The Small Public Library Survival Guide: Thriving on Less

Citation

Osorio, M.A. (2010), "The Small Public Library Survival Guide: Thriving on Less", Collection Building, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 163-163. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604951011094405

Herbert B. Landau is the Director of the Milanof‐Schock Library in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. He has over 30 years of corporate marketing, finance, public relations and human relations experience; has written more than 100 papers; helped his library win numerous local, regional and national awards. In addition, he writes a regular news and commentary column for the local newspaper.

This is a very timely book for librarians everywhere who must deal with the fallout from the worldwide financial crisis. With library budgets being reduced, Landau provides many alternatives to securing resources to supplant what has been lost. He himself led his struggling library with insufficient funds to become The Best Small Library in America (2006). His sharing of his expertise gives librarians ideas, techniques and proven examples on how to prosper in difficult circumstances. That you can mould your library into a state‐of‐the‐art organization with creative tactics gives much needed encouragement to the cohorts of library workers that devote their lives to the betterment of their communities.

The Small Public Library Survival Guide is not about how to run your daily operations but instead gives the tools needed for defining the community's library service needs, developing a responsive program, generating the resources necessary to support this program, and promoting the library and its programs to patrons and funding organizations. With that in mind, this work is a practical guide for such topics as non‐cash support, grants, benefit events, ongoing marketing, staffing, and buying at bargain prices. There are eight appendices that also have valuable information about survey questions, direct mail solicitation letters, evaluating old and rare books, a memorial gift form, a custom research letter, a contract agreement, press release guidelines, plus sample by‐laws for friends of the library groups. This book includes a selected bibliography of topics related to the administration of small libraries. An index is found at the end of the book.

It is aimed at small libraries serving populations of 25,000 or less; however, any library of any size or type can profit from the multitude of insights gained through reading this work. The Small Public Library Survival Guide is recommended for all public libraries.