Where do we go from here in our attempts to help our library whom we need to help our school?

To:  Our Community Leaders,

 

During the past month we discussed merging our library with other public information organizations like our school or other library systems.  Some people question the motives for encouraging this discussion.  Others see the discussion as useful and necessary.  A few people are very upset.  Our library director says that I am obsessed.

 

Here are some current events that will lead to discussions of the cost / benefits of all of our public information organizations.  

1.  We have new tools available to us (free of cost via the internet) to lower operating costs & improve services.

2.  Our school leaders are moving in a useful direction with the 'Plan for Excellence'. 

3.  Our library leaders (except for one leader) seem indifferent to the events at our school.

4.  Our city council leaders express interest in our school and we see them at BOE meetings.  

5.  Our Falls News Press attends BOE meetings and reports on past events.

6.  Our FNP editor sees more people attend his 'Coffee with our Editor'.

7.  Several BOE members and another key player attend 'Coffee with our Editor'.

Thus, slowly we see more cross pollination of our school, city council, FNP and one library leader. 

 

But, we need to do more and we need do it faster -- if we want our community to compete with the global competition.

 

 Our library director has stated that merging our library with our school is prevented by the Ohio Revised Code.  I have not challenged or checked his statement.  I have scanned the ORC and concluded that the ORC is part of our list of problem statements.  The ORC does not help our libraries compete in new and different ways.  For example, our schools are required to do 5 year financial forecasts.  Our libraries are not required to forecast.  Our schools are required to compete for customers.  Our libraries are not required to compete.

 

We need our libraries to compete -- so they can cooperate with the other public information organizations in our community.  We need to help all of our public information organizations lower costs and improve services.  Accordingly, a Google group distribution list has been set up to 'Help our Libraries'.  This group has the email addresses of all our Ohio libraries, all of our Ohio newspapers, all of our Ohio State representatives and senators.  And, the email addresses of this 'Help our School' group have been added.  If you think that 'helping our libraries' is not connected to 'help our schools' then you can easily opt out.

Currently, this group consists of 630 email addresses.

 

Here are the links we can use for this problem solving process.

http://groups.google.com/group/Help-Our-Libraries

http://help-our-cfo-library.blogspot.com/ 

If you think the problem statements for our CFO library are over or understated, please post a comment on the blog.

 

Lou Schott   www.tnl3000.org