Distress Signals
In Mexico, the tortilla's in trouble. In El Paso, it's the library.
Renee Olson, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2000
"Rounds of grilled cardboard." That's what Mexican-American writer Alma Guillermoprieto calls what passes today in Mexico as the tortilla, the national staple. About 10 years ago, then-President Carlos Salinas eased the way for a large player in the tortilla industry to become even bigger, making it difficult for small tortillerias to survive. Concentrating the industry in fewer hands, Guilleromoprieto explains in the November 29, 1999, issue of the New Yorker, has made scarce the fresh, flavorful tortilla: "creamy yellow, light, tender, soft, small, round, and fragrant with lime and charcoal and corn."
Over the border, the El Paso (TX) Public Library is also struggling to survive. Frustrated by what he calls the library's inefficiency, Mayor Carlos Ramirez has announced that he wants the library audited. What a thick document that would be. The library is coping with the aftermath of a contentious relationship between its former director and the city, a children's services coordinator position unfilled since May, and text-only Internet access in the branches. The audit might also tell the mayor what two area librarians told me: that micromanagement by the city's information technology office has hog-tied graphical Web installation.
You can hardly blame the mayor for wanting things improved. There's a lot this city--close enough to the border that most license plates on the street are from Mexico, not Texas, and home to large, Catholic Hispanic families--needs from a good library.
But as you'll read in the news, Ramirez is considering outsourcing the library's management to a private firm. The first step he's taken is to meet with a private company called Library Systems and Services. LSSI, you'll remember, runs the public library in Riverside, CA, and most recently, the Jersey City (NJ) Public Library.
Outsourced management! The very thought makes many of us squirm, or even reach for a sharp object. It's clear that there are public libraries in every part of the country that need reworking, but why should the task fall to a private company that may--or may not--honor the philosophy of free access for all? And what would possess a for-profit firm to drop itself into a community with a track record of failing to adequately fund its public library?
Still, in the interest of finding out whether an outsourced library has anything to teach us, I'm willing to shut up and listen to the results of a small study at Texas Woman's University that will get underway this spring, thanks to a $10,000 grant from the American Library Association. Robert S. Martin, professor at TWU's School of Library and Information Studies, will turn his doctoral seminar into an investigative team that will research and evaluate outsourcing. Examining its impact on youth services is part of the package, but Martin says that he "doesn't anticipate any in-depth focus" on it. When I slyly suggested to Martin that the study should concentrate heavily on youth services, he was agreeable--if the project were bigger and better funded. "I can tell you that [the study] will not be conclusive, by any means," says Martin.
I wish that weren't true. This is an issue that all librarians--library media specialists included--need to understand for the sake of the future of libraries.
In Mexico, the tortilla is not what it once was. We don't want libraries to suffer the same fate.
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
