Bakersfield grassroots library declines blog article - By N.L. Belardes

As they say, even bad press is good press. So I’ll give a local library some bad press, and hopefully that will be good press. OK, it’s not really bad press, but one, it raises the questions: are Kern County’s libraries dying, and can the power of suggestion lead to interesting developments in media coverage.

I was approached recently about a community library in the Southeast run by local reading specialist, Cydney Henderson. An affiliate of hers mentioned the library wasn’t part of the local County library system, but had started up from grants through the Fairfax/Brundage Neighborhood Partnership and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kern County. It was mentioned that the local media wouldn’t give the community library any attention. So I was approached. Of course I offered to write some blogs to help promote.

Although I exchanged a few emails with them, even offered up some ideas after reading a ‘gloom and doom’ dying Kern library piece by the local paper. But I was eventually ignored.

Henderson, as a result of the local news article wrote in a letter to the editor (she is known to leave blog comments here and there on the local newspaper blogs):

A 'novel' solution

Here is one answer to the article about our underfunded Kern County library system.

In southeast Bakersfield, there is a small school district called Fairfax. It's growing fast. Except for school libraries, no other public source for books is available in this part of town. Until now, that is.

Thanks to a group of volunteers who formed the Fairfax/Brundage Partnership and the congregation of the Unitarian Universalist church, space and money has been found to operate a small community library.

It's open every Thursday evening (5 to 8 p.m.) and staffed by a few adult church volunteers and a small group of energetic kids from the school district. The books are of interest mostly to young readers.

We often see mothers and fathers coming in with their children. Sometimes they just spend time at the library reading to each other.

All of this happened because the community wanted to find a solution to a serious problem. It has been a great deal of work, but certainly worth the effort. We all know that the more you read, the better you get at reading. Without access to fine books, young students are left with a critical disadvantage that they may never fully recover from.

I believe the Community Library Project (CLP) stands as an example for others to follow if they would like a practical solution to small library budgets in this county.

-- CYDNEY HENDERSON, Bakersfield

In my emails I discussed ‘grassroots marketing’. I didn’t read the term grassroots in any of the emails sent to me. The focus in the library was the term, ‘community’.

I wrote in one of my emails:

Grassroots marketing is the way. Target your area with fliers. Attract kids with book readings, and maybe offer a computer where kids can get on the Internet and look up cool kids stuff funschool.com, etc. If you provide the expert guidance you will get a lot of kids coming just for computer time. Those kids would cross over to reading books... Remember, today's kids are NET savvy, and if they don't have computers, you can attract them.

My offers to write a blog article were ignored. Today there was an article in the local paper about the library with the title, “Grassroots library springs up.”

In the article Cydney Henderson states, “community libraries are bound to grow in popularity as the county library system continues to face funding cuts amid skyrocketing population growth.”

I disagree. The chances of community libraries sprouting in every library vacuum is unlikely. County libraries are not going to fade into the sunset, and funding isn’t always going to be low That’s a poor assumption. The need is too great. Community libraries will only be popular where county libraries don’t exist, and when there are no county funds for libraries. Then you must have people willing to pour money into growing such grassroots libraries. Not every church and neighborhood partnership is going to see that need.

I wonder if my email had anything to do with a focus on the term grassroots in the title of the article in the local Bakersfield paper. I wrote the library founder an email that read something like, “I see the term ‘grassroots’ was used in an article on the library. Interesting. Too bad I didn’t get the first story…”

What do you think?

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, April 08, 2006. You can leave your response.