Editorial: What should the future hold for County Library?

“The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned”

– Alberto Manguel, author of ?“The Library at Night”

Sonoma County’s got a lot of learning to do.

At least that’s the impression one gets about the 37 percent of county voters who voted nay on Measure M last November, the one-eighth-cent sales tax that would’ve bolstered local Dewey Decimal Systems by $100 million over the next decade.

But, like those literary heroes littering the fiction shelves who remain resolute in the face of all adversity – think Ahab or TinTin – the Sonoma County Library soldiers on to improve even without enough electoral support to muster the two-thirds approval Measure M needed to pass. And this week, the Sonoma County Library launched the first part of its new “strategic planning process,” in which library officials are seeking public input about what folks would like to see in their local card catalogues in the coming years. (They don’t still use card catalogues, do they?)

So in that spirit of bibliothec brainstorming, I conducted an internal poll of the five-member Walsh household – a constituency that’s versed in libraries from throughout the Bay Area, representing a variety of age ranges, albeit, unfortunately, an overly Anglicanized ethnic demographic. Take this survey as you will, but here were some of the more popular suggestions:

• Better selection for an under-served reading population: elementary school age readers. We find the options for preschoolers and teens to be plentiful, but quality fare for the second- through fifth-graders – think “Geronimo Stilton,” or “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” – is harder to come by.

• More programming for adults. Author appearances shouldn’t only be for book stores – guest speakers, lectures on topical issues, readings from local authors, nothing satisfies quite like feeding the mind. And that’s a library system’s ultimate goal, right?

• Think outside the box, or at least outside the library. The West Marin libraries had a wonderful summer program a few years ago when they’d bring various nature vans to library parking lots to show off everything from animal bones and skulls to live exotic animals (often confiscated following illegal ownership). Nothing gives a library cool points quite like a spider monkey or a Komodo dragon.

• Keep the computers in the adult section – and out of the children’s room. That libraries provide Internet access for folks who don’t otherwise have a gateway to cyberspace is vital for many. But, as for the tot tech – kids can fiddle around with online learning games at home; libraries should emphasize reading actual books.

• Sonoma County libraries offer their fair share of kid events – preschool story times abound, and the read-to-a-dog program is a personal favorite – but there’s no such thing as too much programming to get kids into the library. We’ve attended pajama storytimes, clown shows, science sessions, gingerbread-house workshops, sing-alongs, you name it. As the quote from library-lovin’ Argentine author Alberto Manguel emphasizes above, you’ve got to go to the library to become a lifetime library goer.

So these were just a few of the bright ideas that sprang from our personal library lobbying session. (Got more ideas? Send ‘em in, and we’ll consider them for the Pulse of the Public section.)

Of course, all this library love doesn’t come free, and the county library’s $16 million operating budget isn’t getting any bigger with the book closed on Measure M.

But, as a pretty well-read guy named Walter Cronkite once observed: “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”