”Roll `em, roll `em, roll `em,” a cowboy sang in the theme song to the popular ”Rawhide” television show.
Well, roll `em is what people at the West Chicago library do as well, but they`re not herding cattle.
Roll `em is what they do when they want a book on French cooking or a travel guide, or to read up on Lincoln or race walking. They crank and roll the towering two-sided floor-to-ceiling movable shelves that contain the nonfiction books.
The shelves were installed to help solve space problems at the tiny library, built in 1953 to provide for 5,000 residents. Today the library serves four times as many people out of the same building.
The shelves may be efficient, but they`re not popular. Even the Library Board president, Frank Riley, says he doesn`t like to use the portable shelves.
”You have to crank those darn things and it`s hard to browse,” he said. ”You have to get in and out quickly because you feel somebody else wants to get in there. It makes it very uncomfortable. I don`t think the circulation of those books is very good.”
And yet West Chicagoans voted down two recent attempts to build a bigger library.
Farther south in the Indian Prairie Library District, two smaller libraries, Darien and Willowbrook, combined to set up a new library.
”We`re in a storefront in a strip mall,” said Linore Schact, library director. ”Our facility is very noisy and very inadequate, and yet we have one of the highest use levels in the Suburban Library System. We have about 14 story hour sessions every week but no adequate place to hold them since everything is in one big room. The children`s area is not separated from the adult. The seating is so crowded, at times it`s difficult to get down the aisles when people are sitting at tables.”
Voters in 1989 also turned thumbs down on Indian Prairie`s bid to build a larger library. The district is now looking at building a library half the size of its first request and may take it to the voters again next fall, Schacht said.
Although Hinsdale recently won voter approval to build an addition and Westmont got the go-ahead for a new and bigger library, both their librarians say they believe it would be more difficult to get money for these same projects now given current economic times and the no-more-taxes-no-matter-what mood of the voters.
The Westmont voters approved building a 29,000-square-foot library that will cost $4 million.
”That was a year ago,” said Moira Buhse, library administrator. ”We`d probably have a harder time this year.”
To understand the problems libraries face, it`s important to know that there are three types of libraries in Illinois: district, city and village. District libraries are the most autonomous. They elect their own boards and set their own tax levy, subject to voter approval.
Village library boards are also elected, while city library boards are appointed. And both village and city library budgets must be approved by the village and city councils.
Come budget time, particularly in villages and cities, the libraries sometimes find themselves at the bottom of the funding barrel, say librarians. ”You see, libraries are an easy thing to cut,” said Alice Calabrese, executive director of the Du Page Library System, ”because it`s not police or fire.”
Furthermore, library officials from all types of districts believe even tougher times lie ahead, considering that the demand for services is increasing as the population of Du Page grows.
”In business, when you grow you tend to make more money, but it doesn`t work that way with libraries,” said Calabrese. ”Just because you grow doesn`t mean you will get more money to do what you do. You have to use more creative ways to serve your community.”
Demand for services is also increasing as society puts more emphasis on the need for availability of information.
Deborah Miller, state lobbyist for libraries, said she is concerned about cutbacks in funding for libraries.
”What scares me is that so many people are dependent on information today,” she said.
While the Du Page Library System, like 18 other library systems in the state, has worked to make libraries increasingly efficient through networking, even more could be done, Calabrese said.
”My dream is to be able to connect every library on line so people know where materials are and if they`re available,” she said.
Libraries get most of their money from property taxes, and, as a result, government may reduce funding because of taxpayer pressure.
”This is the first time that things look dismal on all three fronts:
federal, state and local,” Miller said. ”They are all under fire. There seems to be a popular perception among people that we`re paying too much in taxes and that there`s waste in government, although I don`t see that happening in libraries. Libraries have been bare bones for so long.”
Jack Heurwitz, Hinsdale library director, said, ”I`m very concerned about the future, given the fact that libraries live and die by the property tax and there`s tremendous pressure to put some kind of limitations on property tax.”
User fees are an increasingly popular approach for reducing property taxes. Most libraries already get a small portion of their income from user fees, such as video and audio cassette rentals, but experts shudder at increasing them to help pay for library services.
”That`s troubling to me,” said Miller, ”because many times the people who use libraries are the people who can`t afford it.”
The best solutions to keep libraries working efficiently in tough times will be in better management of resources, such as building more branches, sharing facilities and increasing networking, say the librarians.
The Aurora Public Library, for example, is doing just that by putting a branch library in a new community center built with the Park District.
Building bigger and better networks among all sources of information, including hospitals, universities, private business, academic libraries and government, is the wave of the future, said Calabrese.
In fact, advances in communications technology could radically change libraries of the future, she said, making information not only more affordable but also more available.
”With computers today, we should be able to access information all over the world,” she said. ”In the next 10 years, we could see a real revolution in the way information is communicated.”
