The beginning of the end

Lots of people have said that public libraries will soon go the way of the dinosaur as advances in technology change the way we get information and entertainment. Web-based social networking offerings such as MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, Flickr, wikis, YouTube, Google, podcasting, etc., etc., etc., are becoming more and more important in people's daily lives. Even Amazon's Kindle is providing a different approach to reading that moves away from the traditional paper book.

Public libraries recognize this and are scrambling to remain relevant in this changing environment, but it's an uphill battle to prove we can provide real value to the community, especially as funds get tighter and tighter in these tough economic times.

My first indication that we are losing the fight was a recent announcement by our city's IT department that they want us to consider reducing the number of public computers we offer in order to reduce bandwidth demands on the network. We all laughed when we heard this but in fact this is exactly the kind of approach that will kill us in the long run. At a time when we should be looking for ways to increase our ability to provide fast, robust online services that are up-to-date with developing technology, our wonderful city government is making noises about curtailing our ability to provide those services.

Free computing is increasingly becoming the main reason why many people visit us, but if we reduce the quality of computing services, fewer and fewer people will come in, which will make it even that much harder for us to justify requests for adequate funding just to keep the building open and provide materials that people need. It's the beginning of a downward spiral towards irrelevance.

Already the quality of our computing services has gone down just in the last year. Our computers are several years old and constantly freeze up when people are trying to do email, take a test, or fill out a form. Repeated calls to IT have not improved the situation at all. Two of our four public printers are down (one for over a month and a half), making it much more difficult for users to get their prints, not to mention causing a huge amount of hassle for the staff.

Computer services at my library have deteriorated significantly over the last few months and I'm beginning to wonder if it is an intentional strategy on the part of the IT folks (and by extension, city government). They are forcing the issue by refusing to provide adequate support services and there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING we can do about it. We are at their mercy.

They are, quite literally, killing us.