Note: John Celli is recently retired Chief of the Library of Congress CIP Division

Dear John Celli:

I thought some of your ideas in "CIP on the Moon" in Library Journal's "Net Connect" (Winter 2008) to be so promising that I want to share my enthusiasm over them with my blog readers at ForeWordMagazine.com in this open letter to you.

As a publishing industry trend-watcher and columnist I have taken to stopping in at small town and city libraries in the past year or so to get a feeling for what is going on as I travel around the country on other business.

In the main I come upon buildings newly built or in process of upgrading, wide area spaces or glass-walled conference rooms being used quietly or collectively to some reading, computer or discussion purpose, and lots of evidence of audio, cd and video on media shelves. And, yes, plenty of books and spaces to sit an comfortably read them – including floor areas in nooks and crannies.

When I visit, I also see libraries used as community centers and repositories of civic information resources. They are also entertainment centers –and I think that the notion you advance of adding to the stated library mission " to inform and entertain" is one of the several out of the box ideas that struck me as promising. Any teacher can confirm that learning takes root most effectively when inspired teaching viewed as a performance [entertainment] art. And as you note, "much of what we provide is clearly entertainment – novels, movies, music, etc."

Three of your other breakout ideas seem to combine well: (1) providing a content "push" service to patrons (as does the LOC to its Congressional patrons), (2) having certain key libraries, following the PBS model, serve as nodules that produce service programming that could be pushed out through a network of libraries to service a national subscriber audience, and (3) exploring with content providers ways in which libraries "might play a large and more active role in providing users a full range of content (including current releases)."

I think also in testing out new ideas for the distribution of copyrighted and licensed content, new business models could be tried. The library circulation model would especially lend itself to anything from pay for use to, what I think would be most promising, subscription based access to a prescribed range of content. Such usage based purchasing by libraries from publishers properly structured might enable libraries to better allocate their collection development funds.

You close your imaginative piece concerned that library systems as "all too well established" institutions might "respond to challenges with "endless debate;" and that "our leadership will not bring us to a new city on a hill by applying the same skills that maintained the old institutions."

As you also recognized, however, the majority of libraries are publics or academic institutions and are distinguished in their "core uniqueness" from mass media. Therein, I think lies the "city on the hill." Any library or library system, or informal consortium, that can bring together the "seed" resources can seek to build a nodule with a solely owned or collaborative service that could then be syndicated to other libraries. I suspect that many publishers would be eager to partner in such initiatives.

The journey to the city on the hill can begin in the hands of any librarian who wants to pursue it and can enlist the support of their on local director or library board. Hopefully your article shot an arrow into the air. . . .

Posted by: Eugene G. Schwartz