Name: Dale Thompson
Occupation: Director of the Providence Public Library
Background: Began her professional library career at the Cupertino Public Library, in Cupertino, California. After leaving California, Thompson worked at the Springfield Public Library in Massachusetts. After a year, she was recruited to the Providence Public Library as assistant director. She held that position from 1982 to 1987, and became director in 1988.
Education: Master’s Degree in Library Science from the former Rosemary College, in Illinois, now Dominican University
Residence: Providence
Family: Married, two children
Age: 56
DALE THOMPSON: ‘We focus on those needs…we can best serve.’
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PBN: Did you always know you wanted to be a librarian?
THOMPSON: Absolutely. My mother took me to the library when I was a little girl for story hour and we always hung out at the libraryalways had my nose in a book. My mother was a great reader and always encouraged me. I can remember one summer we read Gone with the Wind together, I must have been in the fifth grade. The story at home was that I had two older brothers and I always wanted to sit and read, so they had to do my work. It was that kind of thing. She was very encouraging of reading. I went to boarding school in Minnesota and worked in the library. So yes, I always knew that I wanted to be a librarian.
Has the resurgence of downtown had an impact on the main branch of the library?
What’s really exciting, what’s very challenging, what’s really neat are our aspirations to be this world class library — and the incredible diversity within the city and the state.
Providence is a community that is an incredible texture of immigrants, of people who are making the transition from a blue-collar industrial kind of community to sort of a knowledge-based community. You have all of these needs and the library fits right in and can contribute to the growth within the city.
How do you face the challenge of meeting all of these needs?
We try and focus in on those needs that we feel we can best serve. One of the strengths of the library is the fact that we have a number of locations. We have ten locations and the Web. There are many ways of getting to the Providence Public Library, but the real strength is that we have all of those locations in the neighborhoods. What we have done is identified perhaps the most important need that we meet in the neighborhoods that we are there and open and available after school so we provide an intellectually stimulating environment after school. We then identified the most important programs that are needed in those communities, so we have literacy programs, we have early childhood program, support for education We are right there in the community, available to the community – meeting the needs of the residents.
How do the branches work together?
We operate as a system. The branches could not exist without the central library and the central library is certainly able to provide much better service because of the branches. So we all work together. In a very practical way how that works out sometimes, is program development. We will develop programs and try them out here in the central library, and then as we work those programs out we can move them to the branches.
Often, people think of the library primarily as a place to check out books. Does the addition of all these programs change the role of the library?
Yes, definitely. What we try to do is to identify the needs of groups of people whether it’s school children, or parents and try to formulate our delivery of service to meet those particular needs. We develop programs to meet those needs, we develop collections of materials to meet those needs. That is the direction public libraries are going. The way I view it is a constant reaching out to the community, to find out the needs, and then find out ways we can reach out to them. By reaching out we bring them in; we bring them into the resources that we have. But we have to identify what those needs are, then we have to make those needs known, and to that extent we are no different than any other business. We have a business plan, a strategic plan, a marketing plan, and plans to reach out to the community. The goal is to make this a two-way street where we are getting information about those needs, and we are then able to take that information, develop these programs and services, and then market those to the community. So, we are no different than any other business.
How is the library funded?
We are a private, non-profit corporation. We are independently chartered by the state of Rhode Island and have been since 1875. It’s one of the things that is very interesting about this library. I think there is a misconception that we are part of the city because our name is the Providence Public Library. We are public library for the city of Providence, and 35 percent of our budget comes from the city. We are also designated in law as the statewide reference resource center, so another 20 percent of our funding comes from the state of Rhode Island. That 20 percent is made up of funding for our role as the statewide reference resource center. The state also provides funding to all public libraries in the state. We get 30 percent of our funding from our endowment, 10 percent of our budget comes through fundraising and the remaining 5 percent comes through other sources. All of those are important aspects of what we do. We do on an annual basis go to city hall, to the finance committee and present our program of finance to the city. Because we do that, it keeps us in very close contact with the community, and if the community didn’t feel we were meeting its needs, we wouldn’t have the support of the community that we do. I think that is one of the most gratifying things here at the library — the incredible feeling the community has for the library. What we look for is for operating costs to come from the city and state — and the endowment then gives us that margin to become the best possible library.
How does the endowment work?
Our funding from the endowment is based on a formula and we take 6 percent of the average of the previous three years value of the endowment for operating. Our aspirations are to be a world-class library, and the fact that we have an endowment should allow us to achieve that. We aren’t at that level now. The situation right now is that we aren’t at the level of service that we would like to be at. A number of our locations are not open on Saturdays, and if we are going to be able to provide the rich resources we have in support of education, we need to be open evenings and Saturdays.
Does the endowment ever work against you during the state and city budget process?
I don’t know for sure, but that is a possibility.
How has the role of technology in the library changed?
First of all, we view technology as a tool, a way of providing information, and that’s the business libraries are in – delivering information. There is this incredible tool for helping us do our job better. So what we’ve done is make a real strong commitment to technology both in providing information in more or less the traditional roles and in making sure technology is available to those in the community that don’t have access to technology. So we have provided electronic resources, workstations, computer labs at all of our locations, and made those readily available. Not only do we make them available, but we also provide training for use on the computer. One of things that technology has done, is bring people to the library. So business is booming at the library in many different ways. In accessing our resources, the statistics on the number of people who come in via our Web site and use the electronic databases that we have. We have more than 1,000 people a month using the Web site. It’s true that the technology draws people in – once people are in the library, many of our programs are traditional book-oriented by design. Technology is just another way of doing what the library has traditionally done. But we have made a commitment that we will provide the latest technology. One of the things we do — and we are very grateful to the Champlin Foundation for — is that on an annual basis we upgrade our equipment to bridge the digital divide – the information gap.
Financially, what’s the cost of technology, and how do you manage that cost?
It’s definitely something that we have to accommodate for, and will have to plan more carefully for in the future. But to give you an example, three years ago in our materials budget, which covers books, compact discs, magazines, there was no line for electronic databases. Now we spend $120,000 or more just on the electronic databases. It’s now 10 to 15 percent of our budget, whereas before it didn’t even exist. Just as this library has to pay attention to the physical conditions of our buildings and maintain our buildings, we need to also maintain this other capital in a sense – technology. It’s definitely going to be a part of our budget moving forward.
Libraries around the state are grappling with the idea of regulating Internet use because of children accessing inappropriate sites. What is your position on regulation?
We do have an Internet access policy and in regards to children, parents do have to sign a permission slip for their children to use the Internet. Part of what we provide to parents is that there is an incredible amount of information and stuff on the Internet and not all of it is something they would want their children to look at. So, they have to say that it is okay for their children knowing that there are such issues. Just as we don’t buy pornography or provide pornography, we monitor as much as we are able to, the use of the Internet in regards to that. I guess it’s called a ‘tap on the shoulder policy’ – that it’s not allowed.
What are some of the services the library can provide small business owners?
We do have a businesses services librarian, and she works hard at just that type of thing. She has been working on a series on starting your own business seminars and collecting the kind of information a small business owner would need. We do a lot of information for small businesses: job hunting, such as business plans, where to find a manufacturer, and sources of venture capital funding.
What is the single greatest challenge facing the library?
I think it’s technology and the amount of changes it has brought, and the opportunities it’s provided for the library, making sure that everybody has access is quite a challenge.
What about staffing. Are college graduates coming out with library science degrees, or do you see a shortage of librarians?
I think that a shortage is a looming issue for libraries. It’s not just this library, but libraries across the country are looking at large numbers of people retiring in the next five to ten years, and the number of graduates coming out the library schools and wondering how are we going to staff the libraries. It’s not so much an issue now, but it will be an important one for us.
What would you consider the single greatest treasure of the library?
For me the whole library is an incredible gem, and I would be hard pressed to say what is the most important thing. One of the things thing that I absolutely have to say is that the staff we have here at the library is the greatest resource. They are so knowledgeable and so professional; they give the information away to people. To have that level of commitment from our staff is one of the greatest things.
