A librarian takes a vacation.

I recently took a vacation to visit relatives in Southeastern Missouri over the Thanksgiving break; We did not dine together on the actual day but rather the Saturday following.  We traveled to SE Missouri from SE Texas on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  My library system was closed starting Thanksgiving Day and remaining closed through the weekend.

I had a good time visiting with and catching up with relatives in this rural small town in SE Missouri but eventually I decided to stretch my legs and take a walk around the neighborhood.  I mainly knew the place from driving around it over the years (or being driven around it as a kid), mainly at Christmastime and the Summer.  I was less sure about the terrain on foot.  With the help of my iPhone and GPS locator function, I was able to locate the local public library and navigate the few short blocks of my aunt's neighborhood to its location.  I assumed it would be closed, as my library was, but to my surprise, when I got there, I found that although they had been closed Thursday and Friday, the were indeed open for the weekend like usual.  After taking some photographs of the exterior, I ventured inside.

It was a nice library, albeit not very busy.  Besides the three library staffers (what appeared to be a librarian and two circulation clerks), there was one other patron in the children's section and that was about it.  I hit the YA section looking out for any Manga collections or other graphic novels...there were a few comic book graphic novels I think but absolutely no English-language translated Japanese Manga anywhere.  I was taken a bit aback by this and asked the librarian on duty if they had any Manga in their collection.  She stated they didn't and that it wasn't popular here so they don't carry it, but to try the local comic book store near the Wal-Mart.  I found this analysis dubious but kept my opinion to myself, and thanked her for trying to help.  I explained I was a library staffer from Texas and just visiting relatives in town for the weekend.

Having returned home, I looked up the library's webpage online.  It does indeed have one, but to my surprise, it does NOT have a web-accessible OPAC.  I was kind of shocked by this.  They do have a presence on Facebook, but no OPAC that is web-accessible.  I do think they had a site-based OPAC, but I did not actually browse the catalog during my visit, and I don't recall seeing a card catalog, so I do assume they had at least a rudimentary online catalog on site, even if not one that was remotely accessible.  Their website does have a kind of "dictionary catalog" in the form of downloadable PDFs of popular genres of fiction, with the titles in alphabetical order, but no listings for non-fiction works.

I know in the course of my ILL work I've encountered small-town Texas libraries with no identifiable link to their catalog on their webpage, so I know this is not unheard of, but I still find it a little shocking.  Perhaps internet access in this (largely) rural area is still not widely available and the funding authorities still don't see a web-accessible OPAC to be a worthwhile investment at this time.  I personally think a web accessible OPAC is almost a bare minimum requirement for any functional US library of any size, but perhaps that's my own idealism and naivete talking.  It's not as if this library was utterly bereft of technology; they had computers that patrons could sign up to use for blocks of time and surf the web, etc.  They did have a surprisingly large number of obsolete formats, like VHS tapes (my own library system finished weeding the last of our VHS tapes in the past year), and books on tape (now available only at our main branch)...but again, I wonder if adoption of DVD technology perhaps isn't as widespread here and if many older patrons still cling to their VHS players and are unwilling or financially unable to upgrade to DVD players, much less Blu-Ray players.  They did at least have DVDs in their collection, and music CDs and books on CD.

I was personally annoyed by the lack of Anime DVDs of any kind, on top of their being no Manga.  It would be one thing to add some test titles to a collection and then decide not to buy any more if they fail to circulate; But it's something else to declare from the outset that "nobody in this town is interested in Manga" and just refuse to buy any.  Perhaps they are just wanting to avoid courting controversy with the more conservative elements of the local community.  On the other hand, my library system collects quite a fair bit of manga and it is very popular among the YA crowd.

It's nice that they bothered to create a Facebook page to be able to better communicate with their patron base and wider community--kudos to them on that.  But the lack of a web-accessible OPAC still bothers me. But perhaps their funding is so precarious that it's all they can do just to keep the doors open...though if that were the case then why re-open on the weekend of a major holiday like Thanksgiving?  Seems like it would make more sense to keep the doors closed and heating & overhead costs down those two extra days than open up with very little patron foot traffic.

Still, I do figure they must have a shoestring budget because just a cursory scan of the nonfiction titles showed me that many of the books were old and would've already been weeded out of my home system.  Newer materials were few and far between.  The more a library neglects weeding and new acquisitions, the more it becomes a glorified "reading room" with maybe some computers thrown in and the less it fulfills its mission as a true library.  Perhaps the city fathers don't quite understand that, or else there really just isn't the money available right now.  It is a nice building, on the edge of what appears to be the former downtown area of this town.  It has a lot of potential and promise, but right now falls short, in my estimation.  The rest of this town, sadly, I think, combines the worst aspects of rural isolation and a replication of suburban sprawl.  It is an utterly car-dependent community.  It lacks (to my knowledge) a really identifiable center the way Texas towns like Denton or McKinney have clearly identifiable centers.  It has a few nice residential neighborhoods, but everything else are strung out in strip centers along the main road through town next to the main highway.  They even ripped up their railroad tracks that used to cut through the middle of this community.  This was not a wise move in the era of post Peak Oil, a decision I fear this community will one day sharply regret.  This is the sort of lack of community planning I suspect insightful authors like James Howard Kunstler would love to hate and ridicule.  Many who live in this community prefer to do their consumer shopping in larger neighboring towns, even across state lines, when they have wants and needs not met by the local big box store.

What is interesting is that the skeleton remains of the former downtown area and it actually looks nice, with recently re-paved cobblestone streets, very walkable blocks, etc...there are a few valiant little businesses here and there, and a few government buildings, but lots of empty buildings with lease signs, etc.  The seeds are there for community re-vitalization further into the future of the Long Emergency, but for now they lie dormant and will not be considered so long as the drive-in utopia remains the dominant paradigm of this community.

This is the former IOOF (International Order of Oddfellows) hall, founded circa 1908.  This sort of urban programming has potential for the kind of mixed use, residential-over-commercial arrangement that used to be a lot more prevalent in our country than today.  This area could be "re-programmed" into something hip and cool and that would make young adults in their 20s and 30s actually want to come here and spend time together, etc.  But it takes vision and a willingness to invest capital, proper government leadership and planning, perhaps revisions to existing ordinances and regulations, etc.  It's nice that the library butts up against this district, and I hope it bodes well for the library's future.  But like the library itself, this district is not at present living up to its full potential.