Libraries are places visitors should experience

H. Jack Martin returned to the Providence Public Library more than a decade after he first worked there as an art and music clerk, taking the helm this past January as executive director.
At 39, he straddles the worlds of traditional rooms full of books and periodicals and today’s modernized library, where Internet interactivity and gathering-place functions are more commonplace.
He discusses his role in helping craft the library’s new strategic plan, final details of which are expected to be released this month.

PBN: Before you even got a look at the strategic plan, how did you envision your role in helping shape it?
MARTIN: Throughout the interview process for this job last fall, it became clear that the trustees were interested in doing something very different from what they had done in the past. My background is primarily in education and libraries. So, I personally think that the public library of the future … needs to shift from this passive, grocery store model, where someone comes in, checks out a book and leaves, to a kitchen model where somebody comes in and experiences something. They meet people and create something or learn something or build something as a result of that experience. That has been the underlying theory we used this [past] summer to create the strategic plan.

PBN: So what changes are envisioned?
MARTIN: The biggest change people are going to see starting in the spring is more educational programs. We’re going to be rethinking our spaces in the library in terms of programmatic space, for people to gather together and learn together.
For example, the fifth floor of the library which has never been opened to the public … this [past] summer we cleaned it up and we now call it the “learning lounge.” It’s where adults who need access to technology to find a job or do their resume can come and use technology to get information they need to succeed. Also this [past] summer, we had a program called the Teen Tech Squad. We had nine teenagers from all over Providence use iPads to research the history of the neighborhoods of their choice and then build websites that exhibited what they found in the Rhode Island Collection. These programs will be expanded into the spring.

PBN: What other major facilities updates are in the plan and how will you implement them?
MARTIN: We underwent major renovations a couple of years ago and renovated the older spaces to create event spaces. And now we’re working with a team of architectural students from Roger Williams University to rethink what our public spaces look like. The student projects will be done in December. The architects who oversaw the previous renovations are teaching the classes for the RWU students. We’ll be considering the students’ and our own ideas to hopefully have a master plan by the fall of 2015.

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PBN: How are you reprioritizing from passive lending and borrowing services to interactive digital services?
MARTIN: They go hand in hand. We will be focusing much more on digital materials, but we also know that there are lots of Rhode Islanders out there who still prefer to use physical materials. So, it’ll be more of a slow, gradual shift. In terms of reprioritizing, we’ll be focused more on creating programmatic experience. We’ll still have materials to take out, but we’ll be building out our menu of educational programs.

PBN: Name some of the “gee-whiz” gadgetry referenced in the plan that the library may introduce. MARTIN: We’re referring to building out the fifth floor of the library as a maker space. We’re hoping to put all sorts of technology, everything from computers and laptops – some libraries have a recording studio, [to] 3-D printers, laser cutters and sewer machines – all kinds of things like that for people to make things together and learn together.

PBN: The plan also calls for low-cost experimentation that can be phased in when it works. For example?
MARTIN: The creation of the learning lounge on the fifth floor is a pretty innovative use. We basically cleared out that space for a couple thousand dollars for the public to come in and use it.
In the spring of 2015, we’re hoping to launch a major exhibition on Rhode Island music and one of the concepts we’re toying with is, within our collections, we have brass-band scores that have never been performed before. We want to invite musicians to come in and perform them and re-create what they might have sounded like in the past. … We really want to invite people to come in and create experiences around our materials.

PBN: How will the library handle the cost that comes with change?
MARTIN: The library is a private nonprofit so we depend upon donations, grants and supporters.
What we’ll be doing is increasing the number of opportunities for funders to support us. We are in the midst of creating the Lumiere Society, a group of supporters young or young-at-heart, and we have an enthusiastic committee of supporters eager to launch this. We’re having an inaugural event this month. So we’re creating new opportunities and building on our own internal capacity to raise money. •

INTERVIEW
H. Jack Martin
POSITION: Executive director of the Providence Public Library
BACKGROUND: Born in Clarkesville, Ga., north of Atlanta, H. Jack Martin loved libraries from an early age and worked at the Providence Public Library from 1999 to 2001 as an art and music clerk in the downtown library and as a children’s specialist at Washington Park and the South Providence libraries. When he left Providence, he spent 11 years in a series of positions of increasing responsibility in the New York Public Library system, where he was most recently assistant director for public programs and lifelong learning. He became executive director of the Providence Public Library in January.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s in English and drama from the University of Georgia at Athens, 1998; master’s in library and information science from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., 2003
FIRST JOB: Checking and shelving books at the local public library in Cornelia, Ga.
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 39

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