding in several years, said Kay Ecelbarger, who retired last month as chief of collection management. In the District, library director Ginnie Cooper said she has not tackled weeding and turnover policy in the system, which is struggling to increase circulation. She hopes to address those concerns with a recent infusion of cash from the D.C. Council.

There are no national standards on weeding public library collections. As Fairfax bets its future on a retail model, some librarians say that the public library may be straying too far from its traditional role as an archive of literature and history. Arlington County's library director, Diane Kresh, said she's "paying a lot of attention to what our customers want." But if they aren't checking out Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," she's not only keeping it, she's promoting it through a new program that gives forgotten classics prominent display. "Part of my philosophy is that you collect for the ages," Kresh said. "The library has a responsibility to provide a core collection for the cultural education of its community." She comes to this view from a career at the Library of Congress, where she was chief of public service collections for 30 years.

The weight of the new choices falls on the local librarian. That's especially hard at the Woodrow Wilson branch in Falls Church, one of the smallest in the Fairfax system. It's a vibrant place popular with Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants, the elderly and young professionals. Branch manager Linda Schlekau, who has 20 years of experience, says she discards about 700 books a month. "Nine Plays by Eugene O'Neill" sat on the top shelf of a cart in the back room one day in late December, wedged between Voltaire's "Candide" and "Broke Heart Blues" by Joyce Carol Oates. The cart brimmed with books that someone on Schlekau's staff had pulled from the shelves. Sometimes she has time to give them another look before wheeling them to the book-sale pile. Sometimes she doesn't.

The Oates would return to the shelf, "because she's a real popular author at Woodrow Wilson," even if "Broke Heart Blues" isn't, Schlekau said. The Voltaire would go. An obscure Edgar Allan Poe volume called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" might be transferred to another branch. Schlekau hesitated over the volume of O'Neill plays, which was in good condition but had been checked out only nine times in its lifespan at the library, falling short of the system's new goal of 20. She sighed. "The only time things like this are going out is if they're [performing the plays] at the Kennedy Center." But, she said, she's disinclined to throw O'Neill into the discard pile: "That's the English major in me."

Source





Black schoolkids make NJ library unusable

Low discipline schools spread their poison



Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School's final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly. Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day. As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.

An institution that, like many nationwide, strives to attract young people, even offering beading and cartooning classes, will soon be shutting them out, along with the rest of the public, at one of the busiest parts of its day. Library employees will still be on the job, working at tasks like paperwork, filing, and answering calls and online questions. "They almost knocked me down, and they run in and out," said Lila Silverman, a Maplewood resident who takes her grandchildren to the library's children's room but called the front of the library "a disaster area" after school. "I do try to avoid those hours."

This comfortable Essex County suburb of 23,000 residents, still proud of its 2002 mention in Money magazine on a list of "Best Places to Live," is no seedy outpost of urban violence. But its library officials, like many across the country, have grown frustrated by middle schoolers' mix of pent-up energy, hormones and nascent independence. Increasingly, librarians are asking: What part of "Shh!" don't you understand?

About a year ago, the Wickliffe, Ohio, library banned children under 14 during after-school hours unless they were accompanied by adults. An Illinois library adopted a "three strikes, you're out" rule, suspending library privileges for repeat offenders. And many libraries are adding security guards specifically for the after-school hours. In Euclid, Ohio, the library pumps classical music into its lobby, bathrooms and front entry to calm patrons, including those from the nearby high school.

A backlash against such measures has also begun: A middle school in Jefferson Parish, La., that requires a daily permission slip for students to use the local public library after school was threatened with a lawsuit last month by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Librarians and other experts say the growing conflicts are the result of an increase in the number of latchkey children, a decrease in civility among young people and a dearth of "third places" - neither home nor school - where kids can be kids. "We don't consider the world as safe a place as it used to be, and we don't encourage children to run around, hang around and be free," said Judy Nelson, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, part of the American Library Association. "So you have parents telling their kids that the library is a good place to go."

More here




BRITAIN: BLINKERED LEFTIST RESPONSE TO SCHOOL FAILURE

You need to know what it is about the entry into the EU on Monday of Bulgaria and Romania that is problematic. It's the same problem as when, on January 1, 2004, eight other new member states joined the EU: the people who gained access to the British labour market are too good. They either work too hard, or they are too skilled. 447,000 workers from that first new batch of member states applied to register under the Workers Registration Scheme in the first two years since their accession. Including the self-employed, the total working in Britain has been well over 600,000. And that excludes the illegal workers. Economically, this is good news. Jobs can be done better and cheaper thanks to this new pool of labour. But there is a downside: many British manual workers can't compete with them.

The mistake that is usually made is to concentrate on the immediate cause of this problem: the rights of those workers to come here. The real cause of the problem, however, is nothing new and has nothing to with the EU. The real cause is our failure to manage the basic task of educating children properly.

After nearly ten years in office, Tony Blair's pledge to make "education, education and education" his top three priorities is the dog that barked but didn't bite. There has certainly been some improvement in standards. But when ministers celebrate the improved statistics, it's akin to a football team that regularly gets a 3-0 hammering taking comfort from losing 3-1. The most recent Department for Education and Skills study, in 2003, found that 16 per cent of the adult population would fail to pass an English GCSE and 29 per cent of adults could not calculate the area of a floor, even with a calculator, pen and paper.

Instead of the necessary wholesale reforms, tackling the fundamental flaws in school structures and teacher training, the Government has introduced a piecemeal variety of initiatives and schemes. Last week we learnt of the latest, a 65 million plan to give 800,000 of the most able pupils an "e-credit". The pupils will be allocated about 80 pounds in credits, which their schools can use to buy extra lessons from companies, independent schools, universities or other academic bodies. It is a thoroughly sensible idea, which no one committed to excellence could oppose. So, naturally, it has been opposed by a number of Labour MPs and teachers.

But for all the plan's merit, it is symbolic of the Government's failure. By proposing such a scheme, the Government shows that it understands the benefits of competition and a variety of teaching options. Instead of acting on that understanding, however, it restricts it to the most gifted. And it refuses even to contemplate any wider extension of the voucher principle. Why not?

There's a perfect example of a "because I say so" dismissal of a logical extension in a speech made by Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, in November. Intriguingly, he argued that: "To break the cycle of educational disadvantage we need to give parents in the most disadvantaged areas more than preference. They should have choice . . . The evidence suggests both that choice programmes (abroad) helped raise standards across all schools and that the most disadvantaged pupils benefited most."

All good stuff. And to bring about that choice, he proposed a weighted voucher: "I believe that parents with children in those schools where performance has not crossed these thresholds (of success) for two or more years should be given a new right to choose an alternative school. They would be given an education credit weighted to be worth perhaps 150 per cent of the cost of educating the child in their current school. This would give a positive incentive to the alternative school to take them and to expand their intake numbers."

Even better stuff. Mr Milburn clearly grasps the need for choice, and how the market empowers the most disadvantaged and raises standards. But then he shows how the only word that really counts in the phrase "new Labour" is "Labour": "The credit . . . could be used in any state school." At a stroke, Mr Milburn circumscribes the impact of his proposed voucher by limiting its application to state schools. And he offers no explanation why other schools should not be able to compete for the pupils' custom.

Even when Labour sees the benefits of competition, it rules it out in any but the most limited form, for no reason beyond ideology. The same holds in health. Patients are to be given a choice of provider for treatment. But the choice will be from a limited list and there will be no wider application of the acknowledged benefits of competition. Why not?

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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