This month’s issue focuses on taking care of business—the economic impact of libraries on their communities, making library dollars grow, business services to offer, and more. In Spokane, community business growth came about through multiple library partnerships. The Spokane Business Library card is the brainchild of the Spokane County Library District and the Spokane Public Library. Brian C. Vander Veen lays out the Spokane Business Library’s origin story and progress (p5). Kelly Evans shares more of the Spokane Business Library card details (p12). Look for Evans and others involved in that collaboration speak about public-academic partnerships for the business community at the upcoming WLA conference in Tulalip.
For libraries to thrive, the link between business and creativity must be obvious to the community. We need to collaborate with other libraries, other innovative companies, other residents and citizens that are not, as of yet, library cardholders. R. David Lankes, professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, made the point of such creative endeavors in a keynote address a couple of years back: “What will kill our profession is not e-books, Amazon, or Google, but a lack of imagination.” (Check out TrendWatching. com’s “10 Trends for 2015.” TrendWatching.com not only identifies the trends, but suggests inventive ways libraries could put them to use.)
We can ride the wave of the promoting lifelong learning—3D printers, e-content, makerspaces—and the community will benefit. Diane Cowles describes how Kitsap Regional Library became an incubator for community innovation, to borrow a phrase from Keith Michael Fiels’ March 6 American Libraries opinion piece. KRL’s Seth Ciotti designed a tech program to provide jobs for homeless youth. Ciotti was just named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker 2015 for his efforts (p9). Congrats, Seth. Also in this issue, Darcy Brixey writes about bringing the library to kids who don’t have options (p10), and Steven Bailey’s informative piece on how libraries can market to small businesses (p7). Aileen Luppert weighs in on guns in the library (p14), and Exclusive: Shhh! Becky Ramsey (p24) and Gennie Gebhart (p16) talk about library school in their library voices. Of course, not everybody wants to be—or should be—a librarian. Check out this 1947 take, So you wanna be a librarian?
Alki Editor: Joyce Hansen
Alki Editorial Committee: Diane Cowles, committee chair; Steven Bailey; Sheri Boggs; Kelly Evans; Emily Keller; Becky Ramsey, Alki intern; Tami Robinson; Anna Shelton; Tony Wilson
Alki was designed by Tammy Reniche, Director of Publications for Melby Cameron & Anderson.
Cover photo: Here Kendra Jones, children’s librarian, plays with toddlers during story time. At the CAYAS workshop, Jones of Tacoma Public Library, facilitated ideas on how to engage kids and parents.” (p15) Photo credit: Steven Little/The Columbian
