Welcome to the Dr. Dolittle Public Library

I've mentioned before that I'm not overly fond of change. We've had a surfeit of it lately, most of it stressful, even when I agree with the reasons for it. All the changes have been churning around in my head for a couple of months now (rather like boiling mental acid-indigestion soup), and the following musings are the results. I'm sorry that I don't have solutions to offer, but in this instance, it felt like a victory to finally define what I think is the problem.

We seem to be using the pushmi-pullyu model of service.

On the one hand, we have individuals, committees, and departments devoted to allowing people to use more and more of the library's services without ever leaving their homes. Examples-- online signups for SRP, online renewal, online library card signups, library blogs.

On the other, we have individuals, committees, and departments devoted to promoting the library as The Third Place. Come on in, and feel the sense of community that you should be getting from your own neighborhood, but aren't! Come attend a concert! Come and knit! Come to storytime! Come view the art exhibit!

If we want more, more, more people to come to the library, why are we making it easier for them never to darken our door, yet still suck up precious resources from the comfort of their easy chairs? If we want them to stay at home because we can no longer staff our agencies to appropriate levels, why are programs proliferating to such a degree?

I think it's an extension of our tendency to attempt to be all things to all people at all times. I didn't believe that was possible, or even desirable, in 1985 in my first professional job, and I still don't believe it. I observe in our most recent attempt to create new mission statements, goals, and objectives the same thing I always observe in every attempt at that process-- as a profession, we're incapable of saying no. Every single thing we do is the most important thing we do, in someone's opinion. Not only do we keep doing everything we've traditionally done, every time something new comes along, we willingly (nay, eagerly) add it to the list.

There's a mantra I think we all need to chant every time we're tempted to add a new service, particularly in these times when taxpayers are marching with torches and pitchforks: Just because no one else is doing it doesn't make it OUR job. And here's where I'm going to get myself into trouble: Early literacy? Not our job. (Late literacy-- also not our job.) Teaching
people how to use computers? Not our job. Doing people's taxes, or facilitating the process? Not our job. Life skills? Absolutely, positively, definitely Not. Our. Job. People are supposed to use libraries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps-- instead, we're breaking our backs trying to pull them all up ourselves.

My psychic powers can sense the question coming: What IS our job? A full answer to that is a subject for a different post, and I'm only going to answer it in the negative for now: if it smacks even slightly of social work or the classroom-- it's not our job.

I don't even know which end of the beast I'm cheering for, honestly-- the pushmi, or the pullyu. I do believe that if we continue to try to please everyone in an era of dwindling budgets, eventually, we won't be pleasing anyone.