Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990 TAG: 9007270203
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
And libraries are becoming more program-oriented. Regional, state and national conferences over the next six months will look at the changing role of libraries and the critical issues they face in the near future.
"I think of libraries as programs," said Ann H. Eastman of Blacksburg, steering committee chairman of the November Governor's Conference on Libraries and Information Services. Eastman also is involved with the January 1991 White House conference and is executive director of the Virginia Center for the Book.
The regional, state and White House conferences on libraries and information services will explore the link between libraries and "the major challenges facing society today," she said. Themes of the conferences will be libraries and their relationship to literacy, democracy and productivity.
Eastman sees libraries as a base for activities. What those activities are depends on the needs of the community.
For instance, the Blacksburg branch of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library helps sponsor a snack, social and study time for children after school. Children with working parents welcome a place to be with others and have something to eat before settling down to do their homework.
But the awareness is growing that libraries will serve diverse ages and ethnic groups in the near future, Eastman said, and different programs will be needed.
More senior adult programs may be offered at libraries, for example, as the nation becomes "a graying population."
Two ways the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library serves the graying population is by increasing the number of large-print books it has and adding to the books-on-cassette collection, said Kim Martens, regional library director.
The regional library also emphasizes children's services such as story hours and a summer reading program as part of its commitment to the literacy movement, Martens said.
There have been four governor's conferences; the most recent was in 1979, the year of the first White House conference on libraries.
The Governor's Conference will "deal with issues that face every community," such as funding, recruitment of trained staff, literacy, children's programs, the homeless and other populations that rely on library services, Eastman said. In meeting the needs of diverse groups, libraries work with many agencies and provide a whole collection of programs.
While there is "a current of interest in literacy," Eastman said it was hard, not many years ago, to find librarians who thought they should deal with literacy aside from perhaps providing a meeting room. Now, librarians see the extent of the literacy problem and get more directly involved.
Libraries played a direct role in helping start the New River Valley chapter, Literacy Volunteers of America, Martens said, but now that the organization stands on its own, the libraries provide meeting rooms and materials for adult new readers.
Meeting the challenge of added services may prove difficult in the face of another commonality of public libraries.
"There is, universally, a funding crisis in public libraries," Eastman said. Buying power has been cut by reductions in available federal and state money, meaning "public libraries are so very dependent on largely real estate tax funds" at the local level.
One emphasis at the state conference and beyond will be to increase the financial support to libraries at the community and state levels.
Funding is needed not only to buy materials, but to build new libraries, implement new technologies such as automated circulation, and recruit and train new staff. There is a move to recruit more minority and ethnic workers, Eastman said, but success comes slowly because entry-level salaries for public librarians are well below what non-academic or non-public libraries offer.
Recruiting trained staff is becoming harder, Martens noted, now that library schools throughout the United States are closing and fewer librarians are coming out of college. And members of her staff who would like to pursue a master's degree in library science can't find a college that offers the program in Virginia.
As far as library funding is concerned, Martens said, "There is some federal money out there [but] state money is the sad story."
State aid to public libraries is based on a formula that gives 35 cents for every dollar of local money spent. But there is a $150,000 cap on the formula, which can hurt areas that receive good local support. Only the larger counties were affected at first, but now Martens said "more and more of us are reaching the cap."
There is an effort to have the cap lifted and develop a new formula, she said.
Automated circulation and a computerized card catalog are two areas of new technology Martens is eager to implement. Getting these in place are "really critical" to enhancing library services, she said.
In the past fiscal year, the regional library circulated 515,926 items. Taking into account staff time to help patrons find the material, check it out and later return it to the shelves, that's a lot of work done by hand, she said.
by CNB