Quarterly Media Review: Now More Libraritastic (Spring 2014)

I’m back with my much-delayed review of some of the notable media I consumed in the spring of 2014!  Despite the lateness of the hour, I have stuck to those that I read/watched/played in April, May, and June.  You’ll get your July next time.  

In my quest to make these recurring features ever more relevant and useful to you, my library-adjacent reading public, I have added a brief note on each item’s potential for use in your favorite biblioteca.  Feel free to jump around to what interests you, but books and movies are kinda obvious--expand your mind!  Read about board games and graphic novels (discussion of which falls under both movie and TV shows, oddly enough).

Books

The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The book so good it’s a recent winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

My review.

Library value: As if you need any encouragement to add Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest to your shelves?  This would make a great centerpiece to a seminar or lecture, perhaps tied to your community’s own history during the Gilded Age.

Spy books

A mixed bag: the past and the present, the East and the West, and one instance of pointless, self-indulgent schlock.

My review of Jack of Spies by David Downing

My review of Night Heron by Adam Brookes

My review of I Am Pilgrim, one of the few books I couldn’t finish.

Library value:  Two must-haves and a miss.  Jack and Heron are particularly attractive books, so adding them to a summer reading display would catch eyes.

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

A mind-bending Shakespearean metafiction of a narrative nesting doll.

Library value: This is tailor made for book clubs.  There will be a lot of contrasting opinions on the scurrilous narrator, his scamp of a father, and his sympathetic but difficult sister.

My review.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Did someone mention mind-bending metafiction?  The gold standard of the tenuously--and yet deeply--intertwined multi-narrative.  Sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, travelogue, etc.

Library value: This is one of those books, like House of Leaves and, to a lesser extent, American Gods, that needs to be on your shelves just waiting for the reader that needs to find it, wrestle with it, figure it out, dismiss it, come back to it, lather it, rinse it, repeat it.

TV

Game of Thrones season 4

That was a rollercoaster of a season.  It stretched longer than usual for me, since I was fortunate enough to attend a fan premier event in Brooklyn in late March; based on that first episode, I had high hopes for the nine that followed...hopes that were only partially met.  The highs were very high: various intense scenes with pivotal and fan-favorite Oberyn Martell, that massive battle at the Wall, and some definitive turning points in numerous storylines.  But there were missteps, to my mind, as well.  As good as most of Oberyn’s scenes were, I came out of the season feeling like he was underutilized.  Then I had some general pacing concerns, a fact born from the adaptation choice that undergirded this outing from the beginning: by and large, these episodes covered the last third of A Storm of Swords, a sequence of pages chock full with some of the biggest shocks and cataclysmic climaxes of the entire series.  Such events could leave viewers breathless and overwhelmed, but spacing them as the production did led to some uncomfortable dead space in certain storylines, space that was filled with varying degrees of success.  (Space that left the series open for that controversial Jaime-Cersei scene, a moment drawn from the books that the writers and directors nonetheless seemed not to know how to approach.)  I’m generally happy with the season, though, and thrilled by this year’s finale and where various characters are heading--and I can only hope that certain missing elements are being cagily held back to shock everyone, even book readers…

Library value: One university has already had a major course designed around this series and the books that inspired it.  Why not your library?  Make a Thrones course for the people.  Use it as an opportunity to bring in local experts to elucidate fantasy, filmmaking, adaptation, fandom, the Dothraki language...

Bob’s Burgers

What a delightful discovery this was for me.  What started as an idle need to watch *something* while hanging out with a friend on chilly late spring nights turned into my latest animation obsession.  It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed as hard as I did when Bob decided to live in the walls of his apartment/restaurant to avoid his overbearing in-laws (a natural, and hilarious progression of an otherwise tired TV trope).  Yet somehow even that was surpassed in humor shock value in one moment of absurd cow-death.  Yet more than just belly-shakers, Bob’s Burgers gives us a sweet portrait of a modern-ish, struggling middle class family, with megalomaniacal and bunny eared daughter Louise to enthusiastic, unexpectedly hard-bitten mother and wife Linda, and most especially awkward, randy, blossoming young woman Tina…*uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*.  But Bob himself brings new life to the trope of the schlubby, struggling, animated family man: he’s less dopey than Homer Simpson, more of a dad than Peter Griffin, and has more of a moral center than Stan Smith.  H. John Benjamin’s patented everyman drawl, with its notes of improv, make Bob the most realistic guy ever incarnated in lines and color.

Library value: The DVDs for seasons one through three are available.  Give your community the gift of Bob bingeing!  A’riiiiiight!!!

American Horror Story seasons 1 & 2

One thing I’ve noticed in the two seasons of AHS that I’ve watched so far is that there isn’t necessarily enough to the writers’ initial concept to fill 13 episodes, and so they end up throwing the kitchen sink at us before circling back to the logical, thematically-satisfying conclusion to the original conceit.  This season treated us to a potentially haunted asylum, a murderous maniac or three, twisted mommy issues, Nazi experiments, UFOs, the Devil, the Angel of Death...and I’m honestly not sure if more than two of those really had much of a bearing on the very effective finale.  It doesn’t really give a sense that the creators have any interest in providing neatly-bound stories.  But who cares?  Every smidgen of it is stylish and interesting, and you’re never sure which bit will end up being relevant to the endgame.  Most importantly, the cast knocks it out of the park.  Jessica Lange is particularly impossible to tear your eyes away from, whether as the southern mom with a dark secret in season one or as the harsh nun who feels an honest calling to help the wretches in her care in season 2.  Her various transformations, particularly throughout the second season, are transcendent.

Library value:  The lesson of American Horror Story is constant reinvention, within and between seasons.  Don’t let that be lost on your library.  Your Library Season One can be brought to an end; start season two with all new costumes and personalities.  Season One: Haunted Library...dusty and stodgy.  Season Two: Creepy experiments at the sleek info center.  Am I over-extending this metaphor?  Er, also, I’m sure your 20-something patrons would love an AHS themed Halloween party or something.

Veep & Silicon Valley

It has been noted that Veep is the king of the awkward human interaction on TV.  To be more appropriate, Veep is the president, and Silicon Valley’s first season makes a very strong showing for Speaker of the House, at the very least.  or maybe chair of the House Science and Technology Committee?  Regardless, both these shows provide laughs and groans in equal measure.  While Veep continues to expose what you can’t help but feel is a very authentic portrait of the venal, self-absorbed people who populate the heights of the American government, SV is much more everyman in its take on a group of brilliant but discombobulated techies attempting to launch a web startup.  I grew very fond of the hapless protagonist, in all his earnestness, and the various twists and turns of fate demonstrate the lingering uncertainty of the tech world.  (And if you weren;t afraid of the possibilities inherent in self-driving cars, you will be after this season.)  And Veep Selina?  She’s a trainwreck, but you can’t help rooting for her self-serving grasping at power, especially as she continues to suffer numerous unnamable indignities.

Library value: All right, I’m having trouble coming up with appropriate library ideas for these HBO and FX shows.  Obviously you should own all this stuff on DVD--especially these premium-station shows that a lot of your patrons may not be willing or able to pay for...and we want to discourage piracy, don’t we?  Oh, that actually gives me a grand idea.  I was going to say that we could take these shows as an inspiration to hold light-hearted debates on current events and technology developments--feel free to do that too--but an even better idea is to use all your premium channel DVDs in an anti-piracy campaign.  I don’t have all the details.  That’s your job.  But it would be nice for libraries to engage in this kind of thing in a variety of ways.  It can be fun!  And bloody and sexy, possibly.  Probably.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD season 1 and Arrow seasons 1 & 2

Let’s start with Marvel.  The series (which I always enjoyed because I’m a nerd, don’t get me wrong) really picked up toward the middle of the season, after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  In case there are any out there who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil the Marvel Universe-shaking revelations, but its ramifications really sent this show in a new direction.  The new status quo will lead to some interesting storytelling next season, even as things are looking strange for our beloved Agent Coulson in the wake of his death and rebirth.  I was, though, disappointed that, after weeks of non-stop tension, psychological drama, and even a taste of horror, the season ended with a glorified fistfight.  I would have expected they’d conserve a little of the budget to send the season off with a near-cinematic climax, but no.  And there were a few Chekhov’s Supervillains teased through the year that have yet to be fired, so hopefully next year we’ll get some of that.  All in all, I’m looking forward to a strong season 2.  My other new favorite superhero show was Arrow, which approached comic book adaptation in a very different--some might say more traditionally “actiony”--manner.  I continue to be charmed by its cast of supporting characters, and the acrobatic antics of the title hero put the somewhat clumsy choreography of SHIELD to shame.  The best element of the show continues to be its parallel narratives, showing Oliver Queen as the vigilante in the present attempting to fulfil his vow to save Starling City, while in the past we witness his gradual development into a hero.  The end of the second season was oddly inconclusive, though, to my taste--after a big buildup, it was certainly less climactic that season one with its doomsday device.  There’s a lot to be said about the difference in approach to comic book adaptation that these two series take--not least in regards to one actually directly adapting an established character, while the other adapts an entire universe through the actions of mostly original characters--but I think that’s better left for when both series come back in the fall, and I can do real side-by-side comparisons.

Library value: Everybody loves superheroes.  (Admit it.)  All these movies and TV shows are a great way to lure patrons into reading. “Love Oliver Queen in that WB show?  Here’s 900 pages of his comic book adventures!”  Keep these possibilities in mind the next time you’re working on your collection development.  Comics and graphic novels are excellent additions to your library.  Still holding out?  Wanna fight about it?

Guilty pleasures: Nashville, Revenge and Scandal

I can’t believe I got into Nashville this year, but there it is.  It helps that my boyfriend moved down there, but I got hooked on the show in a hotel room well before that happened.  The musical element is almost entirely non-obnoxious, and even pleasant more often than not.  It’s some fun, slightly-trashy evening soapiness, served up with a twang and unrealistic southern righteousness, but I found myself compelled by Rayna Jaymes’ quest to redefine herself in the music industry, and there’s an interesting gay subplot that deals sensitively with self-repression in a not always welcoming context.  Speaking of trashy soap, Revenge happily returned to form this year, with Emily Thorne focusing more on the Graysons and less on shadowy international cabals.  Victoria’s compulsion to end Emily grew ever more baroque, as a long-lost son’s return gave her all the more reasons to act the finely-appointed Hamptons mama bear.  Sadly, Nolan was a little underused this year.  We want more Nolan!  Finally, Scandal served up its usual jolts.  I can’t even talk about the murder and betrayal that went on.  Olivia Pope found herself at her lowest ebb, and it was heartbreaking to see this usually-composed woman racked with doubt and recrimination.  To say nothing of Mellie, whose self-abnegation for the sake of her husband has forced her to endure psychological wounds that the president’s uncomprehending scorn serve only to continually tear open.  And faces were licked, unfortunately.

Library value:  Okay, you got me here.  But just like with romance novels, your library needs a little guilt here and there.  Remember that we’re not running a boarding school!  Your patrons are free to have a good time.  Stock up on those DVDs.

Revolution

Farewell, Revolution, and my favorite character, the schlubby, heroic, dispossessed tech nerd Aaron.  I don’t think enough people gave this show the chance it deserved, but I suppose two seasons is more than a lot of ambitious sci-fi dramas get on network television.  To be fair, I merely endured the interminable gunfights and fistfights that always seemed to leave Our Heroes only negligibly differently-off each episode.  The territorial and philosophical differences between the various factions were interesting in the abstract, but when it was all reduced to fisticuffs, the appeal waned--though when “the Patriots” began brainwashing youth into killing machines, well, that offered a disturbing, dystopian element that the show needed (and hearkened back to its faux-Hunger Games roots).  But for my money, the best element of the show was in the burgeoning sentience of the nanotechnology that suppressed the world’s electricity in the first place, offering a “face” to the overall threat as well as an opportunity for eventual resolution.  Now we’ll never see that potential play out.

Library value: It’s always good to invest in some alternate sci-fi--it’s not all Star Wars and Star Trek, and some of the best speculative fiction is based right here on good ol’ planet Earth..  Bonus points for dystopia and for making your patrons think about the primacy of technology in their lives.

Movies

I’m gonna lump these together because I can, and we all know what I’m going to say.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier changed the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Godzilla was a fun romp.  X-Men: Days of Future Past was an effective reset to the X-Men movie mythos and a pretty affecting film in its own right.  And The Amazing Spider-Man --well, there was nothing wrong with it, but it just didn’t leave me as excited as the other movies on this list.  Sony hasn’t quite got the formula down yet.

Library value: I’m getting verklempt.  Talk amongst yourselves.  Here, I’ll give you a topic: The Marvel movies are way better than the (plans for the) DC movies, even considering underwhelming Spider-Man and X-Men films and really good Batman ones.  Discuss.

Games

Carcassonne

Here’s one of those classics of the mature board game set that I had been itching to try out.  It is not as thematically engaging as Puerto Rico, nor as cleanly enjoyable as Settlers of Catan, but it is definitely a worthy game.  You place tiles to build up the French countryside, extending roads, cities, and monasteries as you go.  It’s a bit of a puzzler, essentially the ingredients of an abstract game given some irrelevant thematic trappings (which I absolutely appreciate--when I play games, I’d much rather feel like I am in a way rehearsing some human activity, rather than simply plugging arbitrary sockets together.  Which I guess is something some humans do in real life, but I much prefer stepping back and saying “Oooooh French countryside in an alternate universeeeee, look what we didddddd”).

Library value: It’s always a good idea to stock up on gateway games and classic games.  This one fits under both categories.

Takaido

This game is a treasure.  You and your friends compete to see who can have the nicest time strolling from Kyoto to Tokyo in feudal Japan.  Each player adopts a persona, each with particular bonuses for engaging in the activities you can choose from along the way.  Do you have an artistic soul?  Then collect tryptichs of the splendors of nature you see from the roadside.  A bit of an epicure?  There are many fine meals to be sampled.  Or maybe your tastes are more hedonistic; feel free to indulge in the hot spring spas that dot your path.  All these and more make for a truly lovely frame to a game of collection and progress, where the slowest traveler--more intent on the pleasures of the journey, perhaps--always gets to go first, and the only requirement is that you spend each night in an inn with your fellow travelers.  It sounds like it might be dull, but instead Takaido captures the perfect balance between competition and relaxation.  It is also the most beautifully designed game I have yet played, with a foundation of pure white splashed with a sheer, shimmering palette that puts me in mind of sunlight shining through cherry blossoms.  No lie.

Library value: People of all ages will love this game.  This would actually be a great candidate for generation-bridging game events.  Nothing to get too worked up and competitive over--just a lot of enjoyment for everyone.

Libertalia

Is it too late to talk about the pirate craze?  Maybe, but this game remains fun whether Jack Sparrow is a la mode or not.  I played this one early in the spring, so its details elude me, but in general each player seeks to leverage the strength and skills of their pirate crews for advantage in claiming various treasures.  It’s sort of a light deck-based card game, with a lot of neat pirate ships to choose from and some entertaining scurvy cutthroats on your cards.  This is a game I felt like playing again in order to better appreciate its intricacies--I just haven’t had a chance yet.

Library value: What better activity for next year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day observances?  (You know your library celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

And that’s that.  Hope you found something of use in my report.  I just read and watch for fun (“I do not read to think. I do not read to learn. I do not read to search for truth.

I know the truth, the truth is hardly what I need!”--bonus points if you can name the musical), but every little stick of media can be turned into worthwhile programming or marketing.  Don’t be afraid to flavor your library with your personal tastes.

ALA, Sustain Thyself

I’m putting my scold hat back on because I look so good in it.  But I’ll try to keep it brief.

Look: Las Vegas is an unsustainable city.  So why is the American Library Association hosting its annual conference there as we speak?

http://bit.ly/1yZY38i

ALA supports environmental sustainability, as evidenced by the recent establishment of Sustainability Round Table.  Its charge is to move the profession forward “toward a more equitable, healthy and economically viable society;” its mission is “is to provide resources for the library community to support sustainability through curriculum development; collections; exhibits; events; advocacy, communication, library buildings and space design..”

I can’t think of a bigger library “event” than the ALA annual conference, and yet I can’t imagine a worse venue for it, from a sustainability perspective, than Las Vegas.  Water scarcity, air quality, urban sprawl and energy use are all major issues in Las Vegas--issues that are fed by tourist interest, and exacerbated by desires for quick fixes for human comfort, rather than systemic improvements.  (Don’t take my word for it--here’s a presentation given by a British schoolteacher.  You can trust anything delivered in a British accent, even when it’s only in writing.)

To be fair, the city is trying.  This article highlights the environmental problems facing Vegas as well as the efforts that the mega-business owners of the Strip are making to ameliorate matters.  Such efforts are admirable, but nothing will change the fact that living in and visiting places like Las Vegas and Phoenix just perpetuates the problems that such initiatives are scrambling to fix.  And no subterranean stream is going to help the mess that is the Colorado River, whose decline is helped along by Sin City’s demands for water.  The fact is that humans weren’t meant to live in deserts, much less vacation there in luxury.

http://bit.ly/1m0mCfo

And yet ALA chose to bring its conference, and the dollars of thousands of librarians, to this energy-sucking, man-made desert oasis whose bright lights can be seen from space.

With a world full of options, why do we choose to support one that is so in conflict with an important contemporary value?  

And much of what I’ve seen on social media from my colleagues is excitement.  I’ll admit it, when I first heard ALA ‘14 would be held in Vegas, I was excited too.  That was before it sunk in what it meant.  Let’s get serious: this is a city composed of knock-offs, built as a shrine to the act of gambling.  It’s a playground.  Any true beauty and culture developed as an afterthought.  When I considered what it costs to power, cool, transport, and light the place--and I’m not just talking dollars--I decided that there was nothing to get excited about.

All for the sake of a playground.

I’d like to be able to say that I’m sitting on my couch at home in Western New York right now because I decided to be principled and boycott ALA.  Alas, I didn’t have the money to go anyway, rendering any such intent to boycott meaningless.  Nor did I get my thoughts together in time to make a plea for other librarians to consider foregoing this year’s conference.  I’m not being a very effective activist right now, am I?  But that doesn’t detract from the importance of stating my view, and hoping that there are others out there who agree with me.  Maybe we can mobilize to make our feelings known, and prevent ALA from making a return to the heart of unsustainability.

What’s the endgame, if I get my way?  Well, if ALA made it a part of their platform not to patronize such cities, maybe the organizations that look to us and respect our values will make similar moves.  That could end up rippling out, as libraries effect publishers, who effect distributors, who effect and effect and effect...

Which leaves the question of how to get ALA to listen.  Boycotting is one way, and the great thing is that we can still get the benefit of programs and sessions without being there in person.  Lots of them are accessible asynchronously, and their materials are available for the asking.  Maybe not every little thing can be found without paying for some kind of attendance, but librarians aren’t really known for limiting access (especially when they’re presenters excited about their topic of interest).

A formal petition to ALA could also have an effect.  I’m going to look into starting one through one of the grassroots activism groups out there.  If you agree with parts of what I’m saying, watch out for that; I’d appreciate your support.

Finally, all those of us who care about the environment, and want to bring librarianship to a leading role in its defense, should join the Sustainability Round Table.  It’s ten bucks to join, which I don’t mind paying at all.  The point of this isn’t to punish ALA, after all, but to get its attention.  What better way than to see a flow of money going into the round table, rather than toward registration for the next unsustainable conference?

In the parlance of Sin City, I’m putting my money on green.

http://bit.ly/1x0Y2in

The State of the State of the Libraries

I was reading the 2014 State of American Libraries report, as I have done every year since getting into librarying, when it struck me that I should stop because they are always pretty much the same.

Americans love libraries!  Libraries are innovating!  There are challenges to face and here are a couple!  The government is bad but please government increase funding for us!

It’s good to hear but it’s kind of a broken record, and at this point it actually seems kind of self-indulgent.  

How about instead of enumerating these things over and over again (and burying the examples of actual innovation deep within the pages of the report), we bring our greatest ideas to the fore and present them for the American people’s consideration and approval?

And I would love it if we could lose the bland, neutral writing style with its rote rhythm and absolute lack of stylistic variety.  Do you think Stan Lee would be open tor taking over the writing duties?

Our savior? http://tinyurl.com/mvlxpm9

(The few examples of more colorful writing in this year’s report are welcome but kinda underline the overall problem.)

I get that a report of statistical findings--with all the white bread the idea entails--is important and serves a role.  So okay, let’s not nix next year’s State.  But how about a companion piece, more a “missions accomplished” announcement than a status report?  Take all of those great programming and outreach initiatives that the report hides deep in its guts and splash them all over the Internet in glossy, sparkly form.  

And not just on Tumblr.  There is a bigger world out there.

We deserve to crow a little.  We do great things, and this year’s State made me swell with pride at some of our successes in 2013--when I got to them.  

Stan will be at ALA this year; what a great opportunity to pitch him on writing for us.  Who better to let the world in on the fact that we’re superheroes?

(But seriously, read the report: http://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2014)

A Brief Return to the Subject of Binge Watching

I love this line of thinking, from the AV Club's newbie review of the most recent Game of Thrones (minor spoilers):

"Episodes like “The Laws Of Gods And Men” make me realize that there are increasingly two Game Of Thrones airing every Sunday night. There’s the first 30 minutes of the show, which collects short vignettes from throughout Westeros and parts beyond, followed by a half-hour of meatier, more concentrated storytelling from King’s Landing. By crafting episodes along this divide, the show runs the risk of bisecting itself, of doing more to isolate its teeming droves of character than geography ever could. But Game Of Thrones is smarter than that, and as “The Laws Of Gods And Men” demonstrates, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and crew are working hard to find the threads that connect the many disparate elements of their show.

"It’s a very savvy, very modern way of structuring a television show. It plays to the binge-viewers as well as the week-by-week audience: The threads that play out across the season, but are only a small fraction of any given hour of Game Of Thrones, flow together more coherently in a binge. For us residents of the Stone Age who still enjoy gathering around the TV set at a predetermined date and time, we get the compelling, self-contained drama of storylines like The Purple Wedding or the trial of Tyrion Lannister. Nether’s the better “show,” per se—they combine to make a satisfying whole. Speaking personally, I might prefer the show-within-the-show that’s taking place in King’s Landing, but only because it sends larger, more palpable shockwaves to be felt across the Seven Kingdoms.

"Even so, “The Laws Of Gods And Men” is a neat reminder that neither half of the episode has to be one show or the other. The lengthy trial sequences demonstrate the advantages of both approaches, drawing upon details that occurred weeks, sometimes years ago in the production timeline of Game Of Thrones. "

And the evolution of televised media marches on!

Connectivity for the Convalescent

Just a quick update/call to action today inspired by my mom’s recent health travails and, of course, Mother’s Day.

The Moms has recently gone through a lot of stuff, including a back surgery that necessitated a several-week stay at a rehab center.  She was roundly agog at the level of professionalism and care she found there, for which we are all grateful, but the place had a couple glaring cons.

Number one, it had a paltry “library” consisting of 50% awful romance novels and 50% weird melange of everything else, all out of order and without regard to, you know, real people’s reading interests.

Number two, the whole facility was wif-fi verboten.

Now, it is true that the majority of the facility’s patients are on the older end of the spectrum (my very “hip” and “with-it” mom was the youngest by a couple decades at least), but it’s kind of a stereotype that all old ladies only read Harlequin novels and fear the computers/rob’uts.  And even if the vast majority of patients ARE rob’ut-fearing, Fabio-loving seniors, my mom’s sojourn proves that the number does not reach 100%, and so those outliers ought to have their needs addressed as best as possible--to say nothing of the families who come to visit and who might want to page through a good book or pull out the laptop to search for Bahamas cruises for Grandma when she gets out of the joint.

And that’s never mind the fact that we should be encouraging our seniors to become more comfortable engaging in modern technology, as it improves their well-being and sense of connectedness, but I won’t get into that here.

No, instead I’ll just ask my librarian colleagues reading this to keep rehab facilities in mind when thinking about outreach and community engagement efforts in the future, and to point out that they seem to fall into an underserved grey area between straight-up senior living facilities, which tend to be on librarians’ radars for bookmobiles and other services, and hospitals, which tend to have greater built-in infrastructure to see to patients’ informational and entertainment needs.  (Emphasis on “tend,” of course.)

I know that it’s just what we need--yet another node of would-be patrons who, knowingly or not, deserve a slice of our fraying, shrinking temporal and monetary resources.  But we can’t ignore a need just because it’s hard. Some of these people are in real dire straits emotionally--there was a lot of difficult stuff to listen to in my mom’s center.  Something as simple as a well-curated shelf of relevant and interesting books, or a visiting librarian empowered to loan out books for special, longer periods between stops, or even some intensive reader’s advisory/bibliotherapy sessions, could go a long way to easing some pain.

Then there’s this, shifting to the thornier issue of connectivity:

http://blog.mobilebeacon.org/how-one-library-is-loaning-out-the-internet-using-mobile-technology/

That would be a library loaning out the Internet.  Cool, huh?  

Obviously not every library has the funds for such a program, but as responsible trustees of the public good, librarians must not underestimate the powerful intersection of personal giving, crowdsourcing, and social media. My family was very fortunate that a friend of my mom decided to start a crowdfunded campaign to get her a mobile hotspot, keeping her connected to all of us while she recovered away from home.  But such things are expensive and can come with strings attached, so they’re not an option for everyone.  Enter the model introduced by the library above.  Is it a perfect solution?  No, but it’s the kind of innovative step that can have a big impact on people in the short term.  Libraries with the will to do so should look into establishing such a program, and maybe adapt it to a bookmobile model--not necessarily to loan out a week at a time, but to make rounds to area dead zones and provide a few hours’ access throughout the week.  It would be a big boon to the homebound and inpatients at places like my mom’s facility.  And we’re the masters of social media, right?  My mom’s campaign raised over $700 in something like 36 hours through Facebook alone.  Imagine what we can do with our librarianly reach and savvy.

I’m not insensitive to the dictates of dwindling library resources, so I’d love some feedback from my readers about what they think is possible.  Is it feasible to deputize well-established volunteers to bring selections of books to these facilities and rotate read books back as they are finished and their dates come due (and avoid cutting into library employees’ time)?  Can we extend due dates beyond our current limitations for renewals to accommodate those whose circumstances cause them to take longer to finish a book?  Can we reach out to these information-needy people with a kind of needs assessment to determine how we can best serve them?  And what do you think about the mobile hotspot idea--any thoughts on how to improve the basic concept?

We’re so happy to have my mom home this Mother’s Day as we enjoy the sunny weather and make strawberry shortcake and look forward to her full recovery (and tonight’s Game of Thrones).  But so many other mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers) are still in places far from their loved ones, without a way to connect with home, without a stimulating book to read, and with nurses and staff who try their best but can’t answer every need.  (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, library friends?)  Our communal responsibility extends to these folks, and we should do our best to serve them.  If you are a librarian, check out what your institution is doing for these types of populations, and feel free to share them with me and each other.  If they’ve fallen off the radar until now, now’s always a good time to fix that.

Do it for your momma!