[WEB4LIB] Re: "Gutting America's Local Libraries"

[Walt Crawford]

Jennifer Abrams provides a spirited attack on my critique. Fine, although I
think she's reading things into it that aren't there.

I greatly admire local, regional, and statewide consortia that build on
effective local services, work with incremental funding (usually statewide
funds that wouldn't be made available to local libraries), and enhance
libraries through fast, cost-effective intercirculation. Such systems build
from strength.They also proceed from profound understanding of, and
appreciaton for, what libraries do. If I didn't believe in thoughtful
consortial action, I'd certainly find another line of work.

As I read Coffman (and listen to him), I don't hear incrementalism and
building from strength. I hear a disdain for today's libraries and library
service; I hear a lack of appreciation for the range of local library
activities; and I hear a call for monolithic, transformative "solutions"
without much interest in who gets hurt along the way. I don't see a call to
find some way to experiment with and think through improvements in existing
systems; I see "everything we do is wrong, and I have The Solution." That's
overstated, of course--but then, I was responding to (IMNSHO) overstated
and self-contradicting argumentation.

Was my critique mean-spirited and nasty? Perhaps--although damned if I can
read it that way. If so, I apologize to anyone offended by my nastiness. I
intended to be forceful, and I surely didn't take time to edit the piece as
I would have for print publication. I reacted badly to Coffman's series of
articles (not just ELL), and may have overreacted. Did I "repeatedly call
the idea 'dumb'"? Well, I can only find the string d-u-m-b in the article
once, in the phrase "like so many other dumb ideas," but maybe my browser's
malfunctioning.

I'd be interested in discussing what we could learn from Amazon that might
be used to improve library services while respecting confidentiality,
equity, local needs, and economic reality. But that's not what we're doing.
Instead, it's back-and-forth about this vast transformative scheme. I
regard it as a distraction from the variety of real-world improvements that
so many of us are working on. That, frankly, is what most distresses me
about the whole thing. I would much rather deal with "ILL and how to do it
better" (we're working on that), "catalogs and what sould be in them,"
(we're working on that), "OPACs and circ systems and how they could be
improved"--noting that "improved" and "trashed and replaced" are two
fundamentally different things.

Am I wrong? Maybe. (It wouldn't be the first time.) Do I expect everyone to
agree with me? Certainly not, although it was interesting to see the flurry
of people whose voice apparently hadn't been represented. Do I represent
anyone else? Absolutely not: it's on my personal Web site, and has no
relationship to my employers, to professional assocations, or anyone else.

Will I be signing up for the Great ELL Cavalcade? Not bloody likely.