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Archive for » March 27th, 2008«

Of Media Equity & Library Reciprocity

27
Mar 2008
By Michael

I do believe that this is the first blog post I’ve ever written on request. However David Rothman and I participated in last night’s episode of Uncontrolled Vocabulary and during the after show he asked that I funneled some of my "righteous indignation" into a blog post. David is the one who came up with "media equity" and "library reciprocity" which I totally love. So, in exchange for those terms, I write this post. Honestly, I’ve blogged some of this stuff before (but it’s been a few years) and I think it comes across better vocally (listen to the episode, it’s story #2 which is about 15 minutes in) than in print but here goes…

Media Equity

Why do so many libraries insist on treating their public-access computers differently from every other type of media in the building. Think about it, anyone can come in off the street, whether they live in your town or not, pay taxes to your library or not, pull any book of the shelf sit down and read it. For audio if they’ve got a portable player with them they can do the same with CDs and/or tapes. But when it comes to the computers so many libraries require some sort of ID. Maybe a library card, maybe a driver’s license.

Why do we have to show ID to get a library card? Well, it’s not to track the patron, it’s to track the materials that they patron will be removing from the library. If they don’t return the item, we want to be able to track it down. Using materials in the library however required no ID, nor should it, ever! But when it comes to those darn computers, we require ID left and right.

Granted, some time management systems require a unique user ID and the library card is a convenient, pre-existing ID that we can reuse. But what about visitors to your town that don’t have a local library card? Give them a temp card but don’t make proving their ID a requirement for a guest card. What possible purpose could it serve? If you’ve got a "purpose" for me on this one then my response will be "then why don’t you require an ID to use a book in the library?" If a patron isn’t removing the resource from the library (wether book, CD, tape, magazine, or computer) what possible legitimate purpose does showing ID serve?

Library Reciprocity

This one is a little harder to explain, especially separately from the media equity issue since that issues typically leads to this one. Anyway… This is the attitude that typically bugs me: "You don’t pay taxes here therefore you don’t get services." While I understand that in principle, how it’s sometimes practiced is what drives me nuts. For example, "if you don’t pay taxes here you can’t use our computers." But wait, harkening back to media equity, if I don’t pay taxes to your library I can still walk in and read a book. Why should I have to pay taxes to your library to check my e-mail on a computer?

Another way to look at it is this: if every single one of your library’s tax payers demanded library services tomorrow, your library would collapse. You work off the assumption that not everyone who pays actually receives. Think of me, the outsider, as using the services that one of your tax payers isn’t. Ultimately, I’m paying taxes somewhere and maybe one of your locals is currently in my town wanting to use my library’s services. Isn’t it a wash in the end? (I realize that this is a harder point to agree with from certain points of view.)

I’m not advocating that anyone should be able to check out books from any library anywhere. There’s still the traceability of the item to contend with and loaning a book to someone from another state who’s just visiting could significantly increase the chance that the book isn’t returned. Remember, I’m talking about in-library use.

Lastly, what about tourist meccas that have "so many tourists" that to provide services to all the tourists would "prevent us from providing services to our public"? I’ve got some trouble with this too. By having this attitude you end up offending the tourists who just want to check their e-mail. Yeah, offend the tourists. Do that enough and they’ll stop coming. They stop coming and you loose what they contribute to your local economy, the budget suffers, and the local’s taxes go up. (A stretch but I’m trying to make a point here.)

Remember, it’s about service. Not service to "your" patrons but to patrons. Firemen and police don’t ask for proof of residency and tax payment before offering basic service. Why should libraries?

Thanks for listening. Now all you Uncontrolled Vocabulary people who promised to comment, it’s your turn.

Category: policy, rant  9 Comments

Of 2.0 and staff workloads

27
Mar 2008
By Michael

When I was on the University of Nebraska, Lincoln east campus last week there was one thing I heard that I’d not mentioned in my previous blog post about the day; "re-staffing". Please allow me explain.

Often, especially during my Library 2.0 or Social Web presentations (both of which I was giving that day) I inevitably get the question "but how can I do my job and do all this new stuff too?" It’s a legitimate question yet I dread it all the same. You see, it’s my job to do all this new stuff. I don’t have to pull a reference desk shift or meet with students. I do have to travel, teach, and present, but all the "new fun 2.0 stuff" I do is in complete support of said travel, teaching, and presenting. So, how have I answered the question?

In the past, and on that day, I mumbled my excuse about how my time is spent and then proceeded to mumble a bit more about "working it into your existing workflow" and "letting the decision of which 2.0 things to use/do be an ‘organic’ process". Both are legitimate answers but aren’t very satisfying ones to either me or the audience.

But over lunch, after my social web presentation, one of the campus librarians said to another, "maybe we need to consider some re-staffing" in order to be able to do some of this stuff." At the time I don’t recall reacting to the comment that much but it stuck with me enough to blog about it a week later.

Maybe at an institutional level adding the new social tools onto an already overloaded workflow isn’t the answer. Granted, I firmly believe that some of the new tools can be integrated successfully and streamline the existing workflow, but what about larger tools like blogging. Instead of expecting staff to blog for the library in addition to their existing workload, how about redistributing the workload so the staff that will be blogging on behalf of the library have a little less of what they did before and now have the time to blog?

I’m not saying this would be easy, nor could I possibly claim to have a "plan" for something like that that you could implement in your library. (How could I, each library’s solution would be completely different from every other.) However, maybe we should not look at this as an addition problem, but more of a rearrangement problem.

Your thoughts?

Category: library 2.0, uncl08  2 Comments

Of houses, taxes and congress

27
Mar 2008
By Michael

Yesterday I paid my taxes. Paid as in, I owed the feds $3050. This was the first year I’ve ever owed money. It’s my fault, yet I’m not unhappy as it could have been much worse, $51,000 worse. Here’s the story including a little bit on my confusion and my thanks to congress and the president. (There’s a first!)

There were several significant financial events that occurred in my life in 2007. The first was my acceptance of a new job that involved a 20% reduction in my salary. The second, my decision to pretty much emptied my TIAA-CREF account in order to eliminate 3/4ths of my credit card debt. (Yes, it was high. No, I’ve not added to it at all in the past two years.) The third was the dumping of my Aurora, CO house in the form of a "deed in lieu of foreclosure" deal with my mortgage lender. It’s the disposition of that loan where my confusion sets in.

As a result of giving up the house I was "forgiven" approximately $167,000 of debt. As the law stands, forgiven debt is considered taxable income. It was explained to me this way: If someone loans me a million dollars and two weeks later the loaner decides that I only have to pay half of it it back, I’m left with $500,000 of income which is therefore taxable. This, I understand. I’ve just made a half a million dollars.

In my case I gave the house back to the bank, they stopped my payments. Please show me what money I’ve made. I’ve nothing to show for it. Why should I have to pay taxes on money I don’t have? The taxes on $167,000? $51,000! Nice. I couldn’t pay my mortgage, how in Hell am I going to pay the taxes on the mortgage I no longer have? (BTW: I bought the house in 1998 for $106,000 and the bank recently resold it for $92,000. Lovely housing market we have here.)

Well, congress (and the president I guess since he would have had to sign the legislation) to the rescue with the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007. Basically, if you lost a house to foreclosure (mine counts) in 2007 and the forgiven debt was less than $2,000,000 (mine counts again) then you are officially forgiven the owed taxes. YIPPIE! I can’t tell you how good it felt to watch that red $54,000 in Turbo Tax shrink to $3050 once I figured out the right box to check in the forms.

At the state level, Colorado is giving me back $49 and Nebraska is giving me back a more than $1800. So, in the end I’m only out about $1200. Considering how bad it could have been, I can’t really complain.

Category: home, taxes  Leave a Comment