Readings Journal 3/5

 Service Trends in U.S. Public Libraries, 1997-2007 by Everett Henderson

This article analyzes statistics on circulation, visitation, and information technology resources from the Public Library Survey for the years of 1997-2007.  The article separates the data into urban and nonurban libraries.

 I grew up in a rural area where we did not have access to high speed Internet until 2010.  Whenever I went home from college for the summer I had to go to the public library to use the Internet.  However, the public library nearest to me was tiny and had very few books.  As such, when I wanted books I went to the next town over, but when I wanted to use the Internet I went to the closest library.  Because of this experience, I can understand why rural libraries may have had their visitation increase from 1997-2007, but their circulation decrease.  People without Internet might go to a small library to use the Internet, but not find many materials to check out.  Another point this article brought up was that program attendance increased from 1997-2007.  The article doesn’t give a reason why, and I would be interested to find out why more people have been attending programs.

 Changes in Rural Libraries and Librarianship: A Comparative Study by Robert Flatley and Andrea Wyman

 This article discusses a 2007 repeat of a survey originally conducted 2000 of rural librarians and how they view librarianship and the future.  The article looks for similarities and differences between the two surveys.

 All of the articles this week discuss the lack of funds that rural libraries receive, but this article really goes into depth.  Librarians of rural libraries list funding as their greatest concern.  Also, because of funding, most rural libraries only have one full-time staff member who is paid an average of less than $15 an hour (This really surprised me).  As I mentioned before, I grew up in rural community and the library closest to me only had one librarian.  Because of this, it was rarely open.  It was always really frustrating to me when I wanted to go to the library on a Saturday, but the library wasn’t open on weekends.  However, I did enjoy the personal aspect of the library.  Because there was only one librarian, she knew everyone and greeted them by name.

 Cooperation in Rural and Remote Libraries: The Promise of Technology by Leanne Clendening

 In this article, Clendening discusses the importance of technology to rural libraries and how technology has helped rural libraries provide better services.

 What I find amazing about this article is how well librarians in rural libraries adapted even before the Internet.  As this article states, “small-town librarians found creative and cooperative ways of meeting the needs of their clients.”  These creative ways included pooling resources through print and CD-ROM catalogues and developing cooperative book pools to augment their collections.  Libraries seem way ahead of their time in this regard.  Rural libraries were working together to share resources long before the Internet showed up, the Internet just made it a lot easier.  One hopes that rural librarians can use this same creative thinking to help raise funds so they have enough money to keep up to date with this helpful technology.