A preservation librarian's nightmare

LISNews.com | Tabloid archive to be destroyed

Okay, so it's a giant collection of the weird and smutty. But it's a valuable collection. And it points to a preservation librarian's nightmare: preserving collections in an era of bioterrorism.

I was very fortunate to have the late, great George Cunha as my conservation/preservation management teacher. He had a solution to damn near anything that could be thrown at a library collection. A chemist, career naval officer, and ground-breaking conservator in his 80s who looked a little like Burl Ives and whose lectures were like a combination of a sea captain's tales by the fireside and Mr Wizard, I could just imagine him bringing in reams of photocopies on proper techniques for dealing with anthrax-exposed collections.

Mr Cunha, we could use you back.

I think most people have no idea how incredibly complicated public libraries can be

And, thankfully, I don't know that firsthand, having been a medical librarian with internships in academic and government libraries or working for private companies. Although I love the idea of public librarianship, and I wouldn't mind working in one, I'd absolutely hate to have to direct one, simply because of the issues in balancing state, local, and library board concerns, endemic budget shortfalls, etc., etc. Oh, and for almost no pay, especially in a small town.

LISNews.com | TN County kills library funding

It sounds to me that there a lot of issues in this story. Why was a security system vital in a bad budget year and bought from operations funding rather than as a capital expenditure? How could things get to a point where by cutting funding the state could literally come take away the books?

It's so easy to cut funding, shut down a library, reduce hours, etc. But once you actually get to a point where positions are cut, facilities are closed, or materials are shuttled away, it costs WAY more to try to get that all back later. It's like the business adage of retention = savings because it costs a lot more to train a new employee than to keep an experienced one. I know I'm not the biggest financial or business genius, but I grokked that pretty easily from my management courses and it's certainly has proved true in real life. So why do they do this? I remember the last recession (lucky me, when I graduated from library school) and California was shutting libraries down right and left. Now we see it all over the country. You can't ever get back what you lose. Don't they know that? It's never the same, and it takes years and years to build up the necessary programmes and patron confidence again.

And yet, as in this case, I can't just blame the politicians. It sounds like there's a breakdown somewhere in management, too, whether at the county level or the library level. It's like watching a pileup on the Interstate--lots of things interact to create a disaster, and if you had to try to determine what the one trigger that could have prevented it could be and stop it in time, it would be very hard to do.

Grrr....