libraries

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Michael Kusalaba Library

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Michael Kusalaba Library, Photo courtesy Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. Used with permission.

Those of you who have followed this blog know that I grew up on Youngstown’s West side, and that I am a bookish sort of person. Some of this was due to a mom who was a reader and to inspiring teachers. A good part of this was also due to the hours I spent at the West Side Library as a kid. I wrote recently that when I think of going to a happy place in my mind, the most likely place I would go is a library.

One of the rites of passage in my life was getting my own library card. When I was growing up, the card was printed on cardboard, with your name typed on it by the librarian after completing a handwritten application. I felt a little more grown up when I received that card! It had to be renewed periodically, if you had no overdue books. Having overdue books felt like a sin. I wonder if my Catholic friends ever brought that up at confession!

It was a wonder, though, to walk up Mahoning Avenue the half mile or so from my home on N.Portland and go to my favorite sections, which tended to be sports, science and science fiction, and military history. It was the era of the space program and many of us were fascinated by rockets and space. I’d pick out as many books as you were allowed to check out (I think the number was six) and walk up to the check out desk, present my card, and the librarian would use this photo device and scan my library card and the book’s card, stamp the due date in the book, and I had an armload of books to read!

Later on, we learned how to use card catalogues, and how the Dewey Decimal system worked, and other reference resources so we could find information for reports and papers we needed to write for school. It was another rite of passage when you were allowed to use the “adult” part of the library.

So much for library memories. On trips back to Youngstown, we’d drive past the West Side Library, and apart from new signs, it looked the same from the outside. That is no longer the case. The old West Side Library served its last patrons on April 30, 2016 and was torn down to make way for a sparkling new, larger library on the same site.

A West side neighbor, Michael Kusalaba, and his family helped make that possible. Kusalaba grew up nearby on N. Maryland Avenue (I never knew him) and like me spent many hours at the library growing up, and throughout his life. He had a successful career with Ohio Edison and served as a trustee with the CASTLO Community Improvement Corporation. Before he passed in 2009, he established The Michael Kusalaba Fund with the Youngstown Foundation. On October 9, 2015, the Youngstown Foundation announced its largest gift to date, a $1.68 million gift for the construction of a new West Side library from The Michael Kusalaba Fund. Fittingly, it was decided that the new library would bear his name. The total project was budgeted at $3.775 million, the remainder coming from funding set aside for this purpose. The library operates debt-free.

The new library will open next week on February 14, a Valentine’s Day gift to the West side, and all of Youngstown. A formal dedication will follow on February 24. The new library is larger, at 11,514 square feet. It includes children’s, teen and adult areas, a casual Community Living Room area,  public meeting room, multimedia collections, a Technology Hub, with public access computers and other digital technology. There are self check-out and patron assistance kiosks. It also sounds like there will be an outdoor reading area and a courtyard for public events. A recent gift from the Slanina family sponsored the Community Foyer. Sponsorships of other areas of the library are still available.

The library will be open 10 am to 8 pm Monday through Thursday and 10 am to 6 pm on Friday and Saturday. It will also serve as the base for the library’s “Pop Up” mobile outreach throughout the county.

Michael Kusalaba was a leader in community development and a lover of the library. This facility, which bears his name, will hopefully inspire more new development on the West side. It will also be a place where a new generation of West side children might discover the joys of reading and discovery, and residents of all ages can gather for community events and pursue lifelong learning. I can’t wait to see it myself.

Librarians in Dystopia

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Patchogue-Medford Library, [CC BY-SA 2.5] via Wikimedia

Remember when the role of the librarian was to help you find research materials for your homework, sign you up for a library card, help you log onto the library computers, and check out your books? Remember when librarians were the guardians of a safe, quiet place of discovery?

Our news is filled with accounts of opioid abuse and overdose deaths, gun violence, and sexual harassment and abuse. In many of our minds, we consider the library a sanctuary from such things, a place to read the newspaper, to hunt for your next read, to do research on a business start up idea. When, in my mind I conjure up my idea of a “safe place” or my “happy place” some version of a library often comes to mind.

Sadly, the reality of the evening news has invaded my safe and happy place. A recent story run by our local CBS affiliate cited the statistic that police answered 3200 calls to our city’s libraries in the last two years. They received calls for drug overdoses, shootings, gang fights, and sexual harassment and assaults.

In one incident, a librarian was punched in the head by a 12-year old boy after asking him to be quiet. Plainly, librarians are being called upon to deal with situations most of them probably never dreamed of when they decided to pursue the profession. This was the subject of a recent Bookriot article by Katie McLain that gives a glimpse into the brave new world librarians are confronting each day. In some major cities, for example, librarians are receiving training in administering Naloxone. One Philadelphia librarian, Chera Kowalski, has saved dozens of lives and was recognized by Hillary Clinton for her work at the 2017 American Library Association convention, according to Fobazi Ettarh’s article, Vocational Awe and Librarianship.

In addition to confronting crises like those named above, librarians often are confronting issues once addressed by social agencies, the health care system, and other neighborhood institutions like churches, parishes, and other religious bodies. They are called upon to address homelessness, unemployment and mental health issues along with the more usual questions for which they trained. McLain asks the question of whether we are asking librarians to be our local “superheroes,” a role that can be exhausting, albeit rewarding.

It seems to me that this new reality that our librarians face in our dystopian world is something they should not face alone. It seems at least three things are important:

  1. If they are expected to regularly handle these situations they should be trained, institutionally supported and appropriately compensated.
  2. Libraries will need to spend more on security. The local news report I mentioned above indicated that our metropolitan library has spent $600,000 in upgraded security cameras in addition to hiring more security personnel. If we want our libraries to be safe and to provide the same or enhanced levels of service, in most municipalities, we should be prepared to pay for it.
  3. We need to recognize that, in addition to societal factors, the erosion of other neighborhood institutions puts more stress on the libraries to fill the gap. In particular, I think we have seen a decline in neighborhood religious institutions, which, along with mom and pop stores, have yielded to “big box” facilities 5, 10, or 20 miles away that have no connection with where their parishioners live. Likewise, many social agencies are in a central location, often distant from different parts of the city, and inaccessible to those lacking transportation. What can we do to strengthen networks of care in our local communities?

Finally, it probably won’t hurt to thank your local librarian for all that he or she does. It may in fact be far more than you think.

Books on Books

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20160601_204859One of the ways you know you are a bibliophile is when your reading includes books on books, or bookish subjects! Margaret Aldrich posted a great list recently on BookRiot of 100 Must-Read Books about Books. What particularly impressed me about this list were the number of fiction books that “give books a starring role.” About the only one on the list I had read was Fahrenheit 451, and that in my adolescence! One things bibliophiles always like is finding a whole new treasure trove of books. In this list I think I found one.

The non-fiction list was equally delightful. Roughly, it divided into two kinds of books. One was lists of great books, or the experience of reading them. We have for example, 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Peter Boxall. Books like these are a great shortcut to discovering interesting books you’ve not heard of. I discovered there is even a website based on the book where you can go through and check off all the books on the list that you’ve read and compare your reading with that of others.

The other part of the list are books having to do with various aspects of our passion for reading. One that looked intriguing was At Home With Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries.  Personally, I am more on the end of being interested in what is between the covers, but there are many people who collect and lovingly display books and a number of books on this list discussed this aspect of our love of books. One that I reviewed not too long ago is about The Man Who Loved Books Too Much describing the search for and character of a book thief, and why he loved stealing and collecting books. There was one book that I thought aptly described my own life as a bibliophile: The Polysyllabic Spree: A Hilarious and True Account of One Man’s Struggle with the Monthly Tide of the Books He’s Bought and the Books He’s Been Meaning to Read by Nick Hornby. The title nails it for me, particularly if you add in the books that show up in my mailbox or on my doorstep from publishers to be reviewed.

I was surprised not to find David Denby’s Great Books, describing his decision at forty-eight to enroll in Columbia’s two core courses on the Great Books. In a similar vein, the list did not include the account of the birth of the “Great Books” phenomenon, A Great Idea at the Time (reviewed here). I suspect that this idea has fallen out of favor with the rejection of the idea of a canon of literature and the interest in more diverse books and voices. The World Between Two Covers sounded like a great way to read one’s way around the world.

I also have a couple on my TBR stacks (pictured above) that I did not find here that look interesting. One is Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co, by Lynne Tillman. This is the story of a classic New York City bookstore from its opening to its closing. So many bookstores have a lifecycle like this, and leave behind a legion of fans who loved hanging around them. The other is BiblioTECH: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google, by John Palfrey. I’m intrigued with the whole question of how libraries are defining their mission with the advent of so many new technologies.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Margaret Aldrich’s post is that it part of a whole other genre of writing about books, of which BookRiot and Bob on Books are a part. There are a whole group of us who are not writing books about books per se’, but in the serialized format of blogging are doing what amounts to the same thing. Perhaps we are trying to recover, in the words of another title on Aldrich’s list, The Lost Art of Reading, perhaps because we believe the assertion of the subtitle, that “books matter in a distracted time.”

Tim Spalding, Founder of LibraryThing

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tim_1_grandeSomehow, it just seems like the kind of thing a Greek and Latin graduate student with free lance experience in web development would do. It began as a pet project of Tim’s to catalog his own books, and those of his book-loving friends. And so began the first social book cataloging site. LibraryThing.com launched on August 29, 2005.

What made this thing go, it appears, is that Spalding is a computer geek who leveraged experience in Houghton-Mifflin’s instructional technology division to acquire the tech savvy for an enterprise like LibraryThing. As he put the site together, he realized it was better than anything out there at the time. To help finance the effort, he sold a portion of the company to Abebooks, now owned by Amazon. So Amazon, which also owns GoodReads and Shelfari, does have an interest in LibraryThing. Spalding still holds the largest share of his company. He is fairly adamant about providing alternatives to the Amazon/GoodReads world. He wrote on the “talk” page of LibraryThing:

“We need to embrace being the “un-Amazon” and “un-Goodreads.” If they zag, we should zig. This is the way I like it—I find Goodreads too pushy on the social side, too cavalier about user data and–on average–not as intellectual as LibraryThing can be(1). So I want to be unlike them. But it’s also good business practices. If you want a ham sandwich, Goodreads will give you one. We need to be the site for people who hate ham sandwiches…. Trust me or don’t, but my motives are pretty pure. I like my job and I’m not looking to flip the company to Amazon or anyone else.”

One of the big things Spalding has done is integrate capabilities to search and incorporate library information from over 1000 libraries using Z39.50 connections (a data sharing protocol) that allows users to access cataloging information available through Dublin Core and MARC records. At the same time, Spalding is zealous in protecting user privacy. No email is required to set up an account and collections can be set to private, so that no one need see the books you have.

In a 2006 interview with Abebooks, he describes the features of the site he developed in this way:

“The idea is simple: You enter an ISBN, a title or a keyword, and it picks up the rest from Amazon, the Library of Congress or over 30 libraries around the world. Deweys, LC Call Numbers and MARC Records are all available. Once you’ve entered some books, the system points you to other users with eerily similar tastes. You can start a conversation with them or just browse their libraries to get ideas. The system also generates great automatic recommendations; it turns out “people who OWN X also own Y” can be more interesting than “people who BOUGHT X also bought Y.” I had cataloged my books one way or another since childhood, and making LibraryThing was a dream for a few years before I went ahead with it. I barely hoped that it would eventually repay the month of programming it took to launch the basic service, but it took off beyond my wildest dreams.”

A significant part of LibraryThing’s business is with libraries. LibraryThing for Libraries provides information that enhances online library catalogs. This helped me understand how they stay afloat. I wondered how they did it on annual memberships of $10.

Tim Spalding lives in Portland, Maine with his wife, author Lisa Carey, and their son Liam. Among the books he is currently reading according to his LibraryThing page are John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Enrico Ascalone’s Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, and J.R. Ward’s Lover Avenged.

 

National Library Week 2016

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Did you know that April 10 to 16, 2016 is National Library Week, a campaign of the American Library Association (ALA) to promote the important contribution our libraries make in our lives, our communities, and our country. And within the week’s celebration, did you know that today, Wednesday April 13 is National Bookmobile Day celebrating the work of librarians who take their services on the road to those without easy access to the library.

This year’s theme is “Libraries Transform”. They even have a contest that involves completing the “Because” statement in the graphic above and submitting it through one of the following ways:

Entries can be posted to Twitter, Instagram, or on the I Love Libraries Facebook page during National Library Week for a chance to win. Entries can be a picture or text.  Creativity is encouraged. Just be sure to include the word “Because” and the hashtag #LibrariesTransform for a chance to win. Entries can also be submitted directly to the Libraries Transform website. The promotion begins Sunday, April 10 at noon CT and ends Saturday, April 16 at noon CT.  

My own answer for our local library is “because our library serves as a community hub and provides critical resources and technology for those of every age.” I wish I could distill that to fewer words, but here is what I have in mind.

Our library is a community hub in a suburban community that did not have one until it was built. When a group of us met to save a local wetland from being turned into an office development, where did we meet? The library. Where do we post information for our church’s community garden or the concert announcements for the community choir I sing with? At the library. In fact, the library hosts a number of meetings, book groups, teen gatherings, and, in the summer, outdoor concerts. Whenever I drive by, the parking lot is always full or nearly full.

The other part of my “because” statement has to do with all the critical resources our library provides, including current state of the art technology as well as information resources one might not be able to access on one’s own. It is still the case that 25 percent of American households still lack internet connections. Computers at our library have high speed access as well as all the basic office software. For others, it is free access to online e-books. For others like myself, it is the ability to reserve books online that I want to read but not own, either from our library system or via inter-library loan. For students, there is a homework help center, and there is a job center for those looking for work or seeking a better job. You can see the list of all the things my library offers at their website.

Of course, libraries, along with families and schools, are great places to encourage the love of reading. From read aloud and summer reading programs to the simple fun of wandering the stacks and the shelves with new releases, there is always the fun of that serendipitous discovery of a book you’d not know about that piques a personal interest. More than once, I’ve gone to the library for one reason, and come away with a new book to read, just because something caught my eye.

This is a good week to stop by your local library. If nothing else, your taxes contribute to its operating budget and you should check out how they are being spent. When I look at our library through this lens, I’m always delighted, as I see the way staff serve the public and all the ways our library enhances our community. Reviewing my property taxes, I see that I contribute $18 a month toward our local library. That’s less than the cost of most new books these days, less than half what I pay for internet service, probably less than I spend at Starbucks in a month. The value to me is not just the personal benefit I receive but also the recognition that it is one place that is providing, not a hand out, but a hand up to those who are trying to make a better life for themselves. The value is how the library makes my community a good place to live.

While you are at the library, take some time to look at who is using the facilities. Notice all the programming that takes place. Talk to a reference librarian about the resources at the library or online that might be helpful to you. Just spend time browsing the books and other media available. And, if you don’t have one, or it is out of date, sign up for a library card. You will be amazed at most libraries with all the things you can do with that little card, many from wherever you are! And, if you have the chance, thank someone at the library for making all this possible. National Library Week is a good time to do that.