Monday May 18: Library board candidates, four vie for one seat

Library Director Pam Thornton with (left to right) David Shields, Werner Renberg and Leo Sheer
UPDATE: May 18, 2009
by Christine Yeres

The League of Women Voters Candidates’ Night last Thursday brought about 20 people to the Chappaqua Library theatre to hear one school board candidate and three library board candidates make statements, answer questions, and make closing statements. One current town board member, Robin Stout, and two library board members, Evelyn Bloom and Barbara Lowenthal, were present.

The three library board candidates who appeared Thursday night are Leo Sheer, Werner Renberg and David Shields. [A fourth library board candidate, Khusro Elley, was unable to attend the evening forum; his name will appear on the ballot; all four candidates’ statements appear in the League of Women Voters’ 2009 Voters Guide.]

For NCCTV’s schedule of replays—as well as a link to the “video on demand”—of Candidates’ Night, click here.

In his opening statement Leo Sheer, a lawyer, described his familiarity with producing budgets for operations and capital needs for subsidiaries of CIT Group. He added that he was a member of the board of directors for his co-op board in New York City before moving to Chappaqua 14 years ago. He believes that his expertise will be an asset to the board especially regarding capital needs.
 
Werner Renberg, a 36-year resident of New Castle, has worked as a news correspondent covering business and state and local government and has written several books on investment topics. As both a patron and a taxpayer, he was pleased, he said, with the abundance of resources and the friendliness of the staff. He attributed the unprecedented growth in library use to current economic difficulties and said that the library should continue to “vigorously spread the word about what is available within these walls.”

David Shields, the third candidate, told the audience that he was running for the library board seat to be supportive of the library. As a professional software programmer since 1965, he worked at IBM until recently, developing open source software. He was scheduled for an interview with Google the next day, and told the audience that he would spend his spare time helping librarians to work with Google more effectively and to build libraries.  “By the way,” he said, “the internet is the largest library,” and “has rendered library science obsolete.”

Questions posed by the league and candidates’ responses

Q: What impact will the increased library use in the last year have on the budget and the services the library should offer?

Sheer said that he understood that some residents are trying to form a library foundation to help fund the library. He believes that the only real way to meet increased needs is increased use of community volunteers, adding, “There are many people in the community who would be willing to help.”

Renberg responded that so far this year’s budget impacts seemed to have been cushioned by contributions plus the use of some monies from the previous year, which might not be able to be relied upon next year. He wasn’t sure, he said, whether this increased use of the library translated into increased expense.

Shields told the audience that he hadn’t retired from IBM, but had been laid off.  “These are hard times; librarians are among those who know it most, they become de facto therapists and advisors.” He said that part of the value of the library now was its ability to show people how to use available resources.

Q: An audience member asked why the candidates were interested in running and why they had not attended any library board meetings in the past.

Sheer told the audience that, like Shields’, his retirement had been suggested to him, before he was ready, so he had the time to devote to the library board. Since he has no children in the school system, the school board position doesn’t make sense, he said. He believes that the current board is doing an excellent job and cited his fiduciary abilities as an asset for the library. He has attended one library board meeting.

Renberg said that it hadn’t occurred to him to run until a friend had suggested it. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t occur to him to run for office if there were no obvious problems.

Shields responded that he had gotten involved in education initiatives three years ago and believes that “we have less than 50 years to repair the damage man has done to the earth, before earth will just reject mankind.” These problems can only be solved by sharing information, he believes. And in that endeavor, “the most important company is Google,” he asserted.

Q: Are you willing to consider adding a drive-through-friendly book drop-off?  Now you have to park to drop them, but the lot is frequently full.

Sheer believes that since cars are not even allowed to stop on the circle, the physical plant of the library would have to be changed to allow a book-drop from the car.

Renberg concurred with Scheer that it might need capital funds.

Shields proffered that his thesis advisor had taught him that “anytime someone proposed something that sounded reasonable he said ‘yes.’  If it worked, he got the credit; if it failed, he told someone who worked for him to fix it.”

Q: Would you consider adding more parking?  And if employees of the library are using the library parking spaces, could they park at town hall instead?

Sheer told the audience that library employees are already encouraged to park on the street in front of the library so that parking lot spaces would be freed up for patrons.  He assumed, he said, that the town hall lot was filled with police and town staff vehicles.

Renberg responded that every entity in town felt the parking shortage.

Shields said, “if there are empty spaces across the street, sure, why not?” He noted that, as a sign of hard times, in the last few months the parking lot has been especially full at all times.

Q: What are your long range plans for the library?

Sheer saw the library’s future as dependent on encouraging more volunteerism in the community. He said too that although the library’s children’s programming is commendable, he wanted to see greater outreach to older members of the community. He noted that although the large bond issue of several years ago had been defeated, “three or five years out we may have to consider expansion.”

Renberg suggested that improved coordination within the Westchester Library System had the potential for saving money in book acquisition. He said that he believed it was the responsibility of the library to provide computer and internet access to people without it. He envisioned “people who are not working teaching others how to access data bases and thereby save on staff.”  Matching funds from employers might be a possible source of revenue in the future as well.

Shields responded: “to find out what is the role of libraries in the digital age,” and went on to describe a friend who had graduated from Columbia Teachers College 30 years ago after studying library science. She told him recently that the internet had changed everything.  Now, he said, the questions to ask were: What education should our staff have? What should they know about education? How do we train those who don’t know how to use computers? How should we introduce children to computers, to manage the internet?  How to collaborate with other libraries? How to exploit what’s free from Google and not buy redundant hard copies of books?  What are the best search engines besides Google?

Q: Would you be willing to survey patrons of the library to see if they have suggestions or add a suggestion box?

Sheer and Renberg both vouched for the friendliness and accessibility of the library staff and director, Pam Thornton, who was always willing to hear the minds of patrons.

Shields suggested that the library might have “a blog done by the librarians,” or a wiki, or Twitter, as he does.

Q: What does each of you like best and think is most successful at the library and what you think is least successful?

Renberg thought the interlibrary loan program might be improved.  “Some aspects of it work beautifully and you can have the book in your hands almost immediately; other things seem to take forever.”

Shields felt thankful to “the people who 30 years ago created the front space to expand into,” as well as the beautiful interior and its lighting. He cited programs such as the recent panel discussion on transgender issues, the foreign policy discussion group as successful programs Overdue fines might be an area, he said, in which the library might reconsider its rates, citing a case of an acquaintance who had paid a $45 fine on a $20 DVD. That is “far more than other libraries; a dollar a day makes no sense, especially in hard times when people need entertainment.”

Sheer had nothing to add to his colleagues comments.

Q: What do you see as the role of new technology in the library, like Kindle,, and how should the library’s policies be adjusted, if at all?

Sheer responded that he wouldn’t devote any capital funds to buying machines from Amazon, but that “if Amazon would like to donate machines, that’s a different story.”

Renberg found the “enforced obsolescence” of current technology disturbing. Without knowing the details or cost, he said, he would stabilize the present patronage and make sure they know how to use what we now have.  As it’s updated, they can learn the next stage. He would, he said, “perhaps invest funds for staff to teach people to use it. Right now I’d like to saturate the present needs of the population.”

Shields praised the traditional book, 500 years old, portable, durable, able to be opened to any page, marked, written on. He noted that only 10% of the library’s $2.2 million budget is dedicated to book acquisition.  He posited that the library might buy fewer copies of best sellers. Shields described the extraordinary storage capabilities of computers, saying that he could build “a very good, almost super computer for $250, if you use open source; you can now buy Terabyte, that’s a million characters of storage for under $100,” and fit it all on a flash drive at very little cost.  He concluded that there were “a lot of interesting problems here. Thinking about libraries is enormously challenging, it’s a very interesting intellectual area.”

Closing statements

Sheer closed by stating that the library was very well run and a valuable resource for the community.  “I want to do everything in my power make it more valuable to the community, to encourage greater participation. I think, unfortunately, we live in a culture today where reading is increasingly something that children are not doing enough of. They’re in front of the TV for too many hours. I’d like to see them sitting with a book or even a Kindle in their hands, looking at the written word. I will do all in my power to encourage that. I’ll try to spend the money of the community as frugally as possible, and get the biggest bank for the buck.”

Renberg took a look back to muse that the founders of the library could never have imagined in 1879 the present ease and speed of accessibility to information that we now have. He described the library as “a resource that helps us all learn what we want to know and stumble onto things that we did not know we might want to know.”  Further, he noted, the library enabled patrons to find jobs and to cope in other ways with the economic challenges of the present and to plan and dream for the future.  “The library must be prepared to accommodate our community’s needs. I promise to do what I can to help in that direction.”

Shields described his early years in Albuquerque, raised by a single mother who possessed a vast vocabulary and worked as a typist and secretary.  He didn’t have a place with a phone of his own until he was a junior in college, no television until he won one in a raffle when he was 12, and no family car until he was 16.  “I spent my childhood on foot, bike and bus, going from school to library to home. I read tens of thousands of books because I had learned by a technique called ‘speed reading’ to read 2,000 words a minute when I was 15, so no place means more to me than the library, save home itself.”

For NCCTV’s schedule of replays—as well as a link to the “video on demand”—of Candidates’ Night, click here.