Coughing up Coffman

[Karen G. Schneider]

Apathetic? O.k., I'll bite.  Some of the ideas were fun.  But some of the
comments were unsubstantiated, and others made wild leaps from hypothesis
to conclusion.  Coffman wrote, "Statistics show that less than 3 percent of
the average public library’s circulation comes from interlibrary loan
(Baker, 1993)."  Well--but what does this prove?  It might demonstrate
several things:

*INTRAlibrary loans work so well that loans aren't needed 
* The browsable physical collection is what people really want 
* Six-year-old statistics don't show much 

I'm not sure these statements are completely, exclusively true--but I don't
think they're entirely or even wholly false.  As for his conclusion--local
databases are awful; let's use OCLC--all I can ask is, post hoc ergo
propter hoc?  C'mon, admit there's more it than that.  

As for the public library as commercial venture--oy, here we are
representing one of the last bastions of public service, and someone is
proposing we should sell our stuff?  Other people do the commercial schtick
a lot better.  Not only is there nothing wrong with the traditional public
library model of free service--it's a proud tradition.  As for that
"deadwood," yes, libraries should weed collections--but even I have an
issue with wholesale abandonment of older materials.  We can get too
careless too soon with our history.  Knock knock knock, hello Coffman? It's
a LIBRARY, not a BOOKSTORE.  We are LIBRARIANS, not BOOKSELLERS.  We have a
higher calling than making sure we have enough copies of Clancy's latest
junk to turn a profit.  What do we say fifty years from now when we have
regained our collective senses and begun to understand how the wildly
commercial Mc90's endangered so many public resources?  We're sorry, we
were too busy trying to turn a profit to keep copies of that author's first
works?  We were too excited about forthcoming formats to take care of the
old ones? I don't think so.  Maybe being a true-blue public servant, a
purveyor of free books and services for the masses, isn't good enough for
Coffman, but it is damn fine good enough for me.  

On the other hand, Coffman did a good job (though he is no trailblazer
here) in outlining the weaknesses of the online catalog, that bloated
bastion of ancient library technology.  Our catalogs stink. They ARE also
way overpriced.  Some of this may be due to the vendors--but some of this
may be due to the library profession, which sometimes (often?) puts a
premium on the wrong features.  Look how long it has taken most of us to go
to web-based catalogs.  How many of us sneak looky-loos at Amazon to
enhance reader's advisory when we find something in our funky old
inflexible, ugly and impersonal catalogs?  And as Coffman points out--if
you have to take a class on how to use a web-based database, it's not an
effective tool.  

One of the truly funky facts of library science is that for many of us the
term "library automation" meant putting the library database into
electronic format... and everything else trailed a poor second at best.  If
we had had more perspective on it, ironically, we would have ended up with
a better product.  (However, that product would still not be for sale...)

________________________________________________
Karen G. Schneider kgs at bluehighways.com 
http://www.bluehighways.com 
Assistant Director of Technology, Shenendehowa Public Library, NY
Author: A Practical Guide to Internet Filters, Neal Schuman, 1997