www.LYPonline.com

Building Libraries and Public Support
By Floyd D. Anderson, AIA

As librarians, you are always building. Always.

You build your collections item by item. You build your utilization by responding to the needs of your communities. You build attendance at library events by learning from past successes.

And you build your buildings by all of the above, and more.

Building – as such – is about as far away from reading quietly in a cozy setting as one can get. But building is essential for libraries just the same, for two reasons. First, libraries, like all buildings, have to be maintained. Second, successful libraries in growing communities grow, just like the community they serve.

Whether you are maintaining your existing library, building an addition or building a totally new library, the same skills are needed. You and your library must be realistic in budgeting, clear about your goals, inclusive of your community and adept at working with outside professionals. In this article, I outline the preliminary steps to building support in your community for the construction needs you have, whether they are as essential as a new heating system or as inspiring as a new library building.

Realism in Budgeting
Everything physical wears out. All buildings, structures, machines, and systems must be maintained. As a general rule, people plan on 20-year building life cycles. That means that when they budget, if money is no object, they plan (a) for expending enough per year to keep the physical object operating for its life cycle and (b) to replace it at the end of its useful life. This takes place in your capital budget, which usually is separate from your operating budget, from which you fund everyday expenses.

Buildings, thankfully, last more than 20 years. But, they have their own life cycle, including necessary repairs over time to systems and elements (roofs, air conditioning, windows, etc.). Properly maintained, well-constructed buildings can last for decades, sometimes centuries. But such maintenance is expensive. 

Your first step related to anything involving construction is to develop or refine your capital budget. To build support in your community for the very necessary, though not glamorous, expenses to keep the roof from leaking, you have to show your library board and those they represent what the actual physical needs of your building are, and how you plan to meet them. This may seem daunting. But it is a huge opportunity for you, your board and your library.
Why? First, let’s assume that your Board, like most Boards, does not have a mix of experienced architectural, engineering, construction and related practitioners as members. In fact, based on my own experience with many library Boards, most do not have even one of these professions represented. However, because of the special place libraries hold in the hearts of their communities, the possibilities for creating a “citizen advisory committee” of people that have this experience to assist you and your board with these matters are great.

The key step is to announce your intention to recruit such a committee and to use your Board members’ and your own contacts in the community to drum up interest. If you have a “Friends of the Library” group, let them know of your recruitment as well. To be successful, the citizen advisory committee should operate on a volunteer basis and all members must agree in advance not to seek any work from the library, and its deliberations must be open to public inspection.

If you gather three or more professionals who will donate their time, you are ahead of the game. You can publicly solicit their reaction to your capital plan before asking the Board to approve it. With the agreement of the committee and the Board, your capital budget plan becomes much more credible  and conveys the library’s interest both in involving volunteers at appropriate levels and your diligence in mastering your capital needs realistically to the community.

Goal Clarity
You, your staff and your Board must have clear goals about your physical needs. In this, you are key. You need to keep the conversation – which will go on over years – clearly linked to an agreed-to set of needs for the smooth functioning of your library services.

Clarity helps build support, because people understand what they are agreeing to. It also keeps deliberations on point, and makes for fewer time-wasting diversions.

How to achieve clarity? A physical needs assessment.

Many library districts use a library planning consultant to develop a thorough report that summarizes current usage, anticipated growth and offers building program options to meet community needs in relation to what other libraries nearby and nationally are planning or have recently completed.  If your library prefers, you can get started on a needs assessment by using the information you already have – patron visits, circulation, usage patterns and community growth expectations.

After you have initiated, gathered, organized and summarized information from a physical needs assessment, this information should be used to develop a principles statement that offers the board and community a vision, or direction the library is headed in regard to physical space needs or requirements.  

Each library will have its own indicators of use and need. The value of your effort is that you can faithfully capture those indicators that apply to your library and community, and share this information on a regular basis. Your needs assessment becomes a guide to met and unmet physical needs which may show that your capital program is amply meeting these needs. Or, it might eventually show the need for new construction.

Community Inclusiveness
Each library has a set of public outreach tools that include a monthly or quarterly newsletter, web site, social/cultural events and patrons that regularly depend on its services. These resources can be utilized to create support for long-range building goals through maintaining an open dialogue with the community in regard to the management of the operating and capital budget plans, usage statistics and additional information that keeps even the casual user up-to-date on the issues and benefits of their library.  Providing factual information on a consistent basis prevents an all out backlash for necessary building programs. Note: each community has individuals that will oppose a building program whether it be for a school, city hall, police / fire station or public library. Nothing that you do or say will convince them otherwise.

Your New Professional Partners
Having built your collections, services and trust within the community, the next step to meeting your physical needs (according to your long-range goals and capital budget) is to retain design and construction planning professionals. If you were successful in assembling a citizen advisory committee, these people can help you develop a list of design and construction professionals to consider for the next steps. If not, there are organizations such as the ALA that have information available about design and construction professionals that have experience with libraries. Additionally, if you used a planning consultant, they usually offer services to help you qualify and select design and construction professionals.

Once selected, these professionals should work with your personnel, Board AND community to develop solutions that are congruent with your long range goals and capital budget. They will help clarify options that are available to meet physical requirements and develop design options with detailed budget information that the community can envision and discuss. Again, keeping an open dialogue with your community and engaging them in the process will provide you with additional information about the physical needs of your patrons - well in advance of going with a referendum.  

Find Products & Services Online