Good morning. I am delighted to participate in the opening session of your conference. I want to tell you right away that I have Wisconsin roots by marriage! Paul's father, Pastor Martin Simon, was baptized, confirmed and ordained in the Zion Lutheran Church in Zachow. Paul's great grandparents had -- no surprise here -- a Wisconsin dairy farm. We have many family members and friends here and we love your beautiful state.
On a library level, let me say how pleased the Commission was last year to be able to work with Doug Zweizig, Chuck McClure and others on a study of public libraries and the Internet. Dr. Zweizig is one of this country's outstanding library educators and researchers and I hope you know how fortunate you are to have him in Wisconsin!
I am pleased to report that we are once again working with Doctors Zweizig and McClure to re-survey the libraries first studied in 1994. We want to begin to develop longitudinal data, to learn how much connectivity to the Internet has increased since 1994, to discover what uses libraries make of the Internet and other electronic services, and to begin to explore what changes these electronic connections have for libraries and for their users. I hope that in the future the Commission can support these kinds of studies for other types of libraries as well.
B) Comments on Conference Theme
I applaud your choice of themes for your conference: "Libraries and Their Communities: Advocating for Their Future."
When we say "communities" we often think of neighborhoods, towns, townships, cities, municipalities, counties or parishes -- that is, the geographic areas by which we normally organize public library service. However, let's remind ourselves that "community" means not just city or county but also campus or corporation. For our purposes this morning, let's say that "community" means any of the multitude of sets of clients or constituents or customers that libraries serve.
In other words, let's think inclusively -- of a universe of communities served by college, corporate, public, research, school, special and university libraries. To that end, let's see how that universe is represented here today. Raise your hands if you are associated with K-12 school libraries or media centers. How about special libraries? Let's see a show of hands for those associated with college or university libraries. How about public libraries? Thank you for responding.
C) JHS' Background with Libraries
If you came this morning expecting to hear a librarian, I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed. As you just heard, I am a lawyer. Although I am not a librarian, I have had the good fortune to be a life-long user and supporter of libraries.
My first awareness of libraries was through my parents' work in helping to establish the first free public library in Western Springs, Illinois. In the 1920's, we collected materials and donated books from the family library. Later, during high school and college, I was fortunate to have access to the excellent public libraries in Winnetka and Wilmette, Illinois. Finally, to help pay my tuition at Northwestern Law School, I worked in the law school library.
When I left Wilmette for Troy, Illinois (pop. 1,280) in 1960, I was dismayed to find that the community had no public library. Joining with other concerned neighbors, I helped to solicit funds, books, space and volunteer staff to establish the first library in Troy. We started the library with no tax support. Today the Troy Public Library has a full-time librarian and plans for a larger building.
In the spring of 1975, without any prior warning, Carl Albert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, called and asked if I would accept membership on the Advisory Council of the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services -- the first WHCLIS.
The work I did planning for the 1979 WHCLIS brought me into contact with people who have fueled my interest in libraries. Like so many of my contacts with library supporters, I formed friendships with many throughout the library community. I came in contact with people like Bessie Moore from Little Rock, Arkansas; Joe Shubert, New York State Librarian; David Gergen, former McNeill/Lehrer commentator and former Communications Advisor to President Clinton; and I renewed an old friendship with Charles Benton, Chairman Emeritus of NCLIS and Chair of the 1979 WHCLIS.
D) Overview of Address
That's a little about Jeanne Simon and my long-term advocacy for libraries. I hope my remarks and questions today will excite and inspire you. Even if my comments provoke or irritate you, if they also spur you to action, then I will have achieved my purpose.
I want to pose some questions for you this morning. I hope that these questions will lead you along some new paths and will prompt some fresh looks at how effective advocacy functions, about where it should originate, about what underlies it, and about what its basic purposes are.
E) Questions Regarding Advocacy Efforts
One of the most insightful articles in the recent library literature that I have seen is titled, "The Politics of LSCA during the Reagan and Bush Administrations: An Analysis," by Peter F. Fuller, in the July 1994 issue of THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY. Mr. Fuller introduces his analysis as follows:
This article began as a case study for a seminar in budgetary politics. The intent was to employ the techniques of policy analysis to examine an interesting historical phenomenon -- the failure of both the Reagan and Bush administrations to eliminate the Library Services and Construction Act. . . .
The case of LSCA also proved interesting because it presented an opportunity for a contextual analysis of library policy. Libraries invariably exist within larger and more complex organizations, for example, city and state government, colleges and universities, and business corporations, and these institutions often adhere to their own rules and logic. Sociologists have noted that such large organizations are marked more by conflict than buy consensus. Librarians need to pay greater attention to the politics of this organizational environment if libraries are to thrive.
Drawing from Fuller's analysis, then, my first two questions
are:
In REDESIGNING LIBRARY SERVICES: A MANIFESTO, Michael Buckland says that
"the mission of a library is to support the mission of the institution or the interests of the population served."
Herb White puts it another way -- that of libraries' supporting larger societal agendas. I think librarians and those who govern libraries are pretty careful about designing services to meet needs of users and potential users.
However, I'm not sure that we gear our advocacy efforts with the same care and attention that we devote to the structure of information services or budgets. We may become so enveloped in the rightness of our causes that we fail to look up or out to discover what the exterior climate is, what other public services are advocating for and why, whether and how libraries relate or compete with those efforts. We need to remember Mr. Fuller's comment,
Libraries invariably exist within larger and more complex organizations, for example, city and state government, colleges and universities, and business corporations. . . .
3) My third question is,
Do our advocacy efforts focus more on preserving and expanding services or preserving and expanding our institutions?
That's a hard one for those of us who love the concept and the concrete reality of a library and who may have devoted a life-time of work to a school, a company, a neighborhood in a library building or space. However, we need to know the difference between the ends and the means and we must be careful to clearly separate these in our public messages.
4) The fourth query is whether our advocacy efforts focus on services themselves or on access to services.
This point may seem arcane, but bear with me. The point was brought out in a discussion the Commission hosted in September 1994 with federal government officials. Participants had some uncomfortable and some provocative things to say to us about libraries and the information superhighway and about the status and prospects of libraries generally. This was one of their points: that the services themselves, not just access to the services, are what need to be emphasized.
5) Those federal officials from the Administration and Congress attending the NCLIS briefing last September said something else that surprised me. They indicated that the depiction of the public library as a safety net for public access to the information infrastructure may not benefit libraries or their range of users or potential users.
I think their point is just as valid for a college or university library, if we paint that library as the last hope only for the student or teacher who doesn't have her or his own computer and network connection. That point leads me to my fifth set of questions:
Are we making libraries marginal? Are we painting them into corners? Are we short-circuiting their potential when we concentrate just on libraries' functions to serve those who would otherwise be information have-nots?
6) We who work in behalf of libraries and information services, particularly public libraries, have long-standing commitments to serving the disadvantaged and I am not suggesting we relinquish this commitment. What I do suggest is that, in our advocacy efforts, we also pay attention to the fact we serve a broad range of the community. My sixth question then is,
Are we demonstrating that we serve the advantaged as well as the disadvantaged? Are we serving our community, campus and corporate leaders, our opinion leaders, our decision-makers and policy-makers and are we in turn getting that message across in our advocacy efforts?
Are we likelier to have an adult new reader or a company president as our witness at a budget hearing? Please understand that I do not consider one more important than the other. My point is that we serve both and that we need both actively involved in our advocacy efforts.
7) Focusing on the problem of "information have-nots" may come from a threat-orientation. My seventh question is,
What would it mean and what would it require for us to become more opportunity-oriented? Do we dare to deal only with the positive? Do we dare to deal only with potential, and not address problems?
I do not mean to brush aside the very real problems many libraries have with resources. However, my point is that as advocates we need to extol the learning and teaching capacities, the job-enriching capabilities and the life-altering and society-changing potential of libraries -- not for us who are librarians or library boosters, but for our users! We also need to showcase the individuals and groups for whom this potential has been realized -- including the advantaged as well as the disadvantaged!
8) My eighth and final query is,
As library advocates, do we communicate with and seek feedback and evaluation from non-librarians and non-library advocates?
Do we talk too much with each other? Do we talk only with each other? Are we singing to the converted? For those of you who are trustees, how long has it been since you talked with the board of another community agency to compare notes and strategies and help strengthen each other's efforts? How long has it been, for you library friends, since you sat down with supporters of the symphony or the museum or with the campus arts committee? Do you belong to the Chamber of Commerce? Do you belong to the League of Women Voters? How about the American Society for Public Administration?
Do you know if your company's board or share-holders receive reports from your library? Do your reports showcase library users telling the practical results they get from using your library's services? If you represent a school library, do you have strategy sessions with providers of other non-classroom services for students? In other words, do you carry your commitment and advocacy beyond the community of library supporters?
Here again, my point is obvious. We need people who are not librarians or library trustees or library friends talking to us. We need people who are not librarians talking for libraries. We need effective, committed, politically sensitive advocates who understand the value of partnerships, collaboration, and cooperation.
F) Broadened View of Advocacy
We need to broaden our view of what advocacy is and we need to imagine new ways to go about it. Let me tell you how one community reacted to its county commissioners' recent reductions in what many residents considered vital services. These services were reduced in order to provide a small tax cut to property owners. Some citizens, who call themselves protesters, are getting organized to make restricted gifts back to their county of some or all of the reduction each received in property taxes so that they help maintain services and make up for the budget cuts. There are all kinds of advocacy and this is just one creative example! (This community, by the way, is Wake County, North Carolina, home of Raleigh, the state's capital and part of the prosperous Research Triangle.)
There are three components of advocacy that I want to mention: advocacy for financial support for libraries, advocacy for financial and programmatic support for community partners, and advocacy for policy issues.
I think we often equate advocacy with financial support -- with the sizes of our budgets and grant programs. Although that's an extremely important function of advocacy, it's not the whole story. I think we have had this traditional and narrow view at the federal level too.
We have traditionally viewed advocacy as support for the major grant programs -- that is, the Library Services and Construction Act, and the portions of the Higher Education Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that authorize funds for college and university a