LaRue's Views

When I started college, I signed up for one of the economics survey classes. The teacher was funny. He let us know right up front that we could buy an A. All it would take was the rest of the money he expected to make in his career, which he then spelled out.

It was cheaper to study.

We laughed. But then he got serious. Economics was a science, he said sternly. It was based on the cold, hard reality of numbers.

I raised my hand. "I read in this newspaper this morning," I said, "that two economists won Nobel Prizes this week."

"Yes!" the professor agreed, all smiles.

Annually, the planning cycle of the Douglas County Libraries used to look like this:

* at a spring manager retreat (this year, that meant a day at Louviers) we brainstorm our best, most exciting ideas for the next year, then whittle them down to the few that matter most.

* at a board retreat a few weeks later (this year, half a day in Highlands Ranch), I present those ideas. The board approves, rejects, revises, or adds their own ideas.

* then we develop budgets and work plans. That all gets reviewed in the fall, and adopted in December.

This year it's different. Like a lot of families and businesses, the Douglas County Libraries will have less money next year than last.

"It was 20 years ago today
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play."

I have now held my position as director of Douglas County's libraries for 20 years. It was a different world back then.

The population of Douglas County in 1990 was about 65,000. We checked out 368,492 items a year. Today, we have close to 300,000 people, and check out nearly 8 million items annually.

Lately we've been posting little flip camera interviews of our patrons on our website. These are folks that have a library story to tell. Since libraries are in the story telling business, it makes sense to collect a few of our own.

One of those stories was from our patron Kay Romer. She talks about how when she first came to Douglas County, the library was a way for her to establish herself in the community. Now, she says, the library is her "Cheers," where everybody knows her name.

We've also been playing with the ability to turn on the "comment" feature on our website for all kinds of postings. And one patron made a comment about Kay's video that caught my attention.

After the 2008 election losses, followed by a recession, the Douglas County School District and the Douglas County Libraries had some cuts to make.

The school district chose to eliminate all of its subscription databases -- information resources offered over the Internet. At the same time, the library was looking at trimming its own subscriptions.

So we did something that doesn't happen very often between schools and libraries. We got together to talk about it. Library staff analyzed the cost per use of our subscriptions. Then we asked our colleagues at school libraries to tell us which resources were most useful for student assignments.

I'm conflicted.

On the one hand, over the past couple of years, I've changed my whole idea of what my profession is about.

I used to think the library business was about access to "intellectual content," whether it be fiction, non-fiction, movies, or music.

But the more I've read about brain research, the more I've thought about the role of the public library in society, the more I have come to realize that we're really in another business altogether: Storytelling.

From the storytelling upon which emergent literacy is based, to the storytelling that frames the highest level of political decision-making, it's all about narrative. It's about finding a frame that makes sense of things.

As an undergraduate, I spent a lot of time at the student billiard center. Occasionally, smooth, well-dressed pool sharks would come through on tour. They had great names, like blues singers or gangsters: Las Vegas Jimmy, Spats McDonough, Gentleman Joe, and so on.

At that time, we college players thought it was all about the equipment. We bought our own sticks, with fancy cases. We imagined that some tables were better than others. But then one of these outside jaspers would breeze through town, pull a standard pool cue off the rack, run the table, perform mind-boggling trick shots, and leave with a not-inconsiderable chunk of all our beer money.

I remember one guy saying, when we were discussing how tricky one of the tables was: "I bet I can still find the pockets."

February 4, 2010 - WANTED: LIBRARY TRUSTEE

Job Title: Library Trustee, a member of the governing Board of the Douglas
County Libraries. There are seven Trustees in total. This appointment fills the vacancy of Stevan Strain, whose term ran through the end of January 2011.

Residency requirements: must live in Commissioner District I, which encompasses the Northeast area of the county. The Commissioner representing this area is Jack Hilbert.

Qualifications: Must believe in the value of strong public library services to the citizens of Douglas County. The Douglas County Libraries is an equal opportunity employer, committed to a vision of a vital and literate community.

For a long time, scientists believed two things about the brain.

The first was the idea that you're born with a set number of neurons -- "brain cells." Then, you lose them all your life.

The second idea was that there are "hardwired" parts of the brain. Various experiments showed that one region was involved in visual processing, another in movement (controlling the arms or legs, for instance). If you went blind, the part of the brain set up to handle information from the eye just sat there, dark and quiet.

Both of these ideas, we now know, were wrong. And that's very good news.