Guest Opinion: Our public libraries still have a vital community importance Guest Opinion: Our public libraries still have a vital community importance (April 21, 2004)

by Sanford Forte

As a recent appointee to Palo Alto's Library Commission, I have been thinking much about libraries and their role in today's society.

I've been fortunate in my working career to experience "tours" of the publishing industry, more than a few technology sectors, industrial design, corporate investment, the world of social entrepreneurship and more.

In all of this, public library services have been central as sources of personal information, entertainment and ideas.

I do not believe, as some do, that libraries are anachronisms in the Information Age, with its catch-phrase: "Information is Power." Cicero -- the Roman philosopher -- said, "Freedom is participation in power." Libraries help us participate in the free circulation of ideas and information. They are its foundation -- essential, evolving, public institutions deserving of our full social and financial support.

In spite of the Internet, without public libraries, many citizens would not have access to information, the key to informed participation. Alternately, without public libraries, many who wield influence would lose opportunities to disseminate their ideas. Libraries enable freedom.

It follows that to the degree public libraries are diminished within our community, to that same degree the quality of our community is diminished.

Over the past four decades Palo Alto has played a significant role in creating the Information Age -- our city became wealthy as a result. Thus, it's ironic to see our libraries threatened by a fast-changing ecology of information, and fiscal constraints.

To meet these challenges Palo Alto Library's current and future mandates must be clearly elaborated. Our libraries must -- at the risk of being taken for granted -- maintain a viable PR presence that clearly illustrates intangible benefits, while quantifying as many others as possible. "Social return on investment" is easily shown in this case, and can act as a powerful motivator for future investment.

Our libraries must also pursue funding opportunities that lie outside the time-worn grooves of traditional, institutional library funding.

And they must be kept as a dynamic part of the community. One immediate goal should be to have all current branches return to full hours. It's sadly instructive to see local library use up even as hours and personnel have been cut back. We ignore this overt citizen demand for library services at our city's cultural peril.

Today's public libraries are fast becoming indispensable centers of efficient access to diverse sources of information -- life-long learning centers where community members can interact.

From the important task of creating and filtering comprehensive collections of information fully representative of our diverse culture to inventing powerful social and learning modalities for all citizens -- young and old -- libraries are becoming more essential than ever to our cultural well being.

Within the last two decades, absolute sources and volume of information have increased by orders of magnitude, mostly due to the influence of digital media and the Internet. These changes continue to accelerate, unabated.

Who better to find, provide retrieval strategies for and effectively parse this flood of new information for our public than library professionals, trained and dedicated to just this task?

Our public libraries should attempt new cooperative ventures -- technological and otherwise -- with public and private institutions. The Cerritos Library has become a model of visionary use and user-friendly technology tools, with Hewlett-Packard's help.

Libraries are changing with new developments in the computer, cognitive and information sciences. Interactive design, metadata, digital archiving, bioinformatics, and cyberspace law are just a few of many new areas that our libraries should be involved in -- we can enable this.

We must incorporate community conference, entertainment and activity rooms (for all ages) into our libraries. These and other additions can deliver significant, quantifiable social returns on investment. San Jose's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library was designed to be a commercial anchor; it has succeeded, acting as a powerful magnet for business. The King Library stands out as a beacon of municipal vision.

Our libraries should explore new commercial partnerships with publishing and media sectors. Accessing much of the library's collection should ultimately be as easy as turning on your television set. We should begin to explore new ways to make that happen. In all of this, we must dramatically increase the depth and breadth of the library's collection, for all media (print and digital).

We must encourage Friends of the Palo Alto Library. This organization has proved that volunteers -- when set free to contribute and innovate -- can make significant, lasting contributions to our public libraries, and community.

No single institution in American culture -- including institutions of higher learning -- has a stronger mandate to enable equal access to information and ideas than do our public libraries. We must honor that tradition locally, strengthen it and make it sustainable over the long term.

Sanford Forte is vice president for business development at the start-up, Snagg, Inc.; a Palo Alto Library Commission member; and a principal in two social entrepreneurial projects involving educational publishing and communications infrastructure, respectively. He can be e-mailed at sanfordforte@hotmail.com.

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