Balancing buildings, books, bytes, and bucks: steps to secure the public library future in the Internet age.

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE CRITIQUE

Two quotations frame my approach to this article, an invited critique of the Benton Foundation's (1996) Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries and Communities in the Digital Age. The first is from American publisher and author Elbert Hubbard (1865-1915) who wrote: "To escape criticism--do nothing, say nothing, be nothing" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 8). In playing a role in the development of Buildings, Books, and Bytes, its collaborators--to paraphrase Hubbard--have said much and done much to help public libraries realize a bright future. I thank the Kellogg Foundation for funding this project and the Benton Foundation for organizing and publishing the study.

The second quote is from film star Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) who once remarked: "I've always felt those articles [about my acting] reveal more about the writers than they do about me" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 10). Like those authors who wrote about Monroe, what I write here reveals at least as much about what I believe needs to be done to yield a bright future for public libraries as it does about the Benton Report's methods and its conclusions. I trust the Benton Foundation will take this article as it is meant: an effort to help move forward the initiative the report suggests (Benton Foundation, 1996, P. 40).

GOALS OF THE BENTON REPORT

The Benton Report (p. 1) articulates two goals. First, the Kellogg Foundation wanted to find out "about where the public supports--or fails to support--libraries as they confront the digital world." Second, the foundation set itself a more difficult task: "With more Americans turning to home computers and the Internet for information, the Kellogg Foundation wanted to help its grantees develop a public message about American libraries that reflected both . . . library leaders' visions and the American people's expectations."

The Benton Foundation discerned much about public support for libraries by conducting a telephone survey with findings modified by a "counterpoint" focus group. The second goal proved more difficult to attain, and the report concludes not with a coherent public message but with a series of suggested next steps followed by a question and an admonition: "What will determine the course of libraries in the digital future? The way that library leaders and visionaries respond to public opinion and the public policy context--as well as their own visions. The library world thus has its work cut out" (Benton Foundation, 1996, p. 41). This article is part of that work. It critiques the Benton Report's findings and makes suggestions for building public support and a coherent library message.

TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGES IN BOOKS AND LIBRARIES

"Technology is a queer thing," English author and physicist C. P. Snow (1905-1980) once wrote. "It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 237).

Nowhere is Snow's observation more true than in libraries, where technological adaptation is a way of life. Long before customers could order a book at Amazon.com on the Internet, they could use public catalogs to check a library's electronic inventory of materials and place reserves. And a decade before barcode scanners appeared at supermarkets, library clerks were checking out materials electronically. Moreover, most public library users already have benefitted from OCLC's networked catalog; a free-standing or networked magazine index from IAC, UMI, or EBSCO; and even online searching by staff using DIALOG or staff Internet terminals. More recently, the latest computer-based networked machines, with their digitized on-site and networked content, have found rapid acceptance in most libraries that could afford to install them. Paraphrasing Snow, while technology has brought great gifts to libraries, its "stabs in the back" are just as apparent in the world of libraries and books. Some examples follow.

College Textbooks

Technology struck a heavy blow to college textbooks. Desiring to teach from current scholarship rather than the two-year-old material found in "new" textbooks, many college professors took copies of colleagues' draft papers, public documents, their own writings, and noncopyrighted Internet material and organized their own sets of course readings. These materials were reproduced at a commercial copier or on a computer disk available at the college bookstore. High-speed electronic reproduction and networking thereby catalyzed a mass movement to customized college textbooks, which hit the traditional college textbook market hard (Darlin, 1995; Magner, 1993).

Reference Books

Paper-based encyclopedias also fell victim to electronic media. As the once-mighty Encyclopaedia Britannica began to issue separate CD-ROM and Internet versions, which one recent reviewer called "unsurprisingly, authoritative and gray," Encarta '97, which had energized the trend to electronic encyclopedias, appeared as two CD-ROMs, "with twice the multimedia" and "wired . . . for cyberspace" (White, 1997, p. 115). Paper encyclopedias are dying or dead, killed by personal computers (Whiteley, 1995). So too are other paper-based reference books, as librarians increasingly turn to frequently updated CD-ROM products or online subscriptions so that reference answers can be as current as users' requests. Electronic publishing, with its easy capacity for continuous updating, is dramatically altering the reference book market (Holt, 1996a).

Journals and Magazines

The quick successes of electronic journals mark the change from paper to bytes in scholarly publishing. A 1995 Association of Research Libraries publication listed "675 electronic journals, newsletters, and related titles, ....a 450% increase since the first edition of July 1991" (Saunders & Mitchell, 1996, p. 6). With paper, ink, and postage costs rising faster than inflation as electronic publishing charges drop, many niche market journal communities seem destined to follow the same path (Strangelove, 1996). Attempts to create popular mass-market electronic journals have been less successful, but public libraries still are shedding paper subscriptions (Glaberson, 1995; Wilson, 1995; Alsop, 1995). To save money, and to gain broader ranges of back issues and electronic indexing and abstracts, St. Louis Public Library (SLPL) already has traded some paper subscriptions for electronic coverage. Though SLPL still purchases numerous paper subscriptions for current browsing at multiple sites, other low-use paper subscription reductions seem inevitable to reduce costs and for easier subject searching in archived back issues.

Public Demand for Multimedia Materials

Public library customer demand is shifting toward multimedia materials. At St. Louis Public Library, where all multimedia is fully cataloged in MARC format, the circulation of multimedia (CDs, audiotapes, videotapes and, soon, computer software) now constitutes 25 percent of all circulations. Other circulation categories have grown as well, but multimedia circulation has skyrocketed. Throughout public libraries, this mass-use trend will impact collection budgets if it has not done so already.

Public Use of Library Computers

Serving a population of 350,000, SLPL currently utilizes 450 computers. Sixty percent (270), arrayed in various LAN, WAN, and Internet configurations and loaded with many different information products and learning games, are used exclusively by the public. The number of public computers will double by the year 2002. If past use is any indication of future demand, this number could double again, and the public's desire for library-operated electronic products and Internet connections could not be met. Networked computing is redefining library use, including picking up new pre-teen and teenager constituencies that previously found excuses to avoid a visit to the library. At St. Louis Public Library, the availability of networked computers has created such a steep demand curve that SLPL professional staff cannot yet discern its peak.

The trend to networked computing in libraries is ongoing, occurs at different rates in different systems, and is regarded rightly by staff and library customers alike as part of a continuing transition without a discernible end in sight. Amid this "life on the edge of chaos" (Holt, 1996a, p. 56), it is no surprise that the Benton Report's authors encountered difficulty in discerning a unified, bright, digital future for public libraries.

SNAPSHOTS AND NEW PORTRAITS: UNDERSTANDING THE LIBRARY MARKETPLACE

The core of the Benton Report is a 1996 survey of citizen attitudes about public libraries. Surveys are snapshots, synoptic impressions caught in time (Spaeth, 1992). The Benton Foundation survey snapshot, like other national surveys, shows "strong public backing for public libraries" (Benton Foundation, 1996, pp. 28-29). While 77 percent of all survey participants had access to computers at home or school, 78 percent of participants thought that libraries would remain as important or grow in importance as computer use increased. And "a majority of those polled" voted to spend an additional $20 on library software rather than buy it themselves (pp. 17-18, 4245). If these levels of support had shown up in an SLPL survey, the system's community relations advisor immediately would have recommended beginning a new campaign for increased financial support. Elected officials would regard one of their cherished issues as next to unbeatable if it achieved numbers like these.

Political reality is in the details, however, and the Benton Foundation survey is suggestive rather than definitive in detail. Before creating a new strategic message for libraries, several specific constituencies deserve more attention. Rather than recounting findings from other national surveys already reported in the library literature and summarized in the Benton Report (pp. 28-29), I have used SLPL survey findings in considering these constituencies.

Nonusers

In March 1995, SLPL conducted a qualitative in-depth telephone survey of twenty-two individuals who had not used any St. Louis Public Library service in the past three years. Although its numbers were small, the survey group was balanced evenly for the city's population by age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status and represented nearly every city zip code.

As a group, the participants had a high level of awareness of the library but little detailed sense about its varied resources. When material and service alternatives were listed, participants stated they did not use the library because "they do not have an interest in these materials, they do not make the effort or take the time to use the library, or they are obtaining their resources and information through other means (i.e., they already have enough reading material, buy books, watch television)." Although the survey was open-ended, strikingly, no one mentioned getting information from computers, either at home or at the office (Cluff, 1995, pp. 1-3).

Are these St. Louis responses typical of other nonusers nationally? Is nonuse a function of lack of interest, lack of need, not knowing about services, or some combination of these? Will a library move to adopt more networked technology "turn off" or win the support of most nonusers? Is there a message powerful enough to convince even nonusers to support financially the work of their public library?

Entertainment Users

A 1990 SLPL telephone survey of nearly 500 citizens found that "pleasure reading," at 48 percent of all circulation, constituted the pre-eminent reason that participants used SLPL collections and services (Ackerman & Holman, 1990, p. 20). Using fiction circulation as a simplistic surrogate for "pleasure reading" in 1996, this use category still accounts for about 36 percent of all circulations. No other circulation category is higher.

Though fiction circulations are rising absolutely, the category has declined from 48 percent to 36 percent of total checkouts over the past decade. Yet when the 1996 fiction circulation total is added to check outs of videos, CDs, and audiotapes, the total represents 61 percent of all SLPL's circulations. Surveys conducted for the Minneapolis Public Library, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library all revealed "that more users selected the Popular Materials Library role as a reason for coming to the Library than any other single reason for coming to the library" (D'Elia, 1993, p. 18).

In spite of Tisdale's (1997) recent ahistorical critique of public library entertainment activities, this category remains predominant in most public libraries. Much of this "entertainment" usage, of course, masks learning. SLPL's Signature Series (1997), for example, brings in renowned authors like Susan Sontag, David Halberstram, Gail Sheehy, Jane Bryant Quinn, David McCullough, and Toni Morrison for free lectures to the people of St. Louis. Such appearances not only entertain but enlighten. So, too, does SLPL's participation in ALA's public programs which bring literature, history, and the arts into libraries across the nation (Brandenhoff, 1997).

In constructing the library's strategic message for the future, how should library entertainment services and collections be handled? How will networked computing change constituent demand for library entertainment services?

Business Users

The Benton Report survey did not contain questions concerning business use of public libraries. Yet every public library in America spends enormous time and a good deal of money especially on business users, and networked computing already has affected business use. SLPL surveyed business users in a detailed 1989 mail survey (Watts et al., 1989) and, as part of recent service-valuation studies, has organized several focus groups specifically for business users.

This survey and the focus groups have revealed both the strengths and the weaknesses of library business services. In SLPL studies, business users represent the most demanding group for current information, specialized online searching, and expensive compiling and sorting of information into personalized packages useful to one entrepreneur or one corporation. Because of their strategic and time-sensitive operations, businesses are the first group of sophisticated users that public libraries will lose to contract information providers providing direct-to-office services via electronic networks.

What role is networked computing playing in filling current demand for library business services? Will networked electronic resources radically change business public library user demands? How can national library surveys be constructed to reflect business user demand for services as part of regular adult demand?

Women

Just as they constitute the majority in American wealth holding and in voter turnout, women historically are heavier library users than men. A thin-but-growing literature on gender and electronic media, added to SLPL experiences and focus group findings, shows that women regard electronic media and information technology differently, use it differently, and value it differently than do men (McAdoo, 1994). In planning a new branch library, for example, SLPL has accommodated preteen and teenage females' desire to be away from males of similar ages as they explore computer learning options.

What do women, including preteens and teens, think about electronic media in libraries? Do they desire different elements in the technological complex, different content, and even different settings? And, what digital future do women, especially women voters, want for public libraries?

Youth

The Benton survey's two questions (12 and 15) involving children received stronger positive reactions than any of the other twenty-seven responses. If survey respondents are not clear on anything else, they want public libraries to use both traditional and electronic means to help kids be successful in school.

Desire for library help with schoolwork for children (and for adult learners as well) has been a consistent SLPL survey and focus group theme. In a 1990 survey (Ackerman et al., 1990, p. 20), "school" (24 percent)was second only to entertainment as a reason for going to the library. A 1990 focus group to assess how best to organize services in a new branch showed children's education as the greatest service demand. Focus group participants also wanted the library to have plenty of public-access computers to help children succeed in school and prepare for life (Marketing Edge, 1990; Holt, 1997a). In St. Louis and at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, new computer labs have attracted new youth users in such numbers as to become a staffing and safety issue as well as a benefit.

Will electronic learning environments draw and hold teens and preteens as library users? What impact will home-computer Internet connections have on demand for library homework help? Will networked computers add to or detract from parental willingness to send their children to the library for materials, programs, and services?

Younger Adults and Men

The Benton Report notes: "Research is especially needed with various target groups, such as younger adults and men" (p. 31). The Benton Report collaborators found it disturbing that survey participants ages 18 to 24 were more willing to spend $20 for their own software rather than to give the same amount to a library which would share the product. Would that group's answer have been any different had the query been about any other library or educational material?

SLPL has the capability of arraying card use by age of user. When that usage is portrayed on a graph, it is nearly a flattened bell-curve extending from age zero to age 92 with one exception--those ages 18 to 24 form a sharply walled deep valley of nonuse.

Is that different from the past? Or, has that valley always been there? Has the availability of networked computing accentuated the valley? Will the valley carry forward to set a new adult pattern? Who knows? This group, indeed, merits research.

Like young adults, adult male use of public libraries requires more focused study. When SLPL lines up "sophisticated users" of its business services for focus groups, males almost always constitute 60 to 80 percent of those who volunteer. On the other hand, library special events directed toward fiction readers nearly always attract 60 to 80 percent women. These male-female patterns of library use are worth more attention, especially if focused on how networked computing is added as a variable in the service mix.

On average, do men use public libraries less than women or differently from women? Is men's support for public libraries generally less than women's support? With the coming of networked computing in homes, offices, and libraries, are men's views of public library value changing more or less than are women's?

FOCUS GROUPS: MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND, AND ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

The most problematical device in the Benton Report (p. 31) is the use of a single focus group as a "counterpoint" to a carefully structured national survey. The weakness of this device is made worse because the focus group was drawn from a single locale, Montgomery County, Maryland.

It is hard to imagine a less typical American county than Montgomery County, a Washington, DC, beltway grouping of subdivisions clustered around "edge cities" largely inhabited by federal government employees, including thousands of scientists and technicians who work at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and in the high-technology corridor which adjoins Interstate 270 between Bethesda and Fredericksburg, Maryland. Good jobs, nice homes, excellent schools, and well-designed residential settings have attracted an upper-class cosmopolitan population. Almost every schoolroom in Montgomery County looks like a committee meeting of a junior United Nations. Municipal services are generally of high quality but, given the socio-economic status of the county, per capita support for public libraries is relatively low.

From this population, in the spring of 1996, "eleven white, mixed-gender participants" were chosen for the Benton Foundation's focus group. "All but one had at least some college education," indicating the group's socio-economic level. All participants were described as "sophisticated library users," though no definition is offered of what criteria makes a "sophisticated" user (Benson Foundation, 1996, pp. 26-27).

Given their life experiences, their residential setting, and their library system, their perceptions about public libraries are hardly surprising (Benson Foundation, 1996, pp. 30-31).

* With a high level of disposable income, for the latest in fiction books, they shop at Borders or Crown Books, not at their local library. Bookstores are seen as "genuine competitors" to libraries.

* They view public libraries as behind the curve technologically, and they will/should remain behind the curve.

* With a high percentage of families having computers at home and with computer-based instruction already taking place in area schools, they do not believe that public libraries should be on the cutting edge technologically.

* Residing in a politically active, high-tax, high-service society, they believe that all tax fights, including those for additional public support for libraries, should be avoided.

* In a community where scientist moms volunteer to develop science units for elementary schoolchildren, it is easy for focus group participants to suggest that public libraries should recruit retired research scholars to help out in public libraries.

"Admittedly," the Benton Report concludes, "these focus group findings should be understood as one group of citizens' responses to a set of directed topics." That being so, compare the Montgomery County findings with the findings from two St. Louis focus groups, each just as valid as the Benton survey group findings.

St. Louis is an old Midwestern city. It is 45 percent African-American and about 2 percent from all other foreign-born and racial groups. Almost 20 percent of its families live below the poverty line, and nearly 40 percent of its children live in poverty. Almost 40 percent of its adults have reading problems of sufficient magnitude to affect them negatively in the workplace. Reflecting these realities, the focus group participants were parents, teachers (including home schoolers), and care-givers who worked in licensed day-care settings. They ranged from a high of "middle income" through those who admittedly get along with a lot less; more than half were African-American, with one Asian-American. Reflecting regular library users in the care-giving categories, focus group participants were 80 percent female. Regular library users were defined as those who visited a facility to use library services, checked out materials, or dialed into the library's electronic services at least once a month through the previous year.

During the two open-ended focus groups, participants were asked three sets of questions. They were not provoked or checked, though every possible attempt was made to ensure that every participant answered in each question series. In this way, no person was allowed to dominate the opinions that emerged. The questions were these:

* How do the library services you use fit into the lives of your children and you? Are the services essential or something extra? Are there services that ought to be improved? How do you value the library services you use? Can the services be assigned a dollar value?

* Finally, what would make you stop using public library services and start using other similar services, including those of for-profit vendors? And, where would you go for library services if your library didn't exist?

What emerged from the sessions was a sense of why these parents, day-care providers, and teachers valued their public library. Because the questions were open-ended, the participants used their own terms for talking about their library experiences. Given the Benton focus group's low opinion of library electronic media, the most intriguing aspect of these conversations was how participants integrated SLPL computers into their perception of the library's value. The title of each discussion section is a term used by one of the participants which seemed to capture the essence of what others were saying.

Family Shopping Mall

The most important overall role the groups articulated was the library as family shopping mall. They saw it as a place of intentional variety, offering products (books), services (reader's advisory, answering questions), computers (magazine full text, kids' learning games, and the Internet), and special events (local and nationally renowned authors, folk music, story telling, and self-help of all kinds)--all in a welcoming environment where staff not only smiled and answered questions but volunteered help. One participant called the library "a complex service, . . . a source of stuff of all kinds." Another said, "It's like a whole person."

A Safe Place

In today's America, safety--especially for children--is never a given. One mother noted that: the library staff does "a great job of taking care of kids." Another called her library "a safe educational place that is fun in my neighborhood." A third saw the library as safe because it offered "age-appropriate materials." Because libraries were safe places, many parents attested to sending their children by themselves to the library.

Community Meeting Place

One mother said she had heard her child tell another child: "Let's meet at the library." A teacher whose branch library is closed for renovation, remarked: "There's no community meeting place in our neighborhood. We're wayward." A parent said that the library's value is in its "community interaction....It's what you get when you come together and do together. You can't get the same thing any place but at the library--and it's free." Another parent commented: "We can look at other mothers at story hour [and] know that others are experiencing things like us."

Community Anchor

The library, said one mother, "binds the community. We all use it." Another said: "It's bigger than home. [Our library system is] something to take care of. [It provides us with] a bigger sense of belonging than just home." A third noted: "We don't have to tiptoe here. We can enjoy and touch and have pride." A fourth stated: "The community is merged . . . into the library. The community and the library . . . have rapport." Library literature is nearly silent on the function of a library as community anchor. Yet a real estate agent called recently (as others have in the past) to ask when a branch library renovation would open so the fact could be included in a residential listing, and city aldermen lobby the library board regularly for new branches as part of neighborhood revitalization efforts.

Children's Doorway to Adulthood

"My branch library," one parent stated, "offers a new horizon to open up the education for children.... They can pick out something they want to read. They can make their own decisions." Another asserted that the library helped children become responsible for their own actions. The trips to Magic House, a program which the library organized, "opened up experiences for our children." Another parent spoke about how children "need ways of going to space, of becoming parents. They need to see more than just their home....The library lets them know they will never be alone."

Focused on Education

If there is a continuing theme that joins most St. Louis Public Library user discussions of library services, it is that of life-long learning, though no participant ever used that term. Home-school mothers led in making the point. "My branch library is a home school haven," one home-schooler mother declared. It is "like an open classroom, with its books and videos forming the substance of the curriculum." "I'm delighted with the kids' computers," another home-schooler mother declared: "My child can go on the Internet." While her child was picking out CDs for music lessons, she got research material for her graduate courses.

Another education value was sounded by an African-American mother who declared: "The books at,my library helped me raise my worth. They provided material for me to understand myself and my race."

The library's multiple computer environments also came in for praise. One father noted: "We can dial in from home and put requests for books on the library's bulletin board. They drop us a card or call when the books arrive.... They also deliver to the kids' [high] schools."

One mother commented on how computers allowed her to get to a specific article fast. "Computers are very valuable for children. They go to the computers first. They start always with programs like Encarta. [My] kids use [library] computers to play and to get information.... They have pictures, color and [are] action oriented.... [Kids] are stimulated by what they see on [library] computers."

And finally there came another parent comment that "our library has more on the computers than the Internet .... The parameters of the library's [children's] computer system are very well thought out. Whether they want a poetry book, experience with children's games, like Mind Maze, they find it on the library's computer."

COMPARISONS WITH MONTGOMERY COUNTY

This summary of the two St. Louis focus groups provides a sharp contrast to the views of the Montgomery County focus group. Neither focus group is more "right" than the other. But the different groups in the two communities represent different socioeconomic strata, draw on different lifestyles and, rather obviously, they have experienced sharply contrasting public library experiences.

The two groups have very different opinions about the place of electronic media in libraries. The Montgomery County focus group regards library computing as an option at best and has little faith in the idea that public libraries ought to be on the technological cutting edge. The St. Louis groups expect their public library to furnish computers with appropriate content. For most of the Midwesterners, library computers, networks, and electronic content have become an essential part of their family lives.

The lesson of this exercise: Single focus groups are not good "counterpoints" to methodical and precise national telephone surveys. If the Benton Report collaborators realized this fact--as they state they did (p. 31)--then the group's specific conclusions, especially its quotations, should have been inserted into this policy document with a far lighter hand.

Instead, the focus group findings are used as a foil to allow the Benton Foundation's compiler-author to turn from reporting and analysis to exhortation. This preachment is delivered in a lengthy paragraph concluding the focus group report. It reads:

the single focus group proved a useful counterpoint to the optimism

of the aggregate survey data, revealing areas of public confusion and

restraint that the survey data mask. And, for library leaders eager to

cling to the reassuring notes of the survey results, the focus group

revealed how quickly public support can erode when arguments are

leveled by even a friendly opposition. While it would be a gross

misinterpretation to derive American public opinion about libraries

from one participant's quotable "just behind the curve" metaphor,

the language and the tone of this discussion among a group of sophisticated

library users should nevertheless make library leaders

cautious about what happens when citizens are left in an information

vacuum to reason through the library's role in a digital future.

If the library is indeed "invisible," as some library leaders admit,

then its story and mission are vulnerable to new, more assertive arguments

and advertising that substitute other institutions as information

navigators. (pp. 31-32)

These points could have been articulated without the crisis language de rived from an inappropriate use of a focus group as a "counterpoint" to a national survey. Rhetoric aside, the report's policy findings are these:

* The Benton Report survey shows strong support for public libraries and considerable support for library development of essential networked computing services for children and adults.

* Libraries need to be on the cutting edge technologically.

* Libraries need to collaborate with other community agencies to maintain their essential social roles and to use resources to maximum ad vantage.

* To create a favorable opinion climate and to gain additional financial support, most especially to develop their networked computing capability, library leaders need to effectively present a unified coherent message. The Benton Foundation will take a leadership position in developing this message.

* If libraries do not develop and deliver this message effectively, their competitors will marginalize them by getting out in front of them on technology and will convince a majority of the public to pay for the electronic information services and bookstore products they use and let the poor do without.

* Concomitantly the public library will become a backwater eddy rather than an essential American institution.

These are significant findings. But, as radio commentator Paul Harvey is fond of saying: "There's more to the story."

The remainder of this discussion is an effort to explore policy issues that will affect the ability of public libraries to develop a bright future and to convey a coherent unified message to the public about that future.

DEFINING "THE CUTTING EDGE" OF LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY

The Benton Report suggests that public libraries ought to lead in technology, not be "behind the curve" (pp. 3, 31). In an 1884 book introduction, pioneer psychologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) reminded his readers: "To be a leader of men one must turn one's back" (Bartlett, 1980, p. 689).

This warning is appropriate for technology innovators. At one time or another, Apple, IBM, AT&T, and a host of other technology and telecommunications companies stepped out to play a "cutting edge" leadership role, then a short time later bled profusely because of its pioneering effort. Libraries are no different. All library professionals have seen promised "cutting edge" automation vaporware which at first was delayed and then proved difficult to use. And they have seen individual technology innovators swept away because of their pioneering (Holt, 1997b). Many more libraries will reap grim results if they join in the telecommunications battles like that being played out between Rupert Murdoch's "Death Star" digital communications networks, television cable companies, and the diminished monopolies of the regional telcos (Roberts, 1997).

What is the public library's technology cutting edge? Is it simply how to use the Internet? Lancaster and Sandore (1997) state that "public libraries have lagged behind academic libraries in the exploitation of the Internet resources" (p. 242). Without any U.S. government or library association recommendations in place, Lancaster and Sandore turn to the Library Association of Great Britain for recommendations on how public libraries ought to adopt Internet innovations. According to the Library Association (1995), public libraries should:

* use their skills to identify information, whether in text, image, or sound, and route it as appropriate to people in need of it;

* provide network access points, free or fee-based, as appropriate;

* provide opportunities for education and training in the use of the network;

* use open information systems and broadband communications to integrate use of the network with mainstream library services;

* publish appropriate information--e. g., catalogs, community information, and archives--over the network;

* apply their skills to the management of the vast amounts of information on the networks;

* as appropriate and in partnership with the academic sector, provide information from the network to students and distance learners (pp. 548-49).

Few library professionals would claim that every one of these recommendations has been implemented in all U.S. public libraries. That should not surprise anyone. The development of public library innovations, like public library governance, is not communitarian but localistic in nature.

Within that localistic context, the public library field over the past two decades has seen dozens of examples of connectivity innovation. Among large and middle-size public libraries in 1997, only a minority do not offer Internet connectivity, often including value-added services like e-mail accounts, community information systems, and files filled with local culture and history information.

In moving forward with such innovations, public libraries are at the "cutting edge" of current Internet issues. As the editors of a special section of the Scientific American pointed out recently, that edge is not connectivity but "bringing order from chaos." Recognizing that connection delays and even limited access are not permanent conditions but are caused by rapid growth, the journal's editors write: "The more serious, longer-range obstacle is that much of the information on the Internet is quirky, transient, and chaotically shelved" (The Internet, 1997, p. 50).

These introductory comments are followed by essays authored by six eminent technological writers, each covering an aspect of how "bringing a measure of organization and structure to an inherently fluid medium like the Web may help realize the 18th-century French encyclopediasts' vision of gathering together all the world's knowledge in one place" (The Internet, 1997, p. 51).

One of the Scientific American articles is by Clifford Lynch(1997), director of library automation at the University of California's Office of the President. Lynch advocates:

combining the skills of the librarian and the computer scientist . . . [to]

help organize the anarchy of the Internet....The librarian's

classification and selection skills must be complemented by the computer

scientist's ability to automate the task of indexing and storing

information. Only a synthesis of the differing perspectives brought

by both professions will allow this new medium to remain viable. (p 52)

Many public libraries already are engaged in innovative organizing of Internet sources. Visits to the homepages of Berkeley Public Library, Kansas City Public Library, and St. Louis Public Library provide three very different views of how this organizing should be handled for area constituents--and the kinds of local content that should be added as well. Other sites abound with different approaches. These attempts to provide local information electronically are hardly new. Margolis (1996) recently reminded readers that Pike's Peak Public Library in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has had an electronic community information network operating since 1980.

Director of Los Angeles Public Library, Susan Goldberg Kent (1996), puts her finger on the cutting edge relationship between innovative public libraries and the Internet when she writes: "The key for us now is content--and the Web and the Internet are, if nothing else, full of content, constantly changing minute by minute; more importantly, so too are library-created and vendor-created data bases.... This type of connectivity--to content--is the most exciting and important aspect of the library of the future" (p. 215).

Electronic content--how connections are made to it, how it is organized and presented to users, and what unique local content is mounted--is the cutting edge of the public library's digital future.

A CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Defining the Campaign Goal

The most hopeful part of the Benton Report is the foundation's interest in:

creating a joint multifaceted, multimedia, umbrella communications

and outreach campaign, based on a model developed by the Benton

Foundation for the Coalition for America's Children. This campaign

would begin to lay the groundwork for new perceptions of the role

of libraries and other public service media in fostering healthy communities....

With the role and impact of personal computers still fluid in

this emerging digital world, now is the time for libraries to seize the

opportunity and define their role with an aggressive public education

campaign [at the local and national level]. (p. 40)

The greatest contribution which the Benton Foundation can make to America's public libraries is to help institutional leaders develop this campaign. As Kent (1996) writes: "It is no longer enough to be . . . esteemed by politicians only to be funded at the minimal level, to be admired for giving good service but devalued as anachronistic and outmoded" (p. 213). Slogans such as "Americans can's wait" and "Libraries change lives" sound good, but what do they change? The answer to Kent's question, of course, is nothing that is important.

"What we do not do aggressively enough," Kent writes, "is assume a key leadership role as the major player in a society that is now based on information and knowledge." It is this essentiality which must be at the core of a new message campaign for public libraries. And the object of that campaign needs to be leveraging new funding that allows public libraries to play the important national role into which technology and user expectations have thrown them. To quote Kent (1996) again: "The American public library can no longer stand alone" (p. 214). To that should be added: Public libraries should no longer be funded as if they stand alone.

ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN

A Mission-Driven Message

When America's public libraries want to send a coherent message to the public about their place in the digital future, they need to articulate their common reason for existence and the place of networked computers in that rationale. Paraphrasing the Benton Report's main themes, that mission-driven message ought to read something like this:

The American public library will innovatively use all its

resources--including

the Internet and other networked electronic media, alliances

with other organizations, and all funding sources--to improve

and sustain quality reading and information services needed by the

people as they and their families engage in lifelong learning to benefit

themselves, their families, and their communities.

By articulating its readiness to "improve and sustain" community life, this mission-driven message makes libraries essential, not peripheral, in the development of the fabric of American family, cultural, and economic life (Holt, 1996b). Such a message also informs a taxpaying public that proactive library professionals are creative enough to use technology as a tool to help each of their constituents carry out her/his life's ambitions; strategic enough to make useful alliances, especially to utilize resources effectively; sufficiently focused on the public interest to add value to the public's library investment by obtaining private funds to supplement tax income from the public purse; and adequately in touch with public opinion to recognize that the library's progress in electronic media cannot be accomplished to the detriment of the organization's traditional community work on behalf of books, reading, and literacy.

Furthermore, when libraries state a commitment to innovation, they are promising to change continuously as society's needs change. Carrying out that mission will not be easy. But the message that the library is a responsible and creative innovator is the one the public wants to hear; it is what libraries politically ought to promise; and it has the additional advantage of being both a reasonable and principled statement of how modern proactive public libraries ought to behave as they increasingly become part of the networked world.

This message--that libraries are "masters of innovation"--is not coincidentally the primary theme of America's most admired companies. In opening a discussion of Fortune's most admired companies, Brian O'Reilly (1997) writes: "Companies that know how to innovate don't necessarily throw money into R&D. Instead they cultivate a new style of corporate behavior that's comfortable with new ideas, change, risk, and even failure" (p. 60). These same traits identify the admired and successful digital public libraries.

Balance Books and Computers

Those who engage in technology innovation may feel technology backlash. The latter theme was apparent in San Francisco even before the opening of the high-tech "New Main" (Holt, 1997b). Other examples abound: Nicholson Baker's New Yorker attacks (Baker, 1994, 1996; Dowd, 1996) on electronic conversion of card catalogs; Baker's and Michael Gorman's attacks on library technology generally (Gruchow, 1995); Ingrid Eisenstadter's Newsweek attack on New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library for replacing open stacks of bound science serials with rows of computers (Eisenstadter, 1997); and Sallie Tisdale's more general 1997 Harper's lament for a public library as a quiet place where quiet people engage in quality activities, not including entertaining themselves in a noisy way.

These technology-backlash reactions, whether judged in retrospect as fair or demagoguery, remind public library professionals that technological control of any collection has up sides and down sides. The advantages are preservation of rare or delicate originals; convenient retrieval in seconds; and copies that take up "millimeters of space on a magnetic disk rather than meters on a shelf." The down sides include loss of easy browsing; a limited way--often only one--to actually find an item; and, because most users when given a choice between online and printed works, chose online, anything which is not digitized becomes an "orphan" for the discernible future (Lesk, 1997). Such criticisms and such limits should make library professionals self conscious about balancing the needs of book users in their plans for the digital future.

The Social Value of the Library

Before the public library was a technological innovator, it was a social creation. Princeton University President Howard T. Shapiro (1997) explains:

the traditional library is much more than a book warehouse. It is a

critical component of a vast social strategy that includes authors,

publishers, copyright laws, booksellers, scholars, etc. designed to

further education, innovation, and the forces of social progress. The

current publicly accessible research libraries are not an inevitable

outgrowth of the invention of printing. They are instead a special

social form adopted by those societies and reflect particular social

attitudes about the preservation and transmission of knowledge that

had begun to develop even before the invention of printing. The

wide scope of their collections reflects less about the technology of

the book than about society's particular attitude toward learning and

knowledge that happen to have been prevalent at particular times

and places.... The overarching question is not whether libraries

will survive, but what their continuing social function will be.

The need for a thoughtful social strategy--as opposed to a technological

strategy--can also be demonstrated by considering the

present state of the Internet. For the most part, while there is a

huge storehouse of information on the Internet, there is no social

agency providing any assessment of the quality of this information.

Nor . . . are adequate tools available to help us navigate to our

destination. Furthermore, predictions regarding the role of the Internet

usually assume it will be available at a very low cost to everyone. This,

however, is a critical and unexamined social and economic assumption.

In our society we have traditionally prized public access to

knowledge as a key component of equal opportunity. If this stance

is to be maintained in the "electronic," "digital," and "information"

age, we need a social and economic strategy for ensuring that these

new sources of information storage and retrieval will be reasonably

available to all.

A primary emphasis in setting up any campaign message for public libraries is the need to deal with the library's social value. What is likely to happen to the costs of usable networked information? Who will pay the costs of making Internet information more useful? A coherent public library message campaign needs to have social value issues well in hand. Such a program will have to be values-based so that public funding can assure that "new sources of information storage and retrieval will be reasonably available to all," a goal shared by the Benton Foundation and library leaders.

Recognize the Library's Role in Constituents' Lives

Any public library message campaign needs to be realistic about how people look for information. The Benton Report survey finding (p. 42) that people look first for information on using computers to somebody they know, or go to a computer store or take a class before going to the library fits with other survey data on how people behave when they need information.

A 1988 SLPL phone survey found that a majority of local survey participants looked first at the phone book, then asked a relative, friend, minister, or doctor. Only after making these attempts did participants turn to the library (Jones, 1988, p. 1). Science researchers behave the same way. A 1991 Faxon study found that science scholars looked first at the material they had accumulated in their offices, then asked colleagues personally, then phoned or e-mailed colleagues on other campuses, and only after they had exhausted all these sources did they go to the library (Almquist, 1991). To be realistic, a public library message campaign needs to take the public's information-seeking behavior into account.

Electronic Marketing

In most libraries, the first step in solving a major problem is to create a written document, and the first tendency in marketing public libraries is to work on the print press. If libraries are to compete for the attention of their busy constituents, then another document will not do much good--and the chances of any particular citizen seeing an article in a typical American daily newspaper is less than two out of ten. The chances of any particular citizen seeing (and remembering) a news story on television is more than seven out of ten (MediaMasters, 1992, pp. 9-14).

Libraries need to market themselves electronically. To quote the Benton Report, they need to engage in a "multimedia" campaign. Such campaigns do not come cheaply but, as St. Louis Public has discovered through its radio advertisements, the benefits are extensive. The purposes of a public library multimedia campaign should be to: (1) build library use; (2) encourage current library users to "cross over" and use other library services; (3) inform nonusers about new and existing services and how they fit into their busy lives; and (4) inform users and nonusers alike that public libraries are giving value for tax dollar received from the funds that taxpayers are providing.

Part of multimedia marketing is for libraries to become familiar with how virtual markets differ from traditional markets. Hagel and Armstrong (1997) explain how organizations can feed useful information into the substantial (and often hypercritical) net communities growing up on the Web. Success brings real advantages. The authors note: "Vendors should take advantage of communities not only to improve their understanding of individual key customers but also to build a track record of good service and responsiveness to their needs. The loyalty they create in the process will be based on performance" (p. 198).

The new net communities are exactly the kind of markets where performance-oriented library and information professionals can hone their institutions' bright images based on meeting real needs. And the net is only the most recent and most dynamic of electronic outlets that needs to be part of a public library multimedia campaign.

Collaboration: Solving Commonweal Problems

There is an old word which is not heard much any more in public issue discussions. That word is "commonweal," which means "the welfare of the public." Public leaders--elected and appointed officials; civic, community, and neighborhood leaders; and citizens generally--are supposed to look out for "the welfare of the public."

The Benton Foundation has a commonweal vision of collaboration: sharing resources for the welfare of the public. To quote the Benton Report, the public library should be the one key participant in "access for all built around a unified and integrated resource hub. This would become the `new life form' with other public information providers as partners, and would tackle the community's needs and problems" (p. 39).

Like so many other visions for the future, this one is based on what already is happening in many American cities and towns. As with so many other public libraries, SLPL is up to its neck in collaborations. At the February 1997 Urban Libraries Council meeting at the Washington, DC, meeting of the American Library Association, eighteen different systems--SLPL among them--reported more than sixty-five different collaborative programs--just with the museums in their communities (Urban Libraries Council, 1997).

The down side of collaboration is that government policymakers and civic leaders too often use the term to cover an activity in which two or more agencies "collaborate" to do still more work with less resources. The 1990s have become what cartoonist Herblock calls the age of "pushdown politics." That is, it is a time when federal officials, in order to cut the budget, push down commonweal work to the state level. Then state officials, to cut the budget, push down the same work to the local level. There local officials, in order to cut their budget, push down the activity to local charities--who then are supposed to go out and find donations to do what the federal government once did. Welfare reform is a specific example of "push-down politics," and churches and food pantries already are shaking their heads over their new "charity" responsibilities which previously were funded by federal and state taxes (Feinsilber, 1997).

A paramount problem for today's public libraries is that, while they have captured the public's attention as potential problem solvers, they have not grabbed commensurate attention as deserving of improved commonweal funding, especially from state and federal governments. Collaboration is a worthy endeavor--i.e., if both partners together have the resources necessary to get the collaborative job done. Public libraries engaged in successful collaborations recognize that finding adequate resources is a major component in successful partnering.

Finances: Public Funding

"Money," W. Somerset Maugham reminded his readers, "is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five" (Metcalf, 1987, p. 167). Public libraries, especially those with public library leaders whose systems suffer from lack of adequate funding, will know immediately what Maugham meant. Acting alone, public libraries have had varying successes in gaining local funding.

Public libraries already cooperate, both informally and through contract, to save money. Interlibrary loan, reciprocal lending, and cooperatively contracted database purchasing are just three current examples. But these collegial and collaborative efforts to save money are small when compared against the differences among the fifty states' funding support for public libraries and the even greater differences in funding among public library districts.

Technology economics guru Don Tabscott writes: "Networked Interactive Multimedia (NIM) will be a trillion dollar [economic] sector in North America alone by the end of 1997. At its current rate, there has never in history been an engine of economic growth like NIM. What's going on is a revolution" (Winning in the Digital Economy, 1997). The whole annual operating budget of all public libraries is about $5 billion, and a quarter of American public library districts have annual operating budgets under $25,000.

Solving this funding riddle is now nothing less than a national imperative if public libraries are going to play an expansive role in the National Information Infrastructure. Susan Goldberg Kent (1996) writes:

Almost all public library funding is local, usually coming from taxes

paid by local residents for local services. Library governance,

concomitantly, is also local.... Recently, there has been a backlash from

local taxpayers, in all areas of the country, who believe that their tax

dollars should remain local and that library services, as well as other

governmental services, should be provided only to those people who

pay for them directly.... What will it mean when a city decides to

restrict public library usage to their residents only and that city's

library has a Web page with information readily available to the entire

Web universe?. . . Can we freely take information from "others"

if we do not allow "others" to take information from us?

As the Benton Foundation kicks off the organizational work in preparation for its innovative library campaign, a good deal of attention needs to be given to the shape and significance of the monetary message to be conveyed. Most public libraries are bursting at the seams with current activities. Technology has only added to the expense-and the service opportunities. Conceptualizing how to solve the public library funding riddle is a substantial problem before new powerful multimedia messages are generated for a public library campaign.

PUBLIC LIBRARY RESEARCH

Half a decade ago, I suggested the need for a second Public Library Inquiry in order to build scholarly knowledge about public libraries (Holt, 1992, pp. 23-26). At the conclusion of this article, that call is repeated. One important message in the Benton report (pp. 5, 31, 40) is its stated advocacy for further research on public libraries.

To appropriately use networked computers and new communications technology to carry out their nationally significant work, public libraries need applied research that results in:

* exemplary applications of networked technology that improve and innovate services;

* explanations of successful pathways in rapid technological migrations;

* role models, job descriptions, and training models for professional librarianship as technology increasingly affects most library work;

* rules for collaborations in which all partners and the community benefit through measurable improvements in services;

* well-articulated programs for obtaining funding in the public and private sector for the technological advancement of libraries;

* strategic marketing programs that not only improve the public library image locally and nationally but which are likely to result in increased institutional capacity to deliver quality services; and finally

* measurements that place dollar values on library activities so that library leaders can demonstrate the economic benefits of public investment in libraries.

Public library leaders will find it easier to move into the electronic-media dominated twenty-first century if "profound, connected, sustained and . . focused . . . research about end for the American public library" is carried out in a careful expeditious way and communicated in a systematic way to the public library community (Holt, 1992, pp. 24-26). Well-informed cosmopolitan library leaders are most likely to be successful advocates for a bright public library future.

The Kellogg and Benton Foundations should be commended for the research and the communication attempted in the Benton Foundation report. It is hoped that the two foundations will follow through on what they have accomplished in Buildings, Books, and Bytes, and that this report marks the beginning of a sustained effort to support serious research and ongoing communication among and about America's public libraries.

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Glen E. Holt, St. Louis Public Library, 1301 Olive St., St. Louis, MO 63103-2389