Library and information studies professor Diane Mittermeyer PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

How a library ought to lobby

BRONWYN CHESTER | For many, the public library is a sacred institution. But that doesn't make it an institution with unconditional support. Public libraries, those run by independent boards -- which predominate in North America -- are still dependent for the bulk of their funding on their city or town. So, even with the support of their boards and often a "friends of the library" lobby group, public libraries are still vulnerable to the policies and priorities of city hall, not to mention the provincial ministries of community services. Like all public services, libraries across the country have suffered from budget slashing. Their future survival depends on their ability to persuade a range of decision-makers and users about the vital role they play in their communities. Which is where library and information studies professor Diane Mittermeyer comes in. An avowed champion of the country's public libraries, Mittermeyer's research aims to help the institutions see how others see them. Mittermeyer recently completed a cross-country tour of 17 libraries in 17 municipalities where she distributed questionnaires to 942 library-related people. Respondents included city councillors (including mayors), community leaders (usually representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the local Arts Council, the Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions Club, the YM/YWCA and the local literacy group), friends of the library groups, librarians, library managers, board members and users. Mittermeyer was interested in seeing how the various actors in the survival and shaping of a public library differ in their notion of what makes a library effective. She believes that if libraries know what their various constituent groups value in the institution, they may be able to do a more targeted selling job about what they have to offer to their communities. "The next step would be to tell libraries to gather certain types of data and slice it this way for councillors, that way for users, for instance. "In other words, if I'm a community leader, for instance, tell me what I'm interested in knowing if you want me to support the library," says Mittermeyer. Hence the nature of Mittermeyer's single-question questionnaire: "In evaluating a public library's effectiveness, how important would it be for you to know each of the following about the library?" and the 62 follow-up options, which varied from "convenience of library hours to users" to "range of materials available," from "energy efficiency of the library building" to "contribution of library to individual or community well-being" and "extent of public involvement in library decision-making." The respondents were asked to rate each characteristic from 1 to 5: "not important to know" to "essential to know." While there was much consensus among all groups on such criteria as convenience of hours, range of materials, the helpfulness of staff and the range of services, Mittermeyer, in her analysis of the questionnaire results, notes two important differences. One was in the area of the library's rapport with other libraries and collections and electronic sources of information. Users rate these as most important. Librarians and managers, on the other hand, found these the least important. "This alerts me to the fact that with new technology and new access to library catalogues through the Internet, users are saying: 'Gear up for exchange.'" Collaboration elsewhere is becoming important to users while library staff and board members have not yet awakened to this. "They still see public libraries as local affairs. "For many years, public libraries have had an inter-library loan service, but it was always treated as something of a second class citizen. This may be a signal that ILL may no longer be sufficient." The other area of difference concerned the importance of the library being free. "For users this was among the most important of characteristics while for board members and managers, it was ranked from middle to low in importance." Mittermeyer says that free service is embedded in all public library acts. (Except in Quebec, where there is no act, and half of all libraries have a user fee.) Her feeling is that because libraries are engaged in a dual struggle with fiscal restraint, on one hand, and public demand for expensive and rapidly outdated technology, on the other, the idea of being able to charge users may be entertained by the board and managers as part of the solution to their financial problems. "We may be witnessing a weakening of the 200-year-old principle of [the public library as] the people's university," she worries. Next, Mittermeyer tackles part two of her study: Quebec libraries. Because of Quebec's unique status in Canada as the only province where libraries are run as municipal services -- along with recreation, fire and sanitation services, etc -- our public libraries have no independent governing board or friends of the library group. So Mittermeyer has reduced her constituencies to: librarians, library managers, community leaders, users and city councillors. She will cover 10 libraries. Her aim is to compare the perceptions of effectiveness between the two types of libraries (Canadian and Quebec) and to compare between the groups she surveys. "In other words," she explains, "regardless of the organizational environment, are there differences between councillors here and in Vancouver or Saskatoon; are there cultural differences or are librarians librarians and city councillors city councillors no matter what the environment?" A native of Abitibi, Mittermeyer hails from the era when in francophone Quebec there were few libraries; she was 13 when Val d'Or opened a municipal library. It was thanks to her woodsman and bibliophile father, a member of the Cercle de livre de France, a mail-order service, that Mittermeyer developed her early love of books. It was only when Mittermeyer went to the University of Toronto to do graduate work that she "discovered" the public library. Upon the insistence of her PhD advisor, Mittermeyer attended her first public library meeting in 1973. "Those were the greatest years for public libraries for Toronto. There were important people on the boards, like [publisher] James Lorimer, and the community was very demanding because they found there were noticeable inequalities between branches." Mittermeyer has remained an interested observer of the decision-making process in libraries for the past 25 years, both in public and municipally run libraries à la Québécoise. She witnessed the value of the public process in libraries one evening in Toronto when a poor woman pleaded to city hall officials to allow her local library to continue to buy Harlequin romances. The city was threatening to cease funding such "trash." "She said how one dollar may not be much for some, but being a single mother on welfare, that was beyond her means and her Harlequins were the only leisure time that she could afford." The woman, supported by her library board, won her case. "It's impossible to have that process here," laments Mittermeyer, explaining that because decisions are made behind closed doors and few librarians, given their status as municipal employees, dare complain publicly about such decisions, "no one even knows when a particular series is discontinued." Which is not to say that municipally run libraries can't be good libraries. Mittermeyer notes that some of the French-language municipal libraries provide fine service, mentioning the cities of Brossard and Boucherville. In her view, Quebec's English-language libraries, with a longer tradition and their location in relatively affluent cities, generally offer a better service than their French-language counterparts. Still, she maintains, due to the closed-door decision-making process, all libraries are vulnerable to the whims of politicians and city administrators.