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This article outlines some of the challenges and solutions identified by attendees at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's “Sustaining Public Access in Rural Libraries” workshop, held February 23 and 24, 2004, in Seattle. See also this report on the workshop as a whole.

No one can tell a good story like a librarian, and at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's recent Rural Libraries workshop, stories were in abundant supply.

There were stories of challenges. But there were also stories of perseverance, triumph, and even heroism: library staff members who come to work every day with new ideas, determined to overcome their paltry budgets and untrained staff and daunting technical problems. The stories drew inspiration from many traditions and cultures: from African folktales to Puss in Boots, and from homemade biscuits to saving for a rainy day. The 135 rural and small library and support staff members at the workshop told their tales, exchanged good ideas, and worked together to pool their experience and talent in order to keep their public access computing programs healthy and growing in difficult times.

Funding

Like many public service organizations these days, the rural librarians listed financial support as their key issue and challenge. The workshop was full of stories about 50 percent cuts two years in a row, the “we're sure glad you can do so much with so little” attitudes of councils and boards and the part-time and volunteer staff heroically cobbled together to keep the building open.

Though rural and small libraries are not alone in their concerns about money, their particularly difficult circumstances are borne out by recent research. A February 2003 report from the University of Washington's Public Access Computing Project, “The Impact of Public Access Computing on Rural and Small Town Libraries,” has identified a direct correlation between the size of the population a library serves and that population's poverty level. In other words, the smaller your library's service population, the poorer your constituents. So it's no surprise that small libraries have small budgets: In late 2002, libraries that served fewer than 2,500 people had an average budget of just $34,666. (See the details of the report here.)

It is clear that economic downturn, loss of jobs, and taxpayer revolts are taking their toll on rural and small libraries. As one participant lamented, “My community is constantly on the edge financially and I cannot rely on them for more help.”

And yet libraries are finding creative ways to soften the blows and keep themselves going despite their difficulties. Four primary strategies emerged from the discussions:

- Partnering

Rebecca Atkinson, director of the Lamar (CO) Public Library, recounted an African folktale about the difference between Hell and Heaven: Hell is a group of starving people sitting around a pot of food holding spoons that have handles too long to reach their mouths; Heaven is a group of well-fed people with the same spoons—but they are feeding each other. Rebecca practices what she preaches by partnering with schools in her community to support the large Latino population. Many others at the workshop related how they share resources with schools, colleges, community health and social service organizations, chambers of commerce, and other libraries.

• A Kentucky library director meets every two months with the local department of family services, chamber of commerce, health department and other community organizations to build relationships and find ways to market one another's services.

• Faye Terry of the Indiana State Library and Rose Bryan of the Geneva (IN) Public Library reported on their work with local library directors to form a planning and technology consortium of 46 libraries in northern Indiana.

• Gail Irwin of the Ainsworth (NE) Public Library worked to set up a three-county Technology Committee to share resources for developing grants and identifying community needs.

- Advocacy

As one participant put it, “As library director, I need to spend more time outside the building than in it.”

Sandra Nelson, workshop facilitator, agreed: “Big city library expectations are sliding down the scale. More and more librarians in smaller and smaller libraries are finding themselves in the position of reaching out into the community to support their libraries.”

And workshop participants provided several examples of how small libraries have begun to do just that.

• In Red Feather Lakes, CO, director Marilyn Colter worked tirelessly to set up a regional library district, bolstering her library's faltering finances and opening up exciting possibilities for expansion.

• In Luverne, AL, director Rene Lester conducted targeted and effective outreach to her county's commissioners, inviting them to breakfast at the library the day before their budget meeting, issuing library cards and checking out books, showing off computers, handing out a summary of the library's service to county patrons, and providing a vivid in-person demonstration of the library's worth to its constituents.

• Across the country, rural library staff members are developing strategies based on the unique political contours of their environments, sitting on the boards of other community organizations, participating actively in local politics, and holding leaders responsible for ensuring the vitality of local libraries into the future.

- Community Outreach and Marketing

In addition to political outreach, rural libraries are finding new ways to connect directly with their patrons and the wider community.

• Several library directors write regular columns for their local newspapers, demonstrating the value of library services and giving themselves a platform to communicate with the public on a regular basis.

• Charles Moore, director of the Pearle L. Crawford Memorial Library in Dudley, MA, has combined technology with outreach by offering computer classes on wireless laptops in his library. In addition to addressing space and wiring issues in his library, the new technology attracted the curious and raised the profile of his public access computing program.

• Kristie Kirkpatrick, director of the Whitman County (WA) Library, promoted their “Ask Us 24/7” virtual reference service through a multi-dimensional advertising campaign, including the Web, direct mail, ad campaigns, school presentations, and in-library displays.

- Creative Financing

Among the other creative financing strategies discussed at the workshop:

• Darla Braken, director of the Friona (TX) Public Library, worked with her Friends of the Library organization to establish a technology maintenance and upgrade escrow account. This account is a specific target of fundraising efforts and has given the library a secure basis for planning their future.

• Lindsy Gardner of the Demopolis (AL) Public Library toured libraries in England on a Rotary Club travel grant, and discovered that government funding in Great Britain is tied to libraries' ability to generate revenue by other means: selling books, rummage sales, and a host of other creative solutions. Whether it's the best policy to require such activities may be open to debate; but it's clear that alternative funding possibilities for U.S. libraries are well worth considering.

You'll find more good ideas about funding in WebJunction's Funding Strategies section, and ongoing discussions on the Funding & Advocacy forum.

Staffing

While rural and small libraries share funding issues with larger libraries, they are particularly challenged in the area of staffing. Three types of challenges emerged at the Gates rural libraries workshop: not enough staff, technology resistance, and the need for training.

In the smallest communities, libraries run by just one staff member are not uncommon. The challenges for the solo staffer (or “Conan the Librarian,” as one attendee quipped) are profound. In addition to the sense of isolation and the overwhelming range of abilities required, there are serious practical issues for technology support. It's impossible to attend off-site technology training without shutting down the entire library and any sort of technical problem can bring all other services to a halt as well.

Larger rural libraries have their own staffing concerns related to supporting public access computing. Staff members in rural communities are often reluctant to embrace technology and may feel resentful about its intrusion into their traditional library role. Workshop participants frequently mentioned winning over the hearts and minds of these staff members as a major concern. Even for staff members who are motivated and tech-savvy, there remains a significant challenge: delivering targeted and effective technical training when they have little time to learn and many other responsibilities.

Finally, according to the “Impact of Public Access Computing on Rural and Small Town Libraries” report, only 7 percent of library staff members serving fewer than 2,500 have professional library degrees. Given the wide range of expertise needed to succeed in such an environment, distance education and opportunities for professional development are a crying need.

Yet libraries are finding ways to overcome staffing their challenges in a variety of ways.

- Volunteers, Work-Study, Internships

Many small libraries are learning how to make effective use of volunteers to close the staffing gap. Julie Woodford of Idaho's Burley Public Library has recruited local teenagers to provide computer training to patrons during the summer—simultaneously reducing the training burden on her staff, producing patrons who need less support, and forging an important link with the community. Other participants use community college work-study students or retirees to help deliver library programs.

Jacque Griffin, director of the Gila County (AZ) Library District, told the group about how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Native American Access to Technology program had helped establish local technicians and training courses for tribal communities in Arizona.

- Training, Training, Training

Access to better training materials helps both library staff and patrons increase their technology comfort level. Enid Costley of the Hibbing (MN) Public Library shared her technology training lesson plans, which effectively combine basic Internet and application skills with themes of interest to patrons (and staff!) such as recipes, quilting, and genealogy.

Attendees frequently mentioned WebJunction as an important tool for helping their staff members get training that would otherwise be too far away or too expensive. The online courses in WebJunction's Learning Center are already beginning to help raise staff members' level of technical competency without taking them away from their library buildings.

Attendees also emphasized the importance of establishing clearer training standards and expectations for their staff. Kristie Kirkpatrick of the Whitman County (WA) Library told of her success in doing exactly that; and many others spoke of the value of developing clearer technology competencies for library staff, which will assist them in hiring, determining training needs, and establishing performance objectives.

Supporting Technology

Even the best-training and most motivated staff members can't solve every problem on their own. When big trouble hits, substantial technical support becomes an essential part of any public access computing program.

But finding this support is particularly challenging in rural communities. Many communities simply don't have people with technical expertise. As one state librarian put it, “there are no geeks in the farm belt.” For communities that do have such expertise, workshop participants identified other issues: when you can afford to pay $7 an hour and your local tech person can make $50 or more from his other clients, you've got a problem. And what if the only technically savvy person in your community is a high school senior that's about to go to a college 300 miles away? Or what if the retired volunteer engineer that built the system his way, and isn't very interested in explaining to anyone else how to use it?

Workshop participants were also concerned about ongoing decisions related to technological change. “Do I go wireless? What's all this about `thin clients?' What about upgrading my operating systems? And what else is coming around the bend that I don't even know about yet?” Making good technology choices for the future was seen by workshop participants as an issue rivaling good technical support for the present.

Unlike the funding and staffing issues that must be resolved mainly at the local level, technical support requires broader involvement from state library organizations. The state support staff at the workshop heard this message loud and clear. And while more and better training is an important part of the solutions the states offer, a better deployment of support resources is necessary as well. One attendee from West Virginia spoke with gratitude (and to the evident appreciation of the rest of the group) about an LSTA-funded Help Desk program in her state that provided response to calls within ten minutes. Other states are developing “circuit-rider” programs to provide periodic on-site visits in order to help with technical problems.

But local libraries, and especially regional library systems, are finding ways to reduce the technical burden. Joe Tynes of Mississippi's Dixie Regional Library System has implemented a “thin client” solution that takes much of the technical burden off of local machines and puts them onto a centrally located server (here's an article that explains this system in more detail). Vickie Grimli, Head Librarian for the Ortonville (MN) Public Library, has made use of Windows' Remote Access capabilities to be able to troubleshoot and resolve computer issues from a central location.

Join in the discussions on WebJunction's Hardware and Software forums, and read the articles in the Technology Resources section, for more information about your technical support options..

At the conclusion of the workshop, participants began to develop their own “Action Plans,” defining the concrete steps they would take to increase the viability of their public access computing programs. Progress on these plans will be evaluated through a follow-up survey conducted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Survey results, and more ideas drawn from these Action Plans, will be posted on WebJunction.