Leaders in the for-profit sector say non-profits should be operated just as businesses and continue to feel frustrated by what they perceive as governments’ refusal to reduce inefficiencies (read as “spending”).  Then, seeing “unnecessary duplication of services” behind every new initiative or even established service, these same leaders tell the public that government is unresponsive. Sometimes they run for office, or more often they get lower level minions to do that dirty work, running on a limited platform of forcing efficiencies in government. Budgets get cut and libraries, seen as the “last pig at the trough,” often are cut the most. In fact, one can point to major libraries, in cities and states enjoying unprecedented prosperity and growth, in which budgets neither kept up with inflation nor were sufficient to meet the needs of the public these institutions served. Back in the political arena, those who complain the loudest never recognize that the inefficiencies of which they complain are the rules that, for years, their likes have forced upon those in public service to “protect” the citizens from the “lazy, inefficient bureaucrats.” In fact, most of us operate under rules so arcane that not one of these leaders would put up with the silliness in his or her own industry.  Significantly, those on the outside looking in want to force public agencies to cooperate, without recognizing the long history of libraries, in particular, working with one another for the common good.

Recently, an even more compelling argument than finding a council, commission, or unicameral loaded with those who would force efficiencies is that of the foundations, corporations, and individuals who, more and more, fund only those grant requests in which agencies work together toward the expressed goal. In Omaha, the Community Foundation gives $1Million annually to nonprofits working together.  We see evidence of that recently here elsewhere here in Nebraska with the funding of the One Library project uniting Norfolk, Columbus, and others in a joint automation venture.  

It remains, however, for those of us in the branch of public service called libraries, that the most compelling reason to cooperate is, simply, it’s the right thing to do.  In fact, we’ve done it for years.  The challenge for us is to find new ways of cooperating which meet the needs of a new “information” society. Free Public Libraries are the heirs of the lending clubs, which purchased books for the good of the members. Academic institutions enjoy a longer history of seeking to expand knowledge. Then, in the course of conceiving a nation that would rise to stand for freedom of choice and liberty for all, our country’s architects realized that an uninformed electorate would surely undermine the very foundation of the society they had designed.  They were so afraid of the uniformed masses that many of our early forefathers did not originally receive the right to vote. The Electoral College was another way to protect society from the uninformed masses. In a letter from 1822, James Madison, the author of our Constitution, stated unequivocally

A popular government without access to popular information is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.