Since 1958, National Library Week is a time to celebrate our local libraries and librarians and to promote library use. This year, April 12-18 bookmarks another year in which the San Diego County Libraries have served the communities in East County. Celebrating 10 years now, San Diego County Library Director José Aponte shares his experience, passion and vision in how the library is an integral part of every community.
Why is National Library Week important?
Since 1958, National Library Week is a time to celebrate our local libraries and librarians and to promote library use. This year, April 12-18 bookmarks another year in which the San Diego County Libraries have served the communities in East County. Celebrating 10 years now, San Diego County Library Director José Aponte shares his experience, passion and vision in how the library is an integral part of every community.
Why is National Library Week important?
“Libraries deserve their place in the city and county table. I say that in metaphor. Community is built around a table. The entity and why we come together as a civilization is a series of pieces building a better world. This celebration memorializes the value of this institution and the greater community of our libraries. In our case, the county, but it is important in the cities, counties, and the whole compliment of them in the method of democracy.”
“Libraries exemplify the right to read, the right to know, and fundamentally, these are basic American constructs. The owner and founder of Powell Books, that we all subscribe to said, ‘The public library is democracy’s greatest promise.’ And I believe that our mission is still that simple.”
What are the most common misconceptions about the library in the here and now?
“I think the largest misconception about libraries is that libraries are fundamentally about books. “It is more than books. Library is about education, knowledge, knowledge transference, and the notion of a living, breathing culture. I was giving my monthly report to the CEO and we were chatting about the accomplishments last month. One of them was a DMV class that we did to help seniors bridge to their DMV re-testing at the library. There are many pamphlets to study for that test, but they chose to go to a living instruction so they could be better prepared with the class. This was in the Lakeside Library. So it’s more than books.”
“I was invited to a book club at the Descanso Library. We were talking about the book by Cheryl Strayed “Wild,” with 12 to 16 very knowledgeable backcountry women who worked in a variety of occupations and foundations of their families. We spent an hour and one half talking about our lessons learned. Twelve different individuals, 12 different minds, 12 different approaches of what we thought the author may or may have not done and the consequences of her choices.”
“The library is more than books. It is that living, breathing institution where, in the words of Andrew Carnegie, ‘We build a people’s university.’ The San Diego County Library is structured so people do not pay for classes. We are talking about 28,000 programs a year. With a program value of $7 a person, that is around $5.1 million a year.”
“Why does the library still exist? In our 2011 study, 25 percent of households do not own a computer. We had 1,371,880 internet sessions (one hour) and the value of that is $24 million. Our perceived ($5 per read) value of our circulation of books, movies, CDs is $71 million a year. So we can account for every $35 million spent, we can account for $90 to $100 million in return.
Value added, access to information, an informed democracy tracks about a half million people that come through our doors.”
You have great programs. Where do you come up with all of these ideas?
“There are a few ways of approaching it. One, we have a strategic plan where everyone has a general idea of where we are focusing on for the next three years. For example, 11 percent of our program focus is working to build healthier communities. We’ve shifted our focus now to thriving, which moves us more towards literacy, arts, celebrating that culture, education and prosperity. So we have a general game plan. We do four trainings a year where everyone in the library is trained. We have a very ambitious continuing education program. We send 20 people a year to the California Library Conference, we present at the California Library Association (and many more). How do we learn? We learn by teaching as well. This forces the staff to think on a national and regional level with regard to some of the innovation with their projects.”
“Third, autonomy. We give the branch staff a tremendous amount of autonomy. Given that trust, and a simple mission they have proven time and again that they are quite capable of succeeding. The line shares of our programs were created by the staff at the front door.”
“One that pops straight to my mind is the Prom Dress Giveaway, headed by Orquidia Contreras the Vista library. She has all these teenagers as a children’s librarian all going through their rituals with their quinceañeras, spring prom, senior prom and it’s a low-income community. This is so successful we now do Prom Dress Giveaway in three separate libraries..”
The events at the library seems diversified for that particular community. Is that part of the autonomy you are talking about?
“There’s no camera rolling here, but you can see it in my face. I’m beaming. This is one of the characteristics of this library that I am most proud. When I came onboard 10 years ago, our library was a marginal and capable library. I had worked at one of America’s best libraries and I came here with this highfalutin vision that we could make this into one of America’s best libraries, and we did. We did.”
“Parcel to that was that we used best practices. One differences (after drilling down and examining the top 10 libraries in the country) that I said to our people is, ‘We don’t want a cookie cutter. What we want is what works in Potrero to be in Potrero. What works in Vista, let it be in Vista.’ While the larger libraries with the same design and same materials picked by administration may be efficient, in my mind, maybe not as effective. And that has kind of been our signature. Each branch has developed and has its own targets and goals, benchmarks and objectives. And that is the genesis of the variety. One will have a rodeo, another will have ballet folklórico contest. I just did clogging at the St. Patrick’s Day at San Marcos branch.”
“They do find their own signature. And I know that is what creates ownership, which is part in part to good management. You can tell people what to do or you can direct them towards potential options for what they want to decide or what they want to do. We give them the training, the mastery is the sense of autonomy and ultimately mission. It’s a pretty simple proposition. Inform, educate, inspire and entertain. Our mission statement is four words. They hear it over and over and we kind of kindle a missionary zeal.”
“One a week, I am in the branches. When I report, I don’t have to make up what is happening in a branch. I saw it. I clogged last week. Yesterday I was at a reading club where I had to wait my turn to report. If you spend a day there you’ll get a since of the vitality. That’s valuable. Where do you have that community? The library. All over this county—all over.”
