Comments on: AADL Board Adjusts Budget, Reviews Policy

By: sheila rice

sheila rice — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 16:13:15 +0000

Thank you Jack Eaton for your positive librarian comments. In an expanding world of information, information professionals (i.e. librarians) are uniquely trained to organize the morass as well as instruct in its use. We need more well trained library professionals as the world of information–good and bad, analog and digital–continues to enlarge.

By: Herb

Herb — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 22:36:25 +0000

In recent months I have visited downtown and Mallet’s Creek several times. Almost all the patrons I see are using a library terminal or their own laptop or playing games or texting on cell phones or just killing time. Few are in the stacks or at the reference desk. Mallet’s Creek seems to have a certain amount of book circulation but mostly it is call in to reserve, pick up and go home. If the taxpayers want to maintain public connection and hang spaces that is their perrogative but there does not seem to be much need for librarians.

By: Lyn Davidge

Lyn Davidge — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 20:58:33 +0000

Re:(3) Professional librarians indeed are able to show patrons how to find and verify reliable information. Unfortunately, it appears that AADL finds less and less value in having degreed librarians on staff and using their unique talents in ways that will be most beneficial for the community. I wonder how many of the highly experienced and talented librarians who are retiring this month will be replaced with degreed librarians?

By: Jack Eaton

Jack Eaton — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 16:56:27 +0000

Re: (3), yes, books! But not just books. The entire spectrum of resources – books, audio, film, technology, and most especially well paid, well trained professional staff.

As information technology expands from hard cover book out into the vast internet, having good library staff is essential. Wikipedia is a good source of information, except when it isn’t. A librarian should be able to show library patrons how to find reliable information and how to verify the information one finds in addition to finding a good book.

In the recent past, it seems that our library is more focused on the real estate aspects of running the library than on the resources in those buildings.

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 15:33:52 +0000

I hope the survey allows us to vote for books. Libraries should be about books! I guess I should say, “too”.

Another good question: “Do you think the AADL board meetings should be on CTN like most other governmental bodies? Yes or no?”

By: Doug Jewett

Doug Jewett — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:12:18 +0000

Probably somebody on the AADL Board should have foreseen that the juxtaposition of the two budget items, $63,000 for direct mailing to all residents and $25,000 for a phone survey of 500-600 residents might be a lightning rod for irony. For the phone survey, I did the math (just simple division, unlike the riskier stuff favored by pollsters). Still, I had to go back and check my results. That’s $50 per resident polled. That’s for a data set of the sort that any frustrated, head-banging researcher has encountered many times – too small a sample, hopelessly skewed in ways that can’t be fully imagined – in short, total junk.

However, somewhere here a viable alternative might be offering itself: Why not use just a little of the $63,000 budget for direct mailing to ask residents to come forward their thoughts and opinions? (There is already no shortage of people eager to do so.) Probably the best would open a web page, etc., where everyone could just talk back and forth with the aim of coming up with a comprehensive list of well thought out questions. That list could then be submitted to all Ann Arbor residents by one of the subsequent direct mailings. That way everyone would get a chance to sleep on things, to think broadly and deeply about the Library and the future – not as, in a phone survey, where only hurried, off the cuff responses are encouraged or even possible.

Enthusiastic participation would be assured by
entering all responses into a lottery. Five hundred names would be drawn, and each winner would receive a check for fifty bucks.

Most all residents would be forever grateful and upbeat about the AADL. (Except possibly for a few howling curmudgeons who might try to point out that the money came out of the taxpayers’pockets in the first place.

By: Donald Salberg

Donald Salberg — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 05:50:08 +0000

The announcement that the AADL will pay $25,000 for another EPIC-MRA survey was surprising in view that the last one was done two years ago. In that study,the 400 interviewed citizens thought favorably about the present library and only 45% favored a new library costing $65 million and financed by a bond issue. The referendum confirmed the veracity of the survey since only 45% of voters favored replacing the library financed by a bond issuance.

The only reason for the AADL library board contracting for another survey is to use the results to convince voters to pass a bond referendum for a new library when a another referendum is scheduled for the fall. With careful design the EPI-MRA can surely obtain survey results different from the 2012 survey, reporting major criticisms of the present library. (For instance, a question phrased as follows:”Do you believe that the physical structure of the library is “extremely bad,”"very bad,” of just “bad.” For fairness a “no opinion” option may be included.)

Whether justified or not, appropriately replacing the present library poses difficult decisions. How much of a new library should house physical books when libraries are rapidly transitioning to digital libraries with fewer and, in some cases, no physical books? Should a new library include costly large areas designed to support conferences and meetings? Should a central library even be built considering the utility and desirability of having many smaller branch libraries?

In my opinion the downtown AADL has changed little in the past two years and with rejection of one bond referendum a little over a year ago, another bond referendum for a new library is not justified this year or for at least several more years in the future. By then decentralized digital libraries may be the accepted norm.