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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Revised mission
Study sees change in State Library's role
By Leta Nolan Childers
Capital Journal
The recommendations are in from a consultant hired to study the role of the South Dakota State Library in the future, and it includes a major revision in the library's mission.
Dr. Mary C. Bushing, a library consultant and educator, studied how the library is currently used and made recommendations on how it should operate in the future.
"To fulfill this mission, the SDSL needs to adjust its programs and services to enable staff members to engage in work that has the potential to bring about long-term change and development of library resources and services to all the citizens of the state," said Bushing.
"Such services should include increased consulting, continuing education, strategic planning for statewide library services, public relations and promotion of libraries across the state, grants administration and negotiation, and facilitation with and for libraries at the local, regional and state level."
Bottom line-the state library needs to go out of business as a circulating library, send people to local libraries for their needs and make local libraries borrow books from each other without the intervention of the state library to ease the facilitation of inter-library loans.
"The SDSL needs to reallocate resources-personnel, space and budget-to provide services and assistance to libraries in order to better enable libraries to fulfill their more locally defined missions," said Bushing.
That doesn't mean that anyone is going to necessarily lose their job at the state library, according to state librarian Dorothy Liegle.
"We like our employees," said Liegle, who explained that during the two-year implementation of Bushing's plan, should the state library board accept its suggestions, employees will be reassigned or retrained.
Instead of being a lending library, Bushing suggests that it should be a "core reference collection, with a preference for electronic formats, to assist in fulfilling its role as a provider of information to state government."
Bushing and Liegle will be touring the state during the next couple of days to explain the study at public meetings such as the one held in Pierre on Monday.
