Teaching the History and Organization of Libraries: The Coronavirus Pandemic as an Opportunity to Study Public Library Reopenings

Abstract

In the fall of 2020 I taught a course at the University of Nevada, Reno, titled “History and Organization of Libraries.” The course is required in a statewide public librarian certification program for non-MLS library directors in designated Nevada counties. It is cross-listed for undergraduate and graduate credit, with additional requirements for graduate students. Course content is divided between reading and reflecting on literacy in the western world, the rise of tax-supported public libraries in the United States, and topics pertinent to public library organization and governance. I taught the course online and held live classes on the Zoom videoconferencing platform, which were recorded and available to students throughout the semester.The historical content of the course stemmed from the interests of state librarian Joan Kershner, who led development of the statewide public librarian certification program in the 1990s. Surveying American public library history and organization together in one course resulted in a strong emphasis on public administration. Kershner believed that studying the growth of public library services would help students to envision a broad service mission and understand the place of public libraries in government. Also, the historical focus added a societal perspective to a curriculum that heavily emphasized technical knowledge and competencies.When I first prepared to teach the course in 2012, I created a list of required readings that reflected both public library history and organization, which I planned to tie together in live online discussions, reading response assignments and my own feedback to students. I chose to highlight a limited number of topics drawn from the wide scope of the course description. The historical readings I selected covered literacy in Europe and the Americas after 1600, the rise of tax-supported libraries in the United States, extension of services to users of differing socioeconomic circumstances, women's roles in library development, and federal library support after World War II. The “organization” readings came from recent literature on library management. In 2018 former Nevada deputy state librarian Karen Starr and I published Public Library Administration Transformed, which grew out of our teaching experience in the certification program, after which I assigned several chapters from this book, covering both history and management.1By the summer of 2020 most public libraries in the United States had reopened on a limited basis after being closed for over two months at the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID) pandemic. However, reported coronavirus infections began to rise dramatically in early fall, which prompted many libraries to close again and remain so through fall and most of the winter. The “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act,” or CARES Act, was enacted in March 2020, which included $50 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services to distribute to libraries, mostly to expand digital access.2 Within our personal memories, regional disasters like hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 had wrecked libraries and caused many others to close, then plan to rebuild and reopen, but the coronavirus pandemic affected all institutions nationwide. In the midst of the pandemic, circumstances involving libraries and the wider society provided an unexpected learning opportunity. It now seemed imperative for students to think more deeply about how disasters would affect libraries and their user populations, and how library services would emerge from this acute, prolonged crisis.Each time I had taught the course I included a library analysis assignment, and I now saw it as a means for students to focus on crisis response. The assignment needed some changes to accommodate this emphasis. In the past each student had compared two public library systems serving populations of similar size, using data and information they gathered from the Public Libraries Survey (www.imls.gov/research-evaluation/data-collection/public-libraries-survey), library and local government websites, demographic and economic data sources, and, whenever possible, site visits and personal interviews. Students assessed each library's effectiveness in serving its users and compared the two library systems they studied. In the fall of 2020 there was little possibility for onsite visits. Further, although past students had done well when analyzing user populations and making comparisons between their chosen libraries' services and programs, they found it harder to generalize about the libraries' relative effectiveness. I modified the assignment by limiting it to two library systems in Nevada, one of which I would assign to each student. Half of the class would focus on Washoe County Library System and the rest on Carson City Library. I recorded video interviews on Zoom with both library directors, in which they described their reopening plans and pandemic- related challenges, and posted these in the course's online Canvas platform.Following are the substantive elements of the assignment: 1.For this assignment you will refer to the library reopening plans discussed in class.2.Include the following: a.Your summary of the library's reopening plan.b.Your analysis. Discuss the following: i.During its reopening period, what public programs and services does the library emphasize or promote? What programs and services that were previously offered are not available now, and are there plans to reintroduce any of these?ii.Refer to the library's mission statement, reports, and data sources. How does the reopening relate to the mission, or is there a disconnect?iii.How does the library keep the public informed about its current services and further plans to reopen?iv.How well is the library positioned to reopen? Is its emphasis appropriate, or do think another approach is preferable for the library and its users? Explain your answer.Examples of information you may use: 1.Library websites (typically, library mission statements are posted here).2.The library's latest annual reports or board meetings, reporting usage and summarizing library services3.Pertinent data sources, including data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Data Planet, The State of American Libraries 2020, and the US Census Bureau.4.The library's social media presence: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.I started the course with an icebreaker-type discussion assignment involving two other library systems dealing with crises. One scenario involved Joplin, Missouri, which had been decimated by a tornado in 2011, and the other was Storey County, Nevada, which had dissolved its library board and defunded its county library at about the same time, although, with private funding, it was still operating on a limited basis. I asked students to imagine themselves the director of each library and determine priorities for spending a large, unrestricted cash donation. Discussing these scenarios required students to identify user needs and think of good ways to meet them with a significant infusion of funds. I intended our discussion to orient students to themes they would encounter later in the semester, as well as to help them get comfortable speaking out in class, but their engagement exceeded my expectations. Several students had gathered news and data about the communities and their libraries. This grounded the discussion in reality and provided a good example for the rest of the class. It also set the stage quite well for the library analysis assignment.We focused on historical readings for the next few weeks. I did not reduce the amount of history-related material to accommodate the analysis assignment or other course activities. After starting with two selections on the spread of literacy in the western world, students read about the rise of tax-supported libraries in the United States. They read Starr's and my survey of public library development and a chapter describing immigrant quotas and exclusions in Plummer Alston Jones Jr.'s book, Still Struggling for Equality: American Public Library Services with Minorities.3 Students considered women's roles by reading and discussing selections from Abigail Van Slyck's Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890–1920, and Martha Swain's article, “A New Deal in Libraries: Federal Relief Work and Library Service, 1933–1943,” after which they contextualized and, in some cases, reframed their impressions of women's social and economic progress.4 Students gained understanding of the impact of the Carnegie grants (including the reality that many communities declined to pursue or accept Carnegie's support), New Deal era innovations in service, and the rise of federal library support in the second half of the twentieth century. From this they saw that community support for libraries cannot be taken for granted. They also learned how library services changed in response to demographic shifts in the last years of Carnegie's grants, when funds increasingly went to build branch libraries, and in the years following World War II, when branches boomed again, services were extended to ethnic minorities and disadvantaged populations, and central city library collections were retooled to reflect the interests of people in their service areas.Readings on intellectual freedom included Christine Pawley's “Censorship: A Contested Professional Practice; Combating Censorship,” and Emily Knox's “The Challengers of West Bend: The Library as a Community Institution,” both of which helped them understand the persistence of censorship efforts in America.5 Since some students did not realize at first that library users' standards and preferences would not mirror their own, our discussions about censorship and challenged books were the most contentious of the course. Students responded in class to questions from Ann Curry's British and Canadian survey of attitudes toward intellectual freedom practices and libraries, which facilitated our discussion.6 Their curiosity, civility, and progress pleased me.I devoted some attention to the library analysis assignment in each class meeting, which involved reviewing segments of the two directors' interviews, examining data sources, explaining my expectations, and answering questions. I gave students the option of turning in an early draft of the assignment for my review, two weeks before its due date, which would allow students to address my feedback and recommendations before preparing their final submission. Half of the students took advantage of this and sent me a draft.In the final class session each student summarized their findings and evaluation of their assigned library's reopening and planning. During the pandemic both Carson City Library and Washoe County Libraries had maintained and even increased online programming, including story times and adult forums, including a panel that discussed race relations in the wake of the summer's Black Lives Matter protests. One of the two library systems had reopened to walk-in use after the first state-mandated closures were lifted and kept operating at this level until the fall surge in COVID cases. The other system opened in early summer for holds pickup and circulation services but did not expand onsite services beyond “grab and go,” due to a staffing shortage and the director's desire to maintain consistency across all branches. To some students this director's justification for avoiding more robust reopenings was unconvincing. For contrast, one student described current services in another large system, Las Vegas/Clark County Library District, which reopened after using CARES Act funds to purchase and install plexiglass dividers and rearranging public seating to maintain required distance between users.Thinking about these different reopenings led several students to look for a winner and a loser. They suggested that only one of the library systems we examined had served the public optimally during the pandemic, while the other had failed. At the least, such an assertion was premature. Differences in political culture mattered, and I stressed the importance of local conditions, including public health decisions made by county and city governments. Several students spoke up and emphasized positive aspects of a slower reopening since, by moving more cautiously, libraries demonstrated a high level of concern for public health. On the other hand, we acknowledged that a more rapid reopening showed responsiveness to the public's desire for open library buildings and continuity of in-person services. Any reopening plan was likely to involve some risks as well as advantages and, in any case, conclusive judgments about the reopening plans wouldn't be possible until at least several months after social distancing orders had been lifted. Reported COVID infections were still surging in late fall, so we clearly weren't at that point yet. And although I did not assess students' informal comparisons of different libraries, I saw that most of them avoided binary judgments about success and failure, or right and wrong, with respect to library services during the pandemic.In the fall of 2020 many in society hoped to return to a perceived state of normalcy that preceded the pandemic. My students envisioned open library buildings, return to full hours of service, resumption of in-person programming, meeting spaces once more available, and employment opportunities. The Washoe County and Carson City directors held similar hopes, while also speaking of more general concerns for their communities. One director mentioned the importance of the library as a safe place to visit from a public health perspective, supporting local government mandates for social distancing and masking. The other director stressed the value of expanded unemployment benefits in keeping people in their homes, in order to both avoid social dislocation and preserve the property tax base that is critical to library funding.Both libraries introduced service innovations during the early months of the pandemic, such as a fully online process for user registration, although this was limited to allow use of licensed online resources (excluding print books and other physical items), and increasing the number of simultaneous users for ebook platforms. The directors quite reasonably projected an acceleration in online use to follow their resumption of in-person services. Students spoke of the desirability of expanded online services for job readiness and homework help, both already elements of Carson City and Washoe County library services. And although society has not yet fully emerged from of the pandemic, library services stand to benefit, as Nevada's state and local governments are more optimistic about tax revenues than was feared several months previously, and library-targeted CARES and other federal recovery funds are still available.7By the end of the semester I sensed that the pandemic-focused library analysis had presented a greater intellectual challenge to students than merely analyzing library systems operating in relatively steady conditions. And I saw that students' own experiences had helped prepare them to think about libraries' response to the pandemic. They had already lived through several months of lockdowns, closure of their children's schools, and unemployment, and had reflected on the societal impacts of COVID. In class, learning about differing local conditions helped students envision the political “art of the possible” in a wider framework. The course's survey of library history widened their perspectives as well, since I avoided conveying a cliched vision of plentiful collections, grateful readers, and boosterism in favor of a clearer sense of public library development in the overall evolution of American democracy. The readings also provided a foundation for students to keep learning about the history of libraries, reading, and related topics.I was satisfied with my students' ability to analyze the crisis response of libraries and considered the library analysis assignment a valuable exercise for them as potential managers and administrators. Going forward, I believe education for many careers in public service and administration should consider society's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The book Public Library Administration Transformed briefly covers disaster management and crisis communication, and the pandemic provides much more experience that is worthy of reflection.8 Equally important in today's increasingly polarized political and cultural climate, I see my students' willingness to consider varying viewpoints and policy solutions as a commitment to participatory democracy, which is an integral part of solid citizenship.