Opinion: Suggestions for Nyack Library

To the editor:

Over the past year, patrons who love the Nyack Library yet deplore Director Mahoney's "Barnes & Noble"-ization of this beloved institution—the "rebranding" of its patrons as "customers,” the reorganization of its collections according to a retail-inspired "Marketplace" scheme that many patrons find complicated and confusingly laid out—have spoken out in Nyack News & Views, Nyack-Piermont Patch, The Nyack Villager, e-mails to the board of trustees, and at trustee meetings.

As well, we have decried what we perceive to be Mr. Mahoney’s tendency to ignore constructive criticisms from the community or dismiss such feedback as uninformed.

Simultaneously, we've pressed the board to be more transparent about its decisionmaking process, and more responsive to public involvement. One of our number, Peter Danish, landed a seat on the board.

Yet as Nyackers like John Gray and Maureen Lester have pointed out, outspoken patrons who believe deeply in the library (and, be it said, provide the lion's share of its budget through their property taxes) are too often treated, by the board, as uninformed or adversarial.

The suggestion that those of us who view the Marketplace scheme as ill-conceived and ineptly executed simply need to be educated by a webinar titled "Not Your Grandma's Library" is a textbook example of the patronizing attitude that too often characterizes the board's interactions with the public. (See July 3 meeting minutes.)

So, too, is Board President Seiler's remark, at the July 3 board meeting, that "John Gray, the author of the letter to the editor, uses the library primarily for research," yet since "from everything that [Seiler had] read 'marketplace is not appropriate for research,' individuals that use the library primarily for research have got to [use] research libraries."

Nyack's students, journalists, and authors such as Mr. Gray and myself should now take our business (but not our tax dollars) to Manhattan, where the better research libraries are to be found?

We who use the library for research understand that libraries must keep pace with social trends and technological change. We understand, too, that the Nyack Library serves diverse communities with varied needs. But there must be room at the library for those of us who use it as a quiet sanctum of reading and writing, and who value the library's helpful, supremely knowledgeable staff—a resource that cannot be found online, and which adds inestimable value to our experience of the Nyack Library. To declare that public libraries are no longer suited to research is to misunderstand their core mission profoundly.

It is also dismissive of a significant segment of the Nyack Library's patrons.

I urge the board to seize this potentially transformative moment—Mr. Mahoney's departure—to make profound and lasting changes in its dealings with the public. I sincerely hope the board will embrace an ethos of greater transparency and responsiveness, valuing community involvement as a potential resource rather than irritating outside interference in the running of the library.

To that end, here are a few concrete, constructive suggestions:

1. In the name of greater transparency, why doesn’t the board ask the library’s head of technology to arrange for the podcasting of board meetings, as the Board of Ed does? The posted minutes are bullet points at best, and in my experience leave much out of the official record.

2. More profoundly, the board could signal a dramatic break from past attitudes and past practices by amending the by-laws not to "require prior board approval for any library decisions that are likely to have a long term effect on the public’s perception of, and experience with, the library"—such as Marketplace—but to submit such game-changing decisions to a popular vote. The community pays the library's bills; why shouldn't it weigh in on managerial decisions likely to have a profound effect on its experience of the library?

3. Mr. Seiler has said that the board will survey the public regarding the Marketplace reorganization of the collections. Why not make the public part of that process, posting prospective questions on the trustees section of the NL website and on the library’s Facebook page—in other words, crowdsourcing the survey to ensure the breadth, depth, and, critically, neutrality of the questions?

As well, I urge the board to reach out to the public via the widest possible array of channels—the greeter in the library foyer, the NL website, local media such as NN&V and Piermont Patch and Nyack Social Scene and The Nyack Villager, as well as the library newsletter—to ensure the largest, most diverse data sample.

4. Likewise, the board could involve the community in the selection of a new director. It could post the biographies of the final slate of candidates on the website, arrange a town-hall style meeting where patrons could question prospective directors, create a topic on the library’s Facebook page or the NL site where patrons could weigh in on the candidates. The Board of Ed does many of these things; why not the library board?

5. Crucially, the board could change the date of the library budget vote to coincide with the school-budget vote, as one Nyacker recommended in a Journal-News editorial. Not only would this ensure a greater turnout, reflecting our diverse community, but it would send the unmistakable message that the board is committed to a new, more engaged relationship with the community that values the library and, not incidentally, pays its bills.

—Mark Dery, Nyack