The transformation of Allegheny County’s library system through regional cooperation

TurningA quieT Crisis inTo A MoDeL oF suCCessTurning

A quieT Crisis inTo A

MoDeL oF suCCessThe transformation of Allegheny County’s

library system through regional cooperation

By the 1990s, too many of Allegheny County’s libraries seemed to be headed toward their final chapter.

up and down the county’s rivers were former manufacturing towns whose tax base had collapsed. As budgets declined, libraries stopped buying books. some librarians wore boots and coats at their desks in winter. Plastic sheeting cov-ered windows. roofs leaked.

Yet amid the falling plaster, a few visionaries saw opportunity — people like Frank Lucchino, then county controller. He believed Allegheny County’s future depended on municipalities finding ways to work together — cooperating instead of competing. And in libraries, Lucchino believed he’d found the perfect test case.

in a slim volume titled “A quiet Crisis,” Lucchino along with staff members Beverly Blankowski and Jack Chielli told the story of libraries quietly fading away — in the very communities where out-of-work residents could least afford to buy books.

The report’s simple, direct language opened eyes. soon, Lucchino had brought Allegheny County’s community librarians together — north, south, east and west — for the first time in history. He asked them: “What if all of you could work together, share resources, and form one county-wide network, but retain your independence?” Then he offered them an incentive. “Cooperate, and jointly you could have access to $1 million.”

From this first meeting grew the organization that became the Allegheny County Library Association (ACLA). Today, the falling plaster at our libraries is repaired. The heat stays on in winter. More locations serve more patrons than ever. And dozens of new programs stretch the definition of what a library can be.

More than a decade after ACLA was founded, people talk about county-wide cooperation as if it’s science fiction. ACLA is living proof the concept works.

“ Within the boundaries of the book-shelved walls of Allegheny County’s libraries, a quiet crisis is unfolding. Funding is being slashed as the price of new materials skyrockets; hours are being cut just when communities need a library’s resources the most; and too many people have to travel too far to reach the information they need.”

“A Quiet Crisis”, 1991

All T o g e T H e r n o W

until ACLA, too many of our county’s libraries were failing alone. now they’re succeeding together.

Today, residents can use a library card from their community library to take out a book at any other library in the county. ACLA consists of 45 independent libraries that work together, share resources and cooperate to better serve the needs of county residents.

When the steel mills

died in McKeesport,

the library there started

dying, too. It stopped

buying books, turned

down the heat, cut back

hours, even unscrewed

light bulbs. But the

people of McKeesport

wouldn’t let their library

die. Though money was

tight for them, residents

sent dollar bills in

envelopes. “The library,”

they wrote, “is the heart

of our community. If

the library shuts its

doors, that’s the end.”

Today, the library shines

as a busy hub of the

McKeesport community.

As she sat down to read the report “A quiet Crisis,” Doreen Boyce, president of the Buhl Foundation at the time, saw “an intersection of crisis and opportunity.”

The Buhl Foundation had just helped local college libraries to computerize. Ancient catalogs of index cards gave way to memory cards, accessed from com-puter terminals. And not surprisingly, wherever the Buhl Foundation funded these improvements, more and more students began using the library.

Boyce wondered how to bring these benefits to the general public — not just college students. “A quiet Crisis” pointed the way. soon, Boyce and Lucchino had envisioned something no library could do alone — a county-wide computer network where residents could search an electronic card catalog listing the materials of every library in the county.

This simple plan faced one enormous complication — an $11 million start-up price tag. But Doreen Boyce had an idea: To fund a county-wide library com-puter system, why not a county-wide fundraising effort?

over lunch, Boyce brought together the city’s leading foundations. By the time dessert arrived, she had commitments for more than half the funding. it fell to Lucchino, once again, to express the urgency to the county librarians in black and white. “Computerization is coming,” he told them. “This is a once in a life-time opportunity to computerize at zero cost to local communities. The train is leaving the station. You’d better get on it.”

Librarians got on board. Today, the network that grew out of this effort serves thousands of requests from residents daily. And total library circulation has increased by 28% since 2001.

By cooperating, the libraries of Allegheny County did something none of them could have done alone. They created one of the first — and largest — computerized library consortia in the nation.

“ACLA was formed at the intersection of crisis and opportunity.”

M. Clare ZalesDeputy Secretary of Education and Commissioner for Libraries

Today, people connect with the library like never before. Easy online searching helps drive more visits to the library, because

patrons can see the resources at every library in the system.

In 1992, many libraries

still communicated

by drafting letters on

manual typewriters.

But when the county

provided a grant for fax

machines, librarians

quickly saw the value

of being connected.

Suddenly, they could

quickly communicate

requests for books, and

even fax copies of

magazine articles. It

was the first tangible

demonstration of the

power of the concept

of county-wide

cooperation.

mpowering A C C e s sUntil ACLA, finding a book could mean trips

to dozens of card catalogs. now it means a single trip to the internet.

e

“ The Allegheny County Library Association continues to be a great resource and asset for our residents. From Knowledge Connections to its Mobile Library Service, ACLA strives to serve all segments of our community in every corner of the County. I’m proud of all that ACLA has accomplished, and I look forward to its continued presence in our neighborhoods.”

Dan OnoratoAllegheny County

Chief Executive

“ I am a strong believer in our libraries and the variety of services they offer to resi-dents of all ages, ranging from Internet classes and tax programs to SAT assistance. The state must do everything possible to sustain our local libraries not only for these reasons, but also because they are certainly an extension of our education system, and benefit our children by supplementing what they learn during school.”

Sean LoganPennsylvania State Senator

“ Libraries are one of the fundamental building blocks of a strong community. Literacy and the love of reading are vital lessons for growing minds. ACLA and its affiliated libraries provide invaluable services to the communities they serve, especially to children and seniors. The wide variety of reading mate-rial, computer access and programming available free of charge at the library are an asset to Allegheny County and its residents.”

John PippyPennsylvania State Senator

At about the time ACLA was being born, so was a concept called rAD.

A radically new idea in government funding, rAD (regional Asset District) grew out of the growing realization that community assets like museums, zoos and sports stadiums were regional in scope — and could not be supported solely by taxing residents of the community where their bricks and mortar happened to be.

To the member libraries of ACLA, this fact was clear: “if anyone is a regional asset, we are. After all, libraries are open to everyone. Libraries may be the quintessential regional asset.” Yet, in comparison to similar metro areas, libraries in Allegheny County ranked last in per capita expenditures.

Having learned the lessons of “A quiet Crisis,” ACLA’s librarians were quiet no more. They lobbied legislators. rallied patrons in Pittsburgh’s Market square. Circulated petitions. And argued — loudly — that their library system was a county-wide asset that deserved rAD funding, too.

ACLA was officially designated a rAD asset. And the steady flow of funding from rAD changed everything.

Before rAD funding, many librarians had to focus on how to pay the bills. rAD allowed them to focus on what librarians do best: ensuring that residents had access to the information and resources they needed, put-ting programs in place that helped the community learn and prosper, and making services available to everyone — even the most disadvantaged. As David Donahoe of rAD put it, “ACLA looked at treating library service regionally not only to make it better for each individual library, but for each individual.”

With rAD in place, ACLA was about to show how much more a library system could really be.

“ Before RAD funding, too many librarians had to be focused on how to pay the light bill, not on delivering more service.”

Jo Ellen KenneyDirector, Carnegie Library of McKeesport

Former President, ACLA

The Quiet Crisis in library funding forced too many librarians to focus on survival. RAD funding enabled ACLA’s libraries to once again focus on better serving their communities.

Creating susTAinABLe FunDing

until ACLA, many librarians worried about how to pay the electric bill. now they’re plugged into a reliable source of funding.

Along with bringing more people to the library, ACLA finds more ways to bring the library to the people who need it most.

Through Mobile Library services, ACLA drives bookmobiles right into our com-munities. ACLA has extended this service across the entire county, as well as boosted service to under-served segments of the community such as pre-schools and senior centers.

seniors are one under-served audience that ACLA works hard to make better served. For example, to help seniors socialize and stay healthy, Highmark’s randy Detweiler started a seniors book club called PALs. seniors loved it. But as the program grew, so did the sheer mechanics of transporting books between clubs. now that ACLA has partnered with Highmark, there are over 20 PALs clubs with more on the way. “We couldn’t have made this program as big by our-selves,” explains randy. “Partnering made the program bigger, faster and easier. Plus it’s just more fun!” The AArP recently recognized the program with an excellence Award.

And, on the other side of the age spectrum, over 28,000 children participate in summer reading programs and activities for kids.

A collection of books inside four walls is one thing. But in ACLA’s view, a library should break down the walls — and be a living, breathing part of its community.

erving THe unserveDuntil ACLA, libraries often struggled simply to stay alive.

Now they’re all finding new ways to reach the communities they serve.

S

ACLA has been nationally

recognized as a Center

of Excellence for Life-

long Learning by the

Americans for Libraries

Council. In addition to

the ACLA/Highmark

PALS book clubs,

ACLA offers many other

programs for seniors,

supported by a dedi-

cated Older Adult Forum

composed of library

professionals who are in-

terested in building Older

Adult programming and

services at their libraries.

The transformational

power of libraries

“Knowledge isn’t filling

a page. It’s lighting a fire.

The library lit a fire for

me,” says disc jockey

Johnny Hartwell. The

library helped Johnny get

started on a career as a

DJ—at a time when he

was struggling to get a

job and raise his young

family. Today, the library

is opening up new worlds

for Johnny’s son with

autism. Audio books

have helped expand his

son’s vocabulary, and

also made him a lover

of—what else for the son

of a DJ?—old-time radio.

“I met these strangers one year ago. Now I have all these friends.”

PALS Book Club Member

ACLA keeps finding new ways to bring the power of books

and learning to everyone. Recently, ACLA helped establish after-school

study centers at 13 homeless shelters.

Through county-wide cooperation, ACLA transformed our community’s libraries. now ACLA is helping our libraries transform the community.

Can reading a single book change a whole region? That’s the idea behind “one Book, one Community,” a program that encourages everyone in our region to read and discuss a single novel. offered yearly, “one Book” even reaches homeless children and parents, through a partnership with the Homeless Children’s education Fund.

reaching out to partner with community groups is one of the things ACLA does best — and often, as the sampling at right shows. Programs like these may not fit how people think about libraries. But that’s just the point. ACLA is re-defining what a community library is.

Could the library be a place where you enjoy coffee and croissants with your prose? it could be — in ACLA’s vision of a library of the future called “Third Place” (the place beyond work and home).

visionary concepts like “Third Place” will require visionary librarians and boards of directors to lead them. To meet this challenge, ACLA, together with the nonprofit Leadership institute, has created a lead-ership development program. Librarians and their Boards learn about attracting volunteers, strategic planning — even how to recruit new board members to mirror the diversity of their community. The program has become a model that’s studied nationwide.

Where will the future lead us? ACLA has accomplished much in its short history, yet there are still many challenges to address. But our county’s libraries will not face these challenges alone. Because of ACLA, they will solve them by working together — using the same model of county-wide cooperation that created our organization. And that transformed a quiet crisis into a model of success.

“ World-class community libraries must think strategically, creating benchmarks and eval-uating best practices to build a best-in-class library system. That kind of excellence is what ACLA fosters.”

Michael KumerExecutive Director, Duquesne University’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute

Re-envisioning T H e L i B r A r Yuntil ACLA, libraries were simply a place for books.

now they’re becoming a “third place” beyond work and home.

ACLA’s “Third Place” envisions what libraries could become in the future—a comfortable, gathering place beyond work and home.

A Sampling of ACLA

Partnerships

The “One Book, One

Community” program

brings our region

together — working with

partners such as Barnes &

Noble, Joseph Beth

Booksellers, Highmark,

and Carlow University.

Operas and symphonies

come alive for families

who might never afford

them — through tie-ins with

the Pittsburgh Opera and

Pittsburgh Symphony.

Seniors become lifelong

learners with the help of

ACLA Faculty — librarians

who share their expertise

in partnership with the

University of Pittsburgh’s

Osher Lifelong Learning

Institute.

Community programs

help residents stay

healthy — through

classes from Working

Hearts, LifeSpan, and the

University of Pittsburgh’s

Institute on Aging.

Fathers become

better dads — through

programming offered

by the National

Fatherhood Initiative.

Re-envisioning T H e L i B r A r Y

ACLA LiBrAries

Andrew Bayne Memorial LibraryAndrew Carnegie Free Library Avalon Public Library Baldwin Borough Public LibraryBethel Park Public Library Braddock Carnegie LibraryBrentwood Library Bridgeville Public LibraryC.C. Mellor Memorial LibraryCarnegie Free Library of swissvaleCarnegie Library of Homestead Carnegie Library of McKeesportCarnegie Library of Pittsburgh Clairton Public LibraryCommunity Library of Allegheny valley Community Library of Castle shannon Coraopolis Memorial LibraryCrafton Public LibraryDormont Public LibraryF.o.r. sto-rox Librarygreen Tree Public Library Hampton Community Library Jefferson Hills Public Library Lauri Ann West Memorial Library Monroeville Public Library

ALLEgHENy COUNTy LIBRARy ASSOCIATION

22 Wabash Street, Suite 203

Pittsburgh, PA 15220

412.921.1123

412.921.0734 (fax)

www.aclalibraries.org

This brochure has

been made possible

by a generous grant

from the Buncher

Family Foundation.

Moon Township Public LibraryMt. Lebanon Public Library north versailles Public Librarynorthern Tier regional Library northland Public Library oakmont Carnegie Library Pleasant Hills Public LibraryPlum Borough Community Library robinson Township Libraryscott Township Public Librarysewickley Public Library shaler north Hills Library south Fayette Township Librarysouth Park Township Library springdale Free Public Libraryupper st. Clair Township Library Western Allegheny Community LibraryWhitehall Public LibraryWilkinsburg Public Library William e. Anderson Library of Penn Hills

oTHer LiBrArY serviCe ouTLeTs

ACLA Mobile Library services

45 Libraries o n e s Y s T e M