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Arlington "Reading Room" Reopens as a Full Branch of the Cranston Public Library

11/26/2013

THE ARLINGTON BRANCH of the Cranston Public Library has reopened after renovations to the former Arlington Reading Room in the Cranston Senior Center. Credit: All photos by Brian C. Jones, R.I. Library Report

By Brian C. Jones
Rhode Island Library Report
    CRANSTON, R.I. – (Nov. 25, 2013) – Even standing room was at a premium today as some of the state’s top politicians crowded elbow-to-elbow with library advocates to mark the opening of the Cranston Public Library’s newest – and tiniest – branch.
      The occasion was the ceremonial opening of what is now the Arlington Branch, located in a wing of the Cranston Senior Center, 1064 Cranston St., and which was formerly the “Arlington Reading Room,” before a six-month renovation that was completed three weeks ago.
      The reconstruction, funded by a $198,000 federal grant, created a 543-square-feet space that is home to a range of modern library services, including new Internet-connected computers and a fresh collection of children’s and adult books.
      Still, it’s a small home, as several dozen library supporters and reporters discovered as they packed the branch’s main room alongside U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin and Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who recently announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor.

A Small, But 'Useable' Space

    Edward Garcia, director of the six-branch library system since 2012, acknowledged the branch’s diminutive footprint, but he said it will make possible big steps in providing new services to neighborhood children and teenagers, as well as older adults who come to the senior center.
      “We created, although a small space, a very useable space,” Garcia said.
      Among the new programs will be one in which graduate library students from University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media will work with neighborhood young people.

MAYOR ALLAN FUNG, right, says the renovated Arlington Branch, is a new library resource for all of Rhode Island. Rep. Jim Langevin is at left; Sen. Jack Reed, center. In the background, Providence Journal Reporter Gregory Smith.

The branch will also will partner with the city’s Pastore Youth Center as part of its outreach effort, Garcia said.
The Arlington library dates to 1895. Its building was demolished 25 years ago and replaced by the senior center, with space reserved for what became the Arlington Reading Room. But the configuration did not allow full library services, Garcia said, and the shelves were stocked only with donated books rather than those purchased by the library system.

According to Garcia, former director David Macksam and library trustees worked with Reed in securing the grant in 2006 from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for a new building to house a full-service branch, but suitable quarters could not be found.
With time running out, since the federal grant was to expire in September, 2013, Garcia recommended that the library remain at the senior center, swapping some space with the center’s gift shop, and completely renovating the reconfigured library area.

CHECKOUT - Patron Anthony Baffoni takes DVDs from Kathy Turcotte, library assistant, just before the ceremony marking the opening of Arlington Branch of Cranston Public Library.

     The branch now has the Cranston library system’s newest computers, Garcia said; a Wi-Fi router, whose signal extends to the first floor of the adjacent senior center; an all-new supply of books; and a lobby with a work table that can be used both by the senior center and school children doing homework.
      Kathy Turcotte, the library assistant who oversees the branch, said the new quarters, with large windows overlooking Cranston Street, is a “night and day” difference from the former reading room, which she said seemed dark.
       The renovated branch actually reopened Nov. 4, with the official program scheduled today.

Remembering a 'Driving Force'

ROBERTA COSTA, library trustee, greeted Sen. Jack Reed. Mayor Allan Fung is at left; and Rep. Jim Langevin at right. Mrs. Costa's late husband and library trustee, Edward Costa, led effort to upgrade the Arlington Branch.

Remembered as a forceful advocate for a revitalized branch was Edward Costa, a library trustee who died before the project was realized and whose widow, Roberta Costa, replaced him on the library board. Said Mayor Fung about Mr. Costa:
“I know he’s looking down at us, really beaming with pride with the fact that we are going to be able to help so many people in this community.”

Fung, perhaps broadening his focus now that he’s a gubernatorial statewide candidate, noted that Arlington Branch – which is part of the book and resource sharing network involving libraries throughout Rhode Island – is open to everyone.
“We all know our libraries aren’t just utilized by Cranston residents, they are utilized by people throughout the state, and this is a wonderful atmosphere where there is another resource for people throughout the state to come to,” Fung said.

Reed: Libraries Made a Personal Difference

    In a humorous moment, Garcia started to introduce Congressman Langevin as the next speaker. But in a stage whisper, Langevin suggested that Capitol Hill protocol indicated that Senator Reed go next.
      “Okay,” said Garcia, smoothly shifting gears, “I want to introduce Senator Reed….”
      “Age has its advantages,” quipped Reed.
     Reed, too, acknowledged Mr. Costa as a "driving

SEN. JACK REED, center, speaking during ceremonies marking opening of renovated Arlington Branch of the Cranston Public Library. At left, Rep. Jim Langevin; Mayor Allan Fung, at right.

force" in the project and as "someone who believed very much in getting this library once again to be a vital part of the Arlington community.”
      Recognized nationally for his sponsorship of major federal library legislation, Reed recalled his own debt to libraries while growing up in Cranston.
      “My first involvement with Cranston libraries was in the 1950s, when I walked up the steps to the Auburn Public Library at the corner of Woodbine and Park Avenue and went in there and found a whole world of information, ideas,” he said. “And, frankly, without that, I could not have been able to move forward in life.”
      Reed noted that libraries have advanced their roles beyond that of being only book repositories, with their public broadband computers allowing anyone access to the Internet, and services expanded to helping unemployed workers seek benefits and jobs.
      “By the way,” the senator added, “when we help libraries, we’re not only being right-minded, we are being pretty smart economically, because they are multipliers in terms of economic value, as well as community spirit and community relations.”

NEW BOOKS line the shelves of the renovated Arlington Branch. Previously, only donated books were stocked when the site was known as the Arlington Reading Room.

REP. JIM LANGEVIN, right, chats with Mayor Allan Fung. Langevin noted the impact of libraries on children.

     Finally getting his turn, Langevin also spoke about the powerful effect libraries can have on children.
       “I think you all remember that time when we got our first library card, and it gave you entree to a whole broader world,” Langevin said. He noted that libraries serve the whole community, regardless of income or status.
      “I’ve always looked at libraries as the great equalizer, because it didn’t matter your socioeconomic background,” the lawmaker said.

“You all had the same access to books and periodicals and all kinds of publications, and that’s so important for advancing knowledge.”

A Place for Old and New Generations

The library system spent $182,857 from the federal grant on the renovations and was able to keep the project local: the architects were from a Cranston firm, Saccoccio and Associates, with construction overseen by another city company, The Bailey Group.
One of the impacts of the Arlington Branch remaining in the senior center complex is the opportunity for young and older generations to sit side by side, as they both benefit from branch’s up-to-date information technology.

    Indeed, the branch’s Kathy Turcotte said that it serves the Gladstone and Arlington elementary schools, as well as the Hugh Bain Middle School.
      Karen Mellor, acting state chief library officer, noted in an interview that older people are sometimes on the wrong side of the “digital divide,” and with the branch’s new computers, they have increased opportunities to learn about new technology.
     Nancie Paola, co-director of the Cranston Senior Center, said she finds that elderly people are quick learners, even using the slow and out-of-date computers that have been available at the center. People who used to come to the center but have moved into nursing homes, she said, stay in touch with her via e-mail.
      And she predicted that computer-savvy senior center patrons are likely to be drawn to the library’s powerful new and speedier computers.
      “They don’t want old and slow,” Paola said.

KAREN MELLOR, acting state chief library officer, chats with Edward Garcia, director of Cranston Public Library after ceremony noting opening of Arlington Branch.

NANCIE PAOLA, co-director of the Cranston Senior Center, where the renovated Arlington Branch of the Cranston Public Library is located, says the center's elderly patrons welcome the branch's new and faster public computers.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - Sen. Jack Reed, who secured a federal grant to renovate the Arlington Branch of the Cranston Library, leaving after the ceremonial reopening of the branch.

Libraries Urged to Borrow Page From Political PIaybook to Win Community Support

11/25/2013

Expert tells advocates that 'passionate' and grassroots campaigns can help gain popular backing for libraries.

By Linda Henderson
Rhode Island Library Report
BARRINGTON, R.I. (Nov. 18, 2013) - The best way to market the library as essential to a community is to think of the promotion effort as a political campaign.
That was speaker John Chrastka’s advice to a group of nearly 75 librarians, trustees and friends organization at a meeting today at the Barrington Public Library.

WINNING SUPPORT - Consultant John Chrastka urges Rhode Island library advocates to adopt campaign techniques to build support. Credit: Linda Henderson, Rhode Island Library Report

Chrastka is a Chicago-area consultant, library advocate and trustee at his hometown library whose firm specializes in supporting associations with membership, recruitment, conference and governance activities.
   The most important factor in a successful campaign is the community perception of the “passionate librarian”, Chrastka said.
   Stressing that to gather support the library director and library itself must be viewed by their constituents as an institution, Chrastka shared polling data that said that most Americans support libraries. The numbers also show that voters don’t need to be library users to be library advocates.
   The goal of the campaign is to identify those advocates within the community.
   The advocates then need to emphasize the essential services to the community whether getting out the vote or just asking for support.

The Importance of the 'Ground Game'

    The library should be seen as a social leveler; an education partner; an economic development engine; a place of discovery; a personal refuge and an incubator, Chrastka said.
   Continuing the political metaphor, he talked about what motivates voters to come out to pass library-related measures on the ballot and differentiated library advocates from voters in general.
   To build advocacy the library staff, trustees and friends should be thought of as the campaign team, he said, and a “ground game” is crucial to success. Literally knocking on the doors of newcomers to town, of potential advocates and of town officials results in building strong ties to the library as a community treasure.
   Chrastka came back to finish the afternoon with a wrap-up and an invitation to join him at Trinity Brew House in Providence for further discussions that evening. He challenged the group to do homework based on his political campaign analogy timed to “threes”.
    He made suggestions for what could be done immediately (three hours) and what needed longer to accomplish (three days, three months and three years). He promised to be back in Rhode Island in three years to be updated on the progress of the group.
   Between sessions with Chrastka, the group was broken up to discuss six topics relating to the theme of the day. The topics were: Library trustee relations; Strengthening community ties; Demonstrating value; Library partnerships; Library as incubator and Connecting with the public. After a short discussion period facilitated by members of the sponsoring organizations each group reported on its suggestions for addressing its assigned topic. The participants used examples from their own libraries and brainstormed other ideas to share lists of potential solutions.

Geek the Library

   After the break-out sessions, Jennifer Bond of Bryant University and Aaron Coutu of the Cumberland Public Library presented an overview of the “Geek the Library” campaign that began statewide in September.
   The campaign was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation nationwide and locally by RILA.
    Bond and Coutu explained the use of the word geek as a verb and shared stories of how their libraries and others in the state used the materials and guidance

to promote the 37 public libraries and one academic library (Bryant) who participated.
   It was deemed a success across the state and Coutu said that Cumberland will continue their programs through next spring to culminate with the annual Arnold’s Mills Parade on July 4th.
   The title of the meeting was "The Essential Library: Community Leadership Strategies."
   It was moderated by Karen Mellor, Acting Chief of Library Services at the RI Office of Library and Information Services (OLIS) and was co-sponsored by OLIS, The Coalition of Library Advocates (COLA) and the Rhode Island Library Association (RILA).

(Editor’s Note: Linda Henderson, in addition to being a member of the Library Report, is chair of the board of trustees at the Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library in Burrillville).

Story edited by Jean Plunkett

Turning 50, URI'S library school celebrates 3,000 graduates and considers the impact of the Digital Revolution

11/11/2013

U.S. SEN. JACK REED was among the speakers at the 50th anniversary celebration of URI's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies Nov. 8. He jokingly thanked the school for posting "my high school graduation picture" on the event's large screen. Credit: Brian C. Jones

    By Brian C. Jones
    Rhode Island Library Report
    WARWICK, R.I. – (Nov. 11, 2013) – In a celebration that both honored its graduates and grappled with the challenges of the Digital Revolution, the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies of the University of Rhode Island marked its 50th anniversary last Friday.
      U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, who is revered by the national library community for his sponsorship of major legislation supporting libraries, received a standing ovation from the crowd of 120 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel as he began his part in the speaking program.
       “This great school,” Reed said, “has helped produce outstanding individuals who are committed to making our libraries the center of not only intellectual life, but community life throughout this country.”

Reed also praised Joan Ress Reeves of Providence, who received a “special lifetime recognition award” from the library school for more than 30 years of citizen advocacy for libraries, nationally and in Rhode Island. One result has been that Rhode Island provides substantially more financial aid to libraries than do many other states.
“She has been a force for libraries,” said Reed, who also took the occasion to poke fun at both himself and the diminutive Mrs. Reeves: “I’m living proof that things come in small packages; Joan is living proof that good things come in small packages.”

JOAN RESS REEVES, a longtime citizen advocate for libraries, received a special recognition award during the library school's Gala celebration. Credit: Brian C. Jones

A Party With A Serious Side

RENEE HOBBS, director of the library school and the Harrington School of Communication and Media, talks with Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association. Credit: Brian C. Jones

But underlying the evening’s celebratory spirit were serious discussions about both the stresses and the opportunities confronting libraries, which have been rocked by a Digital Revolution brought on by powerful computer technology, as well as by budgets strained by stalled or reduced public funding.
Reeves alluded to the challenges in praising Renee Hobbs, who was the evening’s master of ceremonies and who in 2012 became the founding director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media.

    The Harrington school itself is an effort to stay current with the technology and other changes, by placing the library school under one umbrella with five other URI departments that have related disciplines.
      Calling Hobbs “visionary and energetic,” Reeves said that “God knows, you are going forward in a very difficult and very challenging time to do some very, very exciting things at this school.”
      Since its founding in 1963, the URI school has graduated more than 3,000 students, and thus has had a profound effect, not only in Rhode Island, but throughout New England and beyond, where its alumni have joined the staffs of hundreds of public, private, academic and other libraries.
      The URI school is one of only two programs in New England that offer masters degrees in library and information sciences and that are certified by the American Library Association; the other is Simmons College in Boston. Most libraries require their key employees to have masters degrees.

The Internet's Wide Reach

KEYNOTE SPEAKER David Weinberger. Credit: Brian C. Jones

The enormous impact of computer technology and the Internet was the theme also of the evening’s keynote speaker, David Weinberger, co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School Library.
While upbeat about the promises of technology, such as the increasing popularity of electronic books, the vast storage capacity of computers and the Internet’s ability to instantly connect millions of people, Weinberger said that the fast-moving changes are also difficult to comprehend.

    “We can do things we can’t imagine, and maybe we’ll never be able to grasp it, because our brains are not wired for what happens when you get two billion people talking together,” Weinberger said of the Internet’s linking ability.
      Weinberger said the very idea of “information” as a confined, definable set of facts has been made outdated by the Internet’s infinite appetite.
      In one example, he cited a randomly selected article in the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, which devoted 6,000 words to one individual; the next edition reduced the length to 3,000 words; and, in a later one, the length was halved again.
      “Which means that the Encyclopedia Britannica is sitting there throwing away knowledge,” he said. “They had it, and they threw it away, not because they don’t like knowledge, not that they wanted to, but that’s the way the medium worked.”
      In contrast, Wikipedia, the enormous Internet-based encyclopedia, has 1,400 words about the same man, but also many links to other sources. When someone follows even some of those links, those new sites have links, too, Weinberger said, the result being “links to the links to the links to the links,” a process he said has changed “the shape” of knowledge. These linkages promote online conversations and debates in which understanding of knowledge constantly evolves.
      Weinberger also contended that there is merit in the openness of many Internet sites in accepting all sorts of inputs, even those which at first seem trivial.
       “It turns out there is value in having You Tube accept the lowest sort of dreck that there is,” Weinberger said, “because you get stuff that may not look valuable, but turns out to be.”
      An example of the danger of excluding material, he said, might be a well-meaning decision by operators of a news site to exclude gossip. But those reports might prove valuable to researchers who study the effect of media on female celebrities. “You cannot anticipate what people are going to want to do, what their interests are,” he said.
      Libraries – and the URI library graduate school – can be among the winners in this revolution, Weinberger said, because they are uniquely equipped to facilitate the kind of “knowledge network” enabled by the Internet.

     “Libraries can increasingly provide access to everyone,” he said, especially as more sources of knowledge are made available on the Internet, and because they can facilitate the conversations and discussions that are the heart of the Web’s approach to knowledge.
      He suggested something of a referee role for librarians, who he said can help patrons sort through the Internet’s raucous conversations, pointing out arguments worth paying attention to, since some discussions “too often spin off into the tawdry and to the silly.”
      “You are perfectly positioned – perfectly positioned – to lead libraries and to continue to educate the next generations of librarians, to embrace a network that is understood in the depth of its conversational quality, not just in its informational benefits,” Weinberger said. “You’re in a perfect position to move into your next 50 years, and I can’t wait to see as many of those years as I’m allowed to.”

“You are perfectly positioned – perfectly positioned – to lead libraries and to continue to educate the next generations of librarians, to embrace a network that is understood in the depth of its conversational quality, not just in its informational benefits."
-- David Weinberger on the potential impact of the Internet on URI's Library School

The Library School at 50

    At its half-century mark, the URI library school has a current enrollment of 150 students. It has proved to be resilient in responding to changes in how and where it teaches students, moving from its initial location in Providence to the main URI Kingston campus, as well as later providing satellite teaching sites in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and then moving into online learning.
      The school also has periodically weathered crises in accreditation, twice losing approval of the American Library Association’s committee on accreditation, in part because the university did not seem to provide sufficient resources. But the school has bounced back each time, with the help of letter writing campaigns and other support from its alumni and other library advocates.
      The school is now enjoying a seven-year accreditation approved by the ALA in 2010. In fact, among those at the anniversary dinner were two top ALA officials, Barbara Stripling, president, and Maureen Sullivan, immediate past president.
      Renee Hobbs, in addition to her role as overseeing the overall Harrington School of Communication and Media, is also serving as the library school’s director. In an interview before the Gala, she said that a curriculum revision is underway, and the school is adding more faculty members.

Honoring Its Graduates

URI used the 50th observance to honor five of its graduates for “leadership innovation and service” to the library and information services profession:
* Dr. E. Gale Eaton, a 1974 graduate and director of the school from 2006 to 2012. Currently chair of the Rhode Island Coalition of Library Advocates, a group founded by Joan Ress Reeves and other library supporters, Eaton “has been a pioneer in online education for youth services,” the school said. “She offered the first online GSLIS course with innovative technology and pedagogy, in response to student need for more accessible scheduling. She developed URI’s first digital services to youth course. Her early research on spatial cognition and wayfinding explored how library design may support or hinder intellectual inquiry, and her 2006 book, Well Dressed Role Models, probed the way women’s portrayal in juvenile biographies can support or limit what young readers expect from their own lives.”

* Edward Garcia, a 2008 graduate, now director of the Cranston Public Library. The citation said: “Under Ed Garcia’s leadership, the Cranston Public Library became a pilot site for a digital literacy initiative through a partnership with Broadband Rhode Island. The library also recently became the first public library in Rhode Island to have a 3-D printer and to host workshops where the public can use this innovative technology. Garcia also worked on a

THE LIBRARY at the University of Rhode Island

grant with the Confucius Institute at the University of Rhode Island that led to the creation of a Chinese collection at the Central branch library in response to the growing needs of Chinese-speaking citizens in Cranston.”
     * Dr. Nancy Mattoon Kline, a 1973 graduate, who served more than 30 years at the University of Connecticut Library. The citation said: “Dr. Kline’s research and publications include her dissertation: Technological Change and Bibliographic Instruction: a Delphi Study of American Academic Librarians' Views. She also contributed numerous articles to professional journals from 1973 to1997. Her work informed her research and writings while providing innovation for academic librarians to reach out to transform their instruction programs especially with librarians as liaisons to departments.”
      * Janice McPeak, a 2000 graduate, is Public Health Advisor at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Office of Communication and Education. The school said that McPeak previously was a systems librarian at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and that she worked on projects such as Docline, MedlinePlus, NIHSeniorHealth and GoLocal. URI said that previously, she “was a registered nurse and a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. Her military service included deployment to Fleet Hospital 15, Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, during Operation Desert Storm. She was also assigned to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, where she received the Disabled American Veterans Award for providing outstanding care and service to meet the needs of Veterans.”
      * Dr. Fred Stielow, a 1980 graduate, vice president and dean at the American Public University System. The citation said that he is “a major innovator in online education and distance librarianship. His most recent book examines a decade of leading a cutting-edge academic library online, Reinventing Libraries for Online Education.” He has written or edited over 100 scholarly articles and has published more than a dozen books.
    In presenting Joan Ress Reeves with a “lifetime” recognition award, the URI school noted her long service as a library advocate, helping to form state and national policy, and establishing several organizations promoting libraries in Rhode Island.
      She is a member of the Library Board of Rhode Island, and chaired that state panel from 1993 to 2001. In 1986, she was part of an effort that amended the state Constitution, so that it now requires the General Assembly to “promote” public libraries as well as public schools. As a result, Rhode Island aid to libraries totals about $11 million annually, supplementing local budgets as well as paying much of the construction costs of new or renovated buildings.
      Reeves is a founder and chairperson emeritus of the Rhode Island Coalition of Library Advocates; a former trustee of the Providence Public Library; and she was a founder and past president of the Friends of the Rochambeau Library in Providence.
      On the national level, she has played an important role in White House conferences on libraries, and has held numerous posts with the American Library Association, including serving as co-chair of its Task Force on Reauthorization of Library Services and Construction Act, 1992 to1996.
      In accepting the school’s recognition, Reeves urged a new generation of advocates to step forward to promote public support for libraries and to be a force that “can make things happen.” And she also introduced two grandchildren, Daniel, 12, and Andrew, 10.
      “They are voracious readers,” she said proudly.

DAVID WEINBERGER, of the Harvard University Library Innovation Lab, the keynote speaker at the library school Gala, said our understanding of the nature of information is being changed by the vast resources of the Internet. Credit: Brian C. Jones

Story edited by Carol J. Young

Gale Eaton: A teacher, scholar and writer, whose love of learning has connected generations of librarians

11/10/2013

By Brian C. Jones
Rhode Island Library Report

    You expect librarians to give you the story straight, and Gale Eaton doesn’t mince words when she recalls her four years as a student at the University of Rhode Island’s graduate school of library science.
    “Library school, compared to actually working in libraries, was incredibly dull,” Eaton says.
    It’s a statement you might overlook, except that, more than 30 years later, Eaton became the school’s director, a post she held for six years. For three years before that, she was the assistant director. And for nearly a quarter century, she was a member of the school’s faculty.

    But, dedicated librarian that she is, Eaton doesn’t limit the story to just a sound bite, albeit a witty one. The complete story of her relationship with the school, Eaton recalled a few days before the Nov. 8, 2013 Gala celebrating the school’s 50th anniversary, is more complicated.
    The fact is that Eaton has deep affection for the school, now known as the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, part of URI’s Harrington School of Communication and Media.
    And the full story tells us something about the character of librarians, as well as the school that has produced 3,000 of them. Just as importantly, it tells us, once again, not to fall into the trap of believing stereotypes, including those about librarians.
    If the graduates of the school are anything like Eaton, they are witty, tough, ironic, resourceful, skeptical and loyal. They are professionals, who are deeply passionate about their work, and crazy about the children, the teenagers and the men and women whose lives are changed every time they walk into a library.

E. GALE EATON, former director of the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Photo taken at the Nov. 8, 2013 Gala celebrating the school's 50th anniversary. Credit: Brian C. Jones, Rhode Island Library Report

A Long Ride to an Affordable Education

    To begin the more complete story of E. Gale Eaton, and because librarians try not to leave out important facts, I should tell you that one reason Eaton enrolled in URI is that she was rejected by her first choice, Simmons College, the older, bigger graduate library program in Boston that is URI’s major competitor.
    Even today, it’s hard to believe that Simmons made such a blunder, because, by any measure, Eaton was the kind of star student that any university would be delighted to rope in. She’d just graduated, in 1969, from Smith College, which is not just any run-of-the-mill college; and she had finished with no ordinary academic record: magna cum laude, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
    Eaton at the time was working as a “pre-professional library assistant” at the Boston Public Library. And the word around the Boston library was that Simmons, at least that year, didn’t want a lot of part-time students, which is what Eaton would have been.
    Eaton needed to work – her parents had three other kids to put through undergraduate college. And she also needed to go to library school, because her job at the Boston Public Library was conditioned on getting a master’s degree.

    There was another reason she chose URI. And again, not to sugarcoat it, that’s because URI was cheap.
    “I’ve been trying to remember what I paid for tuition, $45 a credit hour, or $45 for a 3-credit course,” Eaton told me in interviews by phone and e-mail. “Either way, it was cheap enough to manage on my $89 weekly take-home pay.”
     URI’s bargain tuition was no accident. When the school was founded in 1963, it was meant to serve not just Rhode Island students, but those from other New England states whose own public universities lacked similar programs. Under a New England Board of Higher Education “compact,” URI offered lower, in-state rates to non-Rhode Islanders.

"I’ve been trying to remember what I paid for tuition, $45 a credit hour, or $45 for a 3-credit course. Either way, it was cheap enough to manage on my $89 weekly take-home pay."

But the price break didn’t put Eaton on easy street: there was the matter of getting from Boston to URI. Once a week, she rode a Bonanza bus from Boston to Providence, a one-hour ride, and then a Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus to Kingston, at least an hour. That held, too, for the return trip.
Maybe all those hours spent aboard busses for four years, starting in 1970, colored her perceptions of the overall graduate experience, so much so that when she finished the program, she “swore I’d never go near a library school again in my life.”

Channeling Dr. Bergen

But to be frank – and we trust that librarians are – the URI program wasn’t completely dull. Eaton attributes that to one professor in particular, Dr. Daniel Bergen.
In describing Bergen, Eaton references the TV program, “Touched by an Angel.” I never saw the show, which ran on CBS from 1994 to 2003, according to Wikipedia. But Eaton, being the open-minded librarian that she is, draws on many sources of knowledge. Professor Bergen, she says, was like a cross between the TV program’s do-gooder angels and “somebody who played football for Notre Dame.”

“We simply had a joyous time, throwing ideas around. You could think about anything you wanted to in Dr. Bergen’s class. And, of course, in the end, it all had something to do with libraries.”

Bergen planted “sort of an intellectual time bomb” in his classes, an explosive love of learning, decades later, that Eaton would try to pass along to her own students. Bergen’s assignments included writings by Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, who explored the link between power and knowledge, and also those of the “medium-is-the-message” philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, who developed theories of media and communication.
“We simply had a joyous time, throwing ideas around,” Eaton recalls. “You could think about anything you wanted to in Dr. Bergen’s class. And, of course, in the end, it all had something to do with libraries.”

A Detour to the Research Desk

    At this point in the story, we take a research detour, since Eaton, without saying so in so many words, suggests that we not take just her word for the sometimes low excitement level experienced by library students, not just at URI, but at similar programs in other states and countries.
    “There have been, over the decades, every so often, articles by scholars about why students hate library school – I kid you not,” Eaton says. And she mentions one in particular, written in the 1980s by Samuel Rothstein, the founding director of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
    To be sure, Eaton points out, so that the reference is placed in context, the article did appear in an April First issue of the Library Journal. But it’s there, and you can locate it using your own or your library’s Internet-connected computer, through a simple Google search: Library Journal, v110 n6 p41-48 Apr 1, 1985, by Samuel Rothstein, an article entitled “Why People Really Hate Library Schools.”
    Rothstein’s conclusion, in part, according to Eaton, was “that people who go into librarianship tend to be very detail-oriented and critical of themselves and others, and that they had a bias towards not liking things as much as students in some other professions.”
    Eaton graduated in 1974 and was promoted at the Boston Public Library to the position of “Children’s Librarian One,” and she worked there three more years. Then she became supervisor for children’s services at the Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass., until 1984. With a recommendation from the angelic Dr. Bergen, she was accepted into a doctoral program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
    So the URI legacy is this: she “adored” her work at the Boston library. The same goes to for her work in Pittsfield. “And without a solid MLS behind me, I couldn’t have done that.”

In a Crisis, Support From Near and Far

The depth of the debt and affection that Eaton and other graduates feel for their URI program became very apparent in January, 1986.
That’s when the school, which has had various crises throughout its history, lost its accreditation with the American Library Association (ALA). Some on faculty felt the university was providing insufficient resources. According to Providence Journal articles at the time, the ALA found 25 problems with the program, including a shrinking faculty, a lack of a permanent director and poor control of satellite programs

it was running in Boston, Amherst, Mass., and Durham, N.H. Further, URI itself had considered scuttling the school. Eaton heard about the school’s troubles from fellow children’s librarians, and she joined in with hundreds of other alums in a campaign that included an energetic letter-writing barrage, urging the university to bolster the program and seek re-accreditation.

“I think that the university was kind of surprised by the depth and the extent of the support for the school by graduates and other members of the library community,” Eaton says. In a major step, the university in 1986 recruited as its director, Elizabeth Futas, who was widely respected by those in the library world, including officials at ALA, where Futas was a member of the executive committee.
“She was something,” Eaton says of Futas, who presided over a rebuilding of the program, hiring of more professors and other reforms. Futas “believed in librarianship as ‘the last noble profession,’ and her vision for the school had everything to do with intellectual freedom and a strong service ethic.”

“I think that the university was kind of surprised by the depth and the extent of the support for the school by graduates and other members of the library community."

    Two years later, ALA accreditation was back at URI, and so was Eaton.
    As an instructor, then as an assistant professor, then as an associate professor, Eaton taught three courses a semester, “channeling” Professor Bergen, courses that ranged from “foundations of library and information services,” to ethics and intellectual freedom, and to “reading interests” of children and young adults.
    In 1995, when Director Futas was only 50 years old, she collapsed and subsequently died, ironically during an American Library Association conference in Philadelphia. The university hired two more directors, including one selected after a national search, W. Michael Havener.             Eaton in 2003 was named assistant director, and in 2006, when Havener stepped down, she was appointed as the school’s top administrator.

Her Turn to ‘Be Responsible’

    Eaton had mixed feelings about the promotion.“It’s not something I really wanted to do, you know,” she told me. “I did not see myself as an administrator; teaching is so much more fun. But I guess it was my turn to be responsible.”
    A year later, in 2007, the ALA’s committee on accreditation put the school on “conditional accreditation,” for several reasons, including inadequate financial support and lack of broad-based planning and curriculum review. But in 2010, after an ALA’s review team had visited the campus, normal accreditation was granted, for seven years.
    According to a history of the school compiled by one of its professors, Cheryl A. McCarthy, Eaton’s administration oversaw “a continuous curriculum reform to reflect the changes in electronic information services and the demand for more online or blended courses.” Eaton also was leading the program during the creation of the Harrington School, which put six departments, including the graduate library school, under the same umbrella.
    One indication of how the school feels about Eaton’s leadership is that at the 50th anniversary celebration, she was among six persons honored. Her “excellence award” called her a “pioneer in online education for youth services,” saying she developed the university’s first “digital services to youth course,” and that she had created the first online course for students who asked for more flexible scheduling.
    Of the efforts for online learning, Eaton says that she, McCarthy and other professors at the graduate school “moved slowly and experimented. She said that “Cheryl McCarthy told me: ‘It’s all very well for you to teach by e-mail – you like to write.’ And I told her: ‘It’s all very well for you to teach on TV- you’re photogenic.’ Gradually, I think we worked out a balance of online and hybrid courses.”

Connecting the Generations

     When I asked Eaton about the library school’s impact, she said that graduates are credited for being well-versed in the essential skills they are required to have when they go into the real world. And thinking back to the accreditation process in 2010, she remembers the ALA visiting team being “really impressed by our students and alumni, by their loyalty and intelligence.”
    “So my feeling is that we have done yeoman’s duty in the field, and that we’ve managed to give students the skills that they need to be getting on with. We’ve managed to light fires with some of them, and not with others, which I think is normal.”
    “But I see students coming back and seeking out my colleagues, with great affection and gratitude, and think: ‘Yeah, we’ve made a contribution.’ ”
   Since leaving as director in 2012, Eaton has been named chair of the Rhode Island Coalition of Library Advocates, and she recently sent her publisher a manuscript of her biography about of Alice M. Jordan, who was the children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library from 1902 to 1940.

"Any time that I did something that impressed the older ladies who were teaching me the ropes, they would say: ‘Oh, Miss Jordan would like that.’”

    Jordan had been gone 30 years from the Boston Public Library by the time Eaton arrived in 1970. In fact, Jordan had died 10 years earlier, so Eaton never got to meet her. But as a fledgling librarian, Eaton could still feel Alice Jordan’s influence.
   "Any time that I did something that impressed the older ladies who were teaching me the ropes,” Eaton says, “they would say: ‘Oh, Miss Jordan would like that.’” In other words, Eaton says, three decades after Jordan had left, the other librarians “were still channeling Alice Jordan.”
    It’s the reason Eaton decided to write a biography about Jordan, and she documented a compelling story of a woman who was the embodiment of what it means to be a librarian.

    In the process, she also demonstrated something of the long reach libraries and librarians have into our lives. Jordan passed on an ethos to her colleagues, and they passed it on to Eaton, and Eaton to her students.
    It was “an ethos about service to children,” Eaton says, “that there was nothing more important that you could do - that it was absolutely essential to give children the best possible stuff; that children deserved not only good books, but also quality attention that you lavished on them – your sympathy, your empathy, the best intelligence and creativity that you could possibly give them.”
    It’s something that does not grow old or out of date.
    “If Alice Jordan were around now, she’d be fighting to get the best and most appealing materials onto children’s Nooks and Kindles and iPads,” Eaton told me.
    “She’d be delving into research on brain development and looking for connections: How does this translate into the development of spirit, compassion, and community? How can we best support the child’s developing mind? She’d be organizing spaces to entice children and teens. She’d be doing just what she always did, with new tools.”
    “And being Alice Jordan, she’d be doing it very, very quietly. You probably wouldn’t notice.”

    Story edited by Carol J. Young

Digital revolution still perplexes, excites librarians, educators and journalists

11/7/2013

"DIGITAL DISRUPTION" was the topic Nov. 6, 2013 at a conference organized by the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. Sydnye Cohen, technology integrator, New Canaan High School in Connecticut, addresses the group. CREDIT: Brian C. Jones, Library Report

By Brian C. Jones
Rhode Island Library Report
      KINGSTON, R.I. – (Nov. 6, 2013) – The digital revolution, its challenges and opportunities, continue to both perplex and excite educators, librarians and journalists.
      That much was clear from the latest conference sponsored by the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island to explore how computers and their offshoots impact society and therefore the way the school trains its students.
      For example, libraries can save space taken up by the storage of books and scholarly journals by having them available electronically, thereby creating room for new “user” functions, such as 3-D printers and multi-media production.
      But many patrons treasure their library’s traditional role as book repositories, and electronic editions pose new problems, including whether leased databases will include the same publications from year to year, or become too expensive during times when public budgets are tight.

A Digital Divide That Also Splits by Age

What the discussion by 50 scholars, reporters, librarians and entrepreneurs attending the all-day session also made clear is that the “digital divide” involves not just those who can afford expensive technology and those who can’t, but a new gap between generations about how comfortable they are in working with new devices.

For example, Rebecca E. Burnett, director of the writing and communication program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that when the university required students to bring laptops or iPad tablets to class, the most daunting hurdle was getting professors to go along.
“The first change you have to make is a culture change with the faculty,"

RENEE HOBBS, director of the Harrington School, with Bill Densmore, a conference organizer. Densmore is education coordinator of Digital City R.I., and a member the Harrington executive advisory board. CREDIT: Brian C. Jones

Burnett said, noting that in the outset, there were jokes about “kill switches” that would incapacitate the devices. So instructors and professors, she said, had to be educated about how their much younger students would use the new “tools.”
"These tools don’t change the thinking,” said Burnett. “They change the way we approach that thinking. Our brains are still intact. And she said students still need to learn how to “write and speak and design, and engage in interaction in a way that makes sense with other human beings.”

Ranganathan's "Rules"

The conference was entitled “From Ranganathan to Read/Write: Managing Digital Disruption in Libraries, Schools and Workplaces.”

According to the program materials, S.R. Ranganathan was a 20th Century librarian who developed five “laws” that describe the function of libraries: “(1) Books are for use. (2) Every reader his [or her] book. (3) Every book its reader. (4) Save the time of the reader. (5) The library is a growing organism.”
Among the questions asked at the conference were how those widely-accepted rules apply in the digital age, and how change can be measured in terms of old and new rules.

Books are for use.
Every reader his [or her] book.
Every book its reader.
Save the time of the reader.
The library is a growing organism.
_ Ranganathan's laws

Changes Stir Both Alarm and Hope

       An obvious change is how newspapers, once dominant and powerful sources of information, have been imperiled by loss of revenue from classified advertisements that now are offered free on craigslist, an Internet site, along with diminished readership.
      Peter Phipps, managing editor for new media at the Providence Journal and a media instructor at URI, noted that newspaper publishers, because they invested in expensive presses and ink, largely controlled what kind of news and information got to the public. But now, software experts who devise powerful data-sorting algorithms, or mathematical formulas, such as those used by Google, the dominant Internet search engine, play a central role in guiding computer users in accessing a broad universe of information.
      At the same time, Tom Stites, founder and president of the Banyan Project, in Newburyport, Mass., didn’t sugarcoat the difficulty faced by journalists who want to sustain the wide coverage that newspapers have provided for decades.
      Stites' group is trying to develop a Web-based journalism model that can be self-supporting and serve “news deserts,” or communities no longer covered by newspapers, and it plans a pilot edition in Haverhill, Mass. But Stites noted that, overall, “journalism is ill, and it’s not getting quickly healed.”
      The Harrington School brings together six once separate departments at URI – journalism, the graduate school of library and information studies, reading and rhetoric, film/media, public relations and communication studies.
      Renee Hobbs, the school’s founding director who arrived at the URI campus in January, 2012, said during one workshop that among the impacts of the fast-changing technology landscape is uncertainty and unpredictability in every field, including higher education.
      “There used to be a stable business model and now there isn’t,” Hobbs noted. But when some participants worried about the financial sustainability of journalism and other mediums, she said that entrepreneurs will figure out the new economics of the digital age.
      “I don’t think we should be pessimistic,” Hobbs said.

The Future of Silence

    The conference discussions, which took place in the lobby and classrooms of URI’s new pharmacy school, touched a variety of subjects, including how space should be used in public and school libraries. Some attendees suggested that common areas should have wheeled and moveable furniture so that spaces could serve multiple purposes and groups. Others talked of new roles for librarians as “coaches and navigators and facilitators” for library users information gathering and use.
      One father of a 14-year-old noted that his daughter insists that she cannot study unless music is “cranked up” and that she finds working in silence difficult. He asked whether that trend, shared by many school and college-aged students, is factored into plans for new library spaces.
      Sydnye Cohen, a former high school library media specialist at Brookfield, Conn., high school and now technology integrator at New Canaan High School, also in Connecticut, said she was never a “shushing” kind of librarian, and believes that creativity is an often noisy process and that strict rules about talking and other behavior can inhibit innovative projects. As a librarian, she allowed students to eat in the library, but conditioned that on the students cleaning up afterwards – which they did.
      Burnett said that the Georgia Institute of Technology created multiple kinds of spaces in new or renovated buildings, some so quiet that people entering them said “wow,” and other rooms with various levels of background noise.
      “All of us probably don’t mind having Bach playing in the background,” she said. “But there are other spaces where you want silence, and different kinds of silence.

What Unites Americans? Their Libraries

KAREN PERRY, digital information expert, says one survey showed that 91 percent of Americans consider libraries important. At left, Troy Hicks, associate professor of English, Central Michigan University. CREDIT: Brian C. Jones

The issue of public attitudes toward libraries was raised by Karen Archer Perry, of Clarion Digital and a former senior program officer for library initiatives at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle.
Perry said that a survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this year found that 91 percent of respondents said that the public libraries are important, which she said was a remarkable finding at a time when the country is divided on many political and social issues:

“Is there anything else that 91 percent of Americans agree on?”
      But she noted that some of that support is rests on past perceptions – with many people not aware that libraries offer electronic books, which can be read on computer tablets, a service that is “going through the roof.” And she said that a significant portion of those polled – 40 percent – don’t want libraries to move books out of traditional stack areas, which can hinder the ability of some libraries to free up space for new kinds of activities.
      Lisa Richter, reference librarian for the Bristol Community College’s Attleboro, Mass. Center, noted that libraries which used to purchase paper editions of scholarly journals, now instead lease databases from vendors. That can produce uncertainty about availability of some journals year to year.
      Richter was a participant in a workshop that discussed the evolution of new approaches to media. For example, video and film once were controlled by a limited number of broadcast networks and studios. Now, individual video creators can reach audiences – and earn income – from “microcasts” showing their work on YouTube, the Internet outlet. Similarly, participants said that writers can now self-publish some of their work, rather than depending on book publishers to market their work.
      Also discussed, during a session convened by the Banyan Project's Stites about the impact on democracy of weakened newspapers, were new approaches to getting civic information to the public.
      Mark Marosits said that the company he cofounded in Newport, Worldways Social Marketing, has been involved with the city of Newport’s development of a new Website, Engage Newport, meant to provide government news and to promote discussion of issues by city residents.
      He called the Website, launched two weeks ago, “a positive first step” for city government in providing essential information to the community’s residents.

Story edited by Carol J. Young

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Gale Eaton: A teacher, scholar and writer, whose love of learning has connected generations of librarians

Digital revolution still perplexes, excites librarians, educators and journalists

The LIBRARY LINE

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