by Mark Dery
The Nyack Library’s attempts to emulate the marketplace logic of retail outlets like Barnes & Noble are at once ill-advised and inexpertly implemented — half measures that neither emulate the best practices of commercial culture successfully nor preserve what’s best about libraries, namely, their resolutely non-commercial status within American society. In a country where the capitalism is the state religion and profit maximization (at any cost) is the greatest good, public libraries are one of a very few institutions dedicated to the free circulation of knowledge.
The new, “rebranded” Nyack Library—an odious term, imported from corporate culture—is an unsatisfying hybrid of public institution and retail space. For example, commercial websites such as Amazon are careful to make their users feel “heard” via autogenerated responses (“Thanks for your feedback”). The library’s Website neglects to do this. On the other hand, it unhappily embraces the tendency, in corporate culture, to view transparency as a liability: I had to contact a librarian to get the e-mail address of the Library Director, since it is not listed online. Similarly, the date of the Board of Trustees meeting, which should be prominently featured on the site’s front page so that all taxpaying Nyackians are aware of it, is hidden deep in the site, buried in a PDF document.
Another example: the identifying placards that have sprouted up on the stacks are whimsically imprecise. Color me clueless, but I have no idea what the vague rubric “Body/Mind/Spirit” is supposed to encompass. Religion and philosophy? Cognitive neuroscience? Evolutionary psychology? The Frances Farmer Story? Freud on infantile sexuality? Tai Kwan Do for Dummies? Rock-Hard Abs in 30 Days? The placard is so generalized as to be useless. Ditto “Business and Society”. “Society” is a vastly large subject area. Shouldn’t it have its own section altogether? And why is it paired with business? Do the two go together any more intuitively than, say, society and gender or society and sexuality or society and race? Why not business and economics?
(Parenthetically, the new organizational philosophy has given rise, as well, to a layout that makes locating a book as easy as navigating a hedge maze. Blindfolded. On a moonless night. The arrangement of the stacks into zigzagging angles and crazy switchbacks instead of the time-honored linear layout is just nuts, to use a technical term. Thanks to the new layout, call numbers hopscotch all over the place. Here, the numbers jump, in the space of one shelf, from 299 to 610; there, from 618 to 793, and over there from 398 to 650. As a book author and former university professor, I’m reasonably fluent with library layout, yet I find the library’s current configuration maddeningly inscrutable. Looking for a book? Bring a sack lunch.)
I asked a librarian about the new organizational philosophy, implemented with the library’s re-opening, and was told that it was modeled on Barnes & Noble categories in an attempt to create a “marketplace” of categories, conducive to serendipity. I’m all for serendipity, but is there any data showing this new arrangement is any more likely to lead to accidental discoveries than the old Dewey Decimal set-up? Moreover, why is a public library emulating a retail outlet, especially one that just did a flaming death-dive into bankruptcy? Too much of American culture embraces the logic of the marketplace and the “wisdom” of CEOs, a tendency epitomized by Trump’s 15-minute candidacy and the odious, only-in-America phrase “the marketplace of ideas,” an expression whose inference that everything, even ideas, should be valued in dollars-and-cents terms makes my Inner Marxist see red.
Nowhere is this regrettable tendency more jarringly evidenced than in the recent renaming of the checkout desk as the “customer service” desk and the requirement that checkout clerks wear badges identifying them as “customer service representatives.” While it may seem small, this renaming—again, part of a larger rebranding—signals the triumph of commercial values over civic virtues. Libraries are not in the business of selling anything, and thus cannot, by definition, have “customers”; they have patrons, a perfectly good term that emphasizes our profound investment, literally and figuratively, in the library as a democratic institution in an ever more privatized world, consecrated to the book rather than the cash nexus.
Libraries are an instance of what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls “great good places”—spaces that serve as the heart of a community, enriching civic and social life and fostering a sense of common cause. The corporate-inspired rebranding of the Nyack Library is repugnant to those of us who care deeply about libraries and the values they stand for—values that help make Nyack the town it is. We deplore such changes and urge the library to unbrand its rebranding and return to the values that have stood it, and the community, in good stead for so many years.
South Nyack resident Mark Dery is a freelance journalist, book author and a frequent user and longtime supporter of the Nyack Library. He originally submitted this opinion piece as a letter to Library Director James Mahoney.
I think first and foremost, the sections need to be in numerical order, otherwise how can anyone find anything? Anything else is chaos.
@Anne: Thanks for your informed perspective; a librarian’s-eye view is useful, here. Respectfully, though, I think you’re arguing a point I didn’t make. The question, to my mind, is not whether patrons might be interested in browsing by subject area; clearly, they are, and always have been. The question, rather, is: do the categories make sense? That is, are they instantly, intuitively comprehensible to the patron? The examples you give—SELF-HELP, BUSINESS & FINANCE—argue my point: they’re self-explanatory, since they’re in common use and have been for some while. However, the problem with discarding the Dewey subject areas—which I personally find robust, flexible, and perfectly up-to-date, even in our wired world—is that the categorization of a book as, say, SELF-HELP is left to the caprices of the library staff. Is Yogananda’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI self-help? Or spirituality? Or religion? Or MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT, as the Nyack library would have it? The possibilities for confusion multiply exponentially. Add to that state of affairs the fact that these new subject areas won’t correspond to the Dewey ones and you’ve a recipe for a migraine. (Incidentally, I consider the fact that books devoted to seemingly similar subjects may have different Dewey numbers a strength, not a weakness, of the Dewey system, which is sufficiently granular to permit subcategorizations under different numbers. On closer examination, I almost inevitably find that the distinctions Dewey makes, leading to different call numbers, are warranted.)
I will say I strongly disagree with the following:
“The Dewey numbers are conducive to finding once you really understand how to search the catalog and a comprehension of how the numbers work. They are not conducive toward finding if it’s been 20 years since you used them, or don’t use computers, or never got the training. Or just want to browse in a general area and find related material. I applaud Nyack’s efforts at trying to make the finding more patron friendly. I’m sure there’ll be some kinks to work out at first.”
First, I’m simply not convinced that the Dewey learning curve is that steep. It’s certainly not as steep as using the Web seems to be, for People of a Certain Age. I’ve got a Flintstonian friend who’s only 52 yet who is consistently confounded by e-mail attachments, links included in e-mail (he can’t get the hang of enabling HTML in is mail client), and on and on. Second, my whole point, and that of many of the commenters here, is precisely that Nyack’s efforts—based on a deplorable embrace of corporate values, poorly conceived, and ineptly implemented—have made the library LESS patron-friendly, not more.
I’m a librarian in another state & am reading about the shelving changes at Nyack with interest. I imagine that the changes will take a while for everyone to get used to, after being accustomed to the regular 001-900 Dewey Decimal system, but I have to say that at my public library I have loads of patrons who come looking for the self-help section, or business & finance and that sort of general topic, and I have to write down 3-5 totally different call number areas for them, and they are quite daunted and turned off despite my offers of help.
The Dewey numbers are conducive to finding once you really understand how to search the catalog and a comprehension of how the numbers work. They are not conducive toward finding if it’s been 20 years since you used them, or don’t use computers, or never got the training. Or just want to browse in a general area and find related material. I applaud Nyack’s efforts at trying to make the finding more patron friendly. I’m sure there’ll be some kinks to work out at first.
I am not sure which I like better – Nyack’s “Marketplace”, or the Conn. Darien Library’s “glades”! (or do I mean like worse?
)
@PeteDanish: Thanks for your solidarity, and please do come to the meeting. Here’s hoping you’ll spread the word. By the way, where and when did you hear Mahoney make the comment about ““any other type of retail business”? Also, do you know the backstory of the MBA consultant who was hired, and what percentage of the budget for the extension was eaten up by his fee?
@Barbs: Agree wholeheartedly: the staff is uniformly wonderful, from long-suffering checkout personnel to the unfailingly helpful, expert reference desk librarians. And the community is undeniably enriched by the many classes and musical events on offer. But the library’s primary focus is, and should be, its collections, and if those collections are useless to its patrons by virtue of their cockamamie organization, then that’s hardly a minor issue, I’d argue.
As a relative newcomer to Nyack, I cannnot compare the current shelving system with the traditional one that preceded it, although it sounds like there’s a case to be made for tradition. I would like to comment, though, on some of the many positive attributes of the Nyack Library. First, whenever I have asked for assistance, I have found the library staff to be both helpful and friendly. When my son needed a change of scene for school work, the library was a convenient place to study. When he needed additional community service hours to satisfy his high school graduation requirement, the library provided an opportunity not only to volunteer, but to make him feel welcome in the community. Perusing the monthly newsletters, I see a rich offering of events. Earlier this year, I attended a wonderful program on the economic contribution of African Americans to the lower Hudson River region. I was also pleasantly surprised when the library began a multicultural book club. While there are many events I have not been able to attend, I am delighted to know that the library is not only a resource for reading and research, but for culture and community as well.
So while it may be advisable to re-think the current shelving system and to re-establish the wonderful entrance that was part of the old library, these are things that can be changed. Figuring out the optimal use of the new space may require a process of trial and error, but these issues are minor compared with the library’s many offerings.
Dear Mark and John,
I applaud your posts. You very succinctly described several of the problems currently facing our lovely and treasured library – and the sad direction that it has been going in for the last few years. This most recent attempt to emulate “any other type of retail business” (direct quotation from Director James Mahoney) is being met with almost universal displeasure by the patrons and the library staff whom I’ve spoken with.
Gone are the days when our library was a place of enhancing, improving and enriching the quality of our lives and those of our children. When Dave speaks of a “pro-learning hang out space” I am afraid he has not spent much time there lately. The library was once a place where our community, a community made up of different people with different experiences, back grounds and interests could come together and connect through the pursuit of learning and knowlege. The “club-house” nature of the place makes that no longer possible. Intolerable noise levels make studying impossible. Complaining to the staff about the noise, you are told, “we can’t do anything about it.” Complaining to the director, you are told, “we can’t do anything about it.” The plain fact is, you can do something about it – like every other library in Rockland county does. The management in Nyack is simply unwilling to do anything about it. And the “customer service” re-branding of the staff only re-inforces an environment that tolerates bad behavior – and by doing nothing, the message sent is tacit approval it.
The staff of our library is routinely insulted and abused by patrons – I’ve been present for it on numerous occasions. In fact, on one occasion, the Director walked past the desk DURING a verbal attack by a patron on a circulation desk librarian and ignored it! I was there. I confronted Director Mahoney and he told me again: “there’s really nothing we can do about it.” I was astonished.
When I got my library card at the library almost 20 years ago, I was told that it was a ‘privilege” and that the privilege could be taken away at any time for inappropriate conduct. I have to question just what one needs to do to loose those privileges today? We have the only library in the county where you don’t need your library card to take out books. If you don’t have your card, you can take out books with a driver’s license. If you have no ID, fine, just spell your name and they will check if its in the system. So, ostensibly, anyone who knows anyone who has a card at library can take out up to 50 items and never return them! That’s 50 items paid for by our tax dollars that we have zero guarantee of ever seeing again. We are the only library in the county to allow this practice.
At the re-dedication, there was much talk of returning a sense of civic pride to Nyack through our library, but I do not see it in the library itself. I don’t see it “living” the values it preached about. Turning our library into a Kmart, Barnes & Noble or Starbucks is hardly a contribution to the community. It hardly enhances, improves or enriches the lives of the members of our community.
I will be at that board meeting and I encourage everyone else to attend as well.
Wow, I’ve been meaning to write something like this for several weeks now. I understand that the library has a new lay out and I need to adapt. I will try my best to get used to the fact that when I walk in the “front door”, the nearest fiction books are at the end of the alphabet — it doesn’t make sense to me, but at least it is a system I can understand. However, the “Barnes&Nobleization” of the nonfiction books is something I have difficulty accepting.
Firstly, it is NOT easier to locate books. I had a similar experience to those discussed above looking for dog training books (science? hobby? no, home & garden — it took me and the librarian several attempts to even identify the category under which we should look!).
Secondly, while the retail stores want to entice me to BUY books (and merchandise) by confusing me and keeping me wandering aimlessly thru the stacks, I do not see that as the purpose of a public library. Making the experience as frustrating as possible and keeping me lost in the stacks is NOT a positive library experience that makes me want to visit in person. To be honest, the annoyance and wasted time produced by my last library visit has me seriously considering a Kindle. This “Barnes&Nobleization” is great way to turn off a loyal library user and push me into commercial sources of reading material.
(Not to mention that this must be fodder for some conspiracy theorist: how Barnes & Noble duped libraries into emulating it, so that libraries would fail and Retailers would win the day.) As I told the librarian (who suggested I contact the director), it seems perverse to throw away years of library science and systems (taught to us since elementary school) for a marketing scheme. Does this foretell the demise of librarians in our schools?
July 10, 2011 at 2:47 pm
@wornoutstroller: I feel your pain. A marvelous anecdote, offering yet more evidence of the slow-motion disaster that is the Nyack Library’s new (dis)organizational scheme. Would you consider joining me and the rest of the pitchfork brigade at the next meeting of the library trustees? Please spread the word, even if you’re unable to attend. Here, again, are the vital stats:
LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING
Event Type: Meeting
Date: 7/25/2011
Start Time: 7:45 PM
End Time: 9:00 PM
Description:
Meeting
59 South Broadway, Nyack NY 10960
Location: Children’s Story Hour Room
Contact: Minerva Parker
Contact Number: 845-358-3370 ext.218
July 10, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Recently I went up into the non-fiction stacks to check out a book “The Dictionary of Superstition” for and with my nine-year-old daughter. I couldn’t figure out where the numbers began or ended. Were they in order? They didn’t seem to be. I asked the librarian, and she queried “what’s the subject?” I said, “superstition….the Dewey Decimal number is 012.63 where is that?” She explained that the library was separated by “subject” so I needed to know what subject it was under to find it. Silly me, I just took the call number down. I then suggested they have a list of the categories that the Dewey Decimal System is separated into on the wall. At this point she looked at me blankly, as if I were from the moon. Then a second librarian, who by then had gotten involved, said that the Nyack Library “subject” headings didn’t necessarily correspond to the Dewey Decimal System. ACK! The second librarian knew where 012.00 was shelved–right before the 600.00 area–so logical.
I had hoped to use this time to help my daughter understand how to navigate the library on her own using the time-honored systems….forget about that.
July 10, 2011 at 10:06 am
OK- so the library, at taxpayer expense, is planning on opening a cafe in their building which will compete with not only their own tenant, the Art Cafe, but also every other cafe in Nyack? What is wrong with this picture?
I’ll tell you what’s wrong- beyond the obvious, the library is not a business, and should not be in competition. It it s a repository of knowledge, culture and history.
This Barnes and Noble phase of library thinking is just another fad that will pass, and we will be left to pay the bill.
If libraries become irrelevant because of changes in how we get our information, perhaps they should scale down, instead of spending millions communities don’t have to tart themselves up to be something they’re not…
July 10, 2011 at 10:05 am
@John Gromada: Well put. You’re not alone in your outrage at the “architectural sins” you enumerate. Do you know who the architect was, and how s/he was chosen? Has anyone conveyed the sentiments you express here, namely, that the realization differed profoundly, not to mention disappointingly, from the architectural rendering? I do hope you’ll join me and other concerned citizens at the upcoming board of trustees meeting. Here are the details, from the Nyack Library website:
LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING
Event Type: Meeting
Date: 7/25/2011
Start Time: 7:45 PM
End Time: 9:00 PM
Description:
Meeting
59 South Broadway, Nyack NY 10960
Location: Children’s Story Hour Room
Contact: Minerva Parker
Contact Number: 845-358-3370 ext.218
July 10, 2011 at 9:47 am
Boys, settle down.
This is a classic case of “I may disagree with what you have to say — but will defend your write to say it.” (that mis-spelling was intentional.)
Libraries need to compete for their place in American culture. They need to evolve, because frankly, all American institutions compete with American Idol. Now, I’m not necessarily a big American Idol fan — but I recognize that all “consumers” in our culture make choices about how they spend their time — and where they get their information. And if our institutions don’t evolve to keep up with consumer needs they will become irrelevant.
Libraries — more than most public institutions — are threatened by that Internet thing. Which my sources tell me is going to be big (you heard it here first!)
OK, all kidding aside, the point is that libraries and all they represent run the risk of disappearing unless they keep pace with their consumers. Which is young families, retirees, singles, divorcees, minorities, majorities, recent immigrants, illegal aliens, intergalactic aliens — basically anyone who can fog a mirror. If the library isn’t a consumer friendly dispensary of information, both critical and whimsical, there are a lot of other places where people can go to get their daily download.
I know this will upset many people, but it’s largely a packaging issue. Our new library is old wine in new bottles. But don’t be too dismissive of that marketing analogy: the content our libraries offer — much of which isn’t available on the Internet (at least not for free) — is critical for us to both preserve and promote.
Nyack’s Library also serves one other unique role in our community: it’s a well regarded, internet-accessible, cross-cultural, minority-friendly, pro-learning hang-out place. Social clubs, bars & restarants, Starbucks, Art Cafe and schools all can make part of that claim. But only the library owns all of those marketing attributes. And it speaks well for Nyack that we have a place where everyone regardless of race, age, gender or tv preference can go to learn, read, chill or just get a change of venue from the rest of their life.
The criticisms about organization might be true, but I haven’t noticed them. Personally, I always get confused finding anything in any library (I also get directionally confused every time I exit a NYC subway station. So don’t go by what I say). Architecturally — I need to leave that to others who know much more than me about that subject.
If I had one criticism to share about the library district it would be this: I don’t think it should exist. It’s sham democracy when only a few hundred people show up to vote to approve a big budget for which each tax payer is responsible. Autonomous districts for schools, libraries and fire coverage sound great but they don’t work — practically speaking — when too few voters are involved in the process.
These are the functions of local government. And if we can’t trust our elected officials to make good appointments to these boards, there’s a serious problem with how our local governments operate.
btw, I am looking forward to the cafe being open someday soon. It *will* be just like Barnes & Nobles and Borders. But better, because it will be for free. (with free Internet access, too.)
July 10, 2011 at 8:56 am
I couldn’t agree more with this post. Since when is a library supposed to emulate a business? It should be an oasis where one can escape from commerce.
Another big beef I have with library board, which is also symptomatic of their lack of understanding, is that they have done great disrespect to the original building and the street by closing the original front entrance and making it a dead spot on Broadway. This is an architectural sin- the beautiful original entryway was designed with the idea that one was to enter into this place of knowledge and wisdom with dignity and grace. The old building and entry is inviting and beautiful- open- close to the street- a place where people can be seen entering and exiting, with space to linger and talk to neighbors and enjoy the lovely plantings and graceful architecture of the building. It has been transformed into stagnant zone, devoid of the life for which it was designed. Now one must traverse a sterile gulf, some distance from the street, and enter an industrial doorway, below street level, hidden from view. When you enter the building you are suddenly in a cold, disorienting environment- confronted with stairways up and down- which way to go? Where is the lovely old building and welcoming reading room? Very difficult to find in the byzantine layout of the new library.
The library board and its architect misled the public during the village’s design review process, assuring the Architectural Review Board at meetings I attended, that the original entryway would remain as it had for a century and continue to be used as intended by its designers. They did not hold to their word, and have instead neutered the original building- now just an afterthought to their new structure which bears no relation to the original library, nor to Nyack’s architectural heritage, and is a confused and disorienting place to navigate.