RURAL LIBRARY SUSTAINABILITY

One of the mealtime conversations I had at the WAPL Spring Conference was with a couple of librarians from very small libraries in very small towns. They related a long laundry-list of problems encountered in village libraries that were indeed very daunting. They included things such as the Village administrator commandeering library fines to put in the village coffers to be dispensed at his discretion on his projects; nepotism and favoritism conducted by the Village administrator; constant change of library board members (in violation of state statutes), so they don't get too enamoured of the goals and objectives of the library; distrust of librarians because of having association with organizations outside the village; librarians getting denied approval to put a sign on their building stating that the site was a library; the library getting closed on election days because the library is the polling place; the librarian rarely getting approval to attend functions because she is the only library employee and in her absence the library has to shut down; failure to invite the librarian to meetings affecting the operation of her library; the fastest form of communication in the village being word of mouth; many in the village sharing much of the same DNA; etc. etc. The librarians can not get too militant on these issues because their jobs would be on the line.

Discussing potential solutions, certainly legal ones, things that would work in villages might well prove to be offensive or unworkable in large communities. There is definitely need for advocacy and selling the community on the library's worth and value to the village.

Despite the Gates Foundation and Web-Junction program, Rural Library Sustainability in some small communities depends upon much more than computers.