Would You Look at This?
RSSBy Lillian N. Gerhardt, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 01/01/1998
Prepared by the Benton Foundation and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, what has become generally known as the Benton Report has attracted more criticism in library service for its faulty research than Kitty Kelley's The Royals in the general press. It began with the Kellogg Foundation's wish "to help its grantees develop a public message about American libraries that reflected both the library leaders' visions and the American people's expectations."
The 46-page Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries in the Digital Age was issued in November 1996. It's been ripped apart by speakers at library conferences across the country. Twelve articles in the Summer 1997 Library Trends trash everything from the report's research methods to its recommendations. (Copies can be requested from the Benton Foundation, 1634 I St., NW, 12th floor, Washington, DC 20006.)
In the report, the library leaders interviewed for their visions of the future of libraries are entrenched in academe, other foundations, and research libraries. The only public focus group consulted was made up of all-white, upper-income, well-educated, computer-savvy, urban library customers. The report pretends that these were national norms for the field and the library customer base.
What emerges from this slender research effort is discouraging. The visionaries consulted floundered in attempts to define the library profession and projected a "hybrid of digital and book collections." The unrepresentative focus group was no greater help in sending a clear message on libraries of tomorrow. Making a greater effort to raise the public's awareness of libraries and librarians is among the limp advice offered, as is the now stale advice on collaborating with other information agencies.
So, why get this report? Why read, save, or use it? Because it proves the maxim: "Even the worst effort at gathering and analyzing data can produce indicators of what's needed for further research."
At the top of page 27 of the report is just such an indicator. Eighty-three percent of that sliver of the general public put the provision of "reading hours and other programs for children" first on a list ranking the importance of various library services. But neither the Benton Report nor its critics make much of this finding.I asked Dr. Leslie Edmonds Holt what she thought of this indicator of the need for better research. She's the incoming 1998-1999 President of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and the Director of Youth Services and Family Literacy at St. Louis Public Library. She said, "We are 50 years overdue in library service at studying the public's high approval rating for library services for children and adolescents. It always shows up high on surveys of the public."
Dr. Holt cited The Public Library Inquiry (1954), a major study undertaken by the American Library Association. It dismissed any research on youth services in one sentence, simply ignoring it by calling them the "classic success story" of American public libraries. "It's time to research that success," she said. "We need to find out what the public, young and old, identify as the elements of that success and get this incorporated into public policymakers' decisions on the funding and staffing of tomorrow's libraries." To this end, her ALSC presidential pre-conference at ALA's 1999 Annual Conference will center on the measurement and evaluation skills necessary to put youth services before the eyes of sight-challenged library visionaries.
Right on. One half clap for page 27 of the battered Benton Report and three cheers for Holt.
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
