Editorial- Washington's Cultural Disconnect

By the time this Month's issue of SLJ reaches readers, we hope Washington Governor Gary Locke will have reconsidered his efforts to close the state library. With any luck, this whole episode will be viewed as an unfortunate misunderstanding. After all, Locke desperately needs to trim a few programs in order to make some headway with a $1.2 billion deficit, according to the Seattle Times. (See News .)

The irony of the Washington State Library (WSL) finding itself on the governor's shortlist of "expendable state agencies that will incur the least political fallout" is best illustrated by a story told by Nancy Zussy, Washington's state librarian for the last 16 years. After being informed by Locke's chief of staff about the governor's intention to ax WSL one year short of its 150th birthday to save $9 million annually, Zussy began lobbying legislators to reject the governor's misguided proposal. She visited one lawmaker who reasoned that the Internet was making the library superfluous. A "marvelous" site that he used all the time had become an almost indispensable tool in his work. Anxious to have the legislator show her the site, Zussy quickly recognized it.

It was the Washington State Library Web site.

Zussy observes that those who use WSL's resources think "these valuable things appear like mushrooms in their backyard." She explained that librarians have an "increasingly major role in identifying digital information, licensing it, harvesting it, organizing it, so that people can use it."

Unfortunately, that's the best-kept secret at the State House in downtown Olympia. Obviously there is a dangerous disconnect, because neither Governor Locke and his budget analysts, nor the chagrined legislator who had been a regular user of the state library's Web site, were aware of librarians' "increasingly major role," as well as the ambitious and diverse number of services WSL provides. Left untended, this disconnect not only imperils WSL, but rest assured, will imperil your state library as well.

Part of the problem has to do with better branding. Libraries, whether in a small community, school district, big city, or as a state agency, need to brand themselves more definitively and aggressively. Zussy agrees. "We need to figure out a way to make what we do more meaningfully visible to the people we serve as well as to the key policy people," she says.

However, the disconnect is as much cultural as it is informational. Governor Locke's budget assistant proudly pointed out that despite the intense pressure to cut from every department, Locke had proposed holding the line on K–12 education and higher education, apparently living up to his "pro-education" moniker.

It is inconceivable that the governor would consider WSL's Early Learning Initiative—which trains librarians on using promising new brain research about the way young children learn—an entity separate and apart from education. And what of the state library's K–12 School Library Initiative to "help prepare school librarians to make more significant contributions to student achievement and make K–12 libraries the true centers of learning in schools"? Governor Locke, libraries are education, not an expendable support service to be dropped into a smaller, inconsequential bucket.

To further confirm its educational mission, the state library is the de facto authority on and advocate for lifelong learning. "There is no one else to speak for that aspect of formal learning outside the classroom," says Zussy. Hopefully, Washington's legislators will reject Governor Locke's proposal to eliminate the state library. If not, Washington state's cultural disconnect will have jump-started a dangerous precedent.