Getting Down to Business with Taos Public Library

Few public institutions are as loved as the public library. Out of a county of more than 30,000 people, about 7,000 of them use the library devoutly. In the course of a year, those people check out 117,000 items (books, DVDs, audio books) — nearly double the entire 65,000-item collection. The Taos News talked with Shirley Fernandez, director of Taos Public Library, to break down these numbers and talk about what it takes to keep the books moving and lights on at the literary heart of Taos.

Let’s kick this interview off with a bit about yourself.

I was born and raised here in Taos. I was gone for 25 years. When I returned, I worked here and there. I started [at the library] as an administration assistant and 3 1/2 years ago, I became the director. I’ve been at the library 14 years. I love my job.

What do you do as the director?

It’s mostly supervisory. I do collection and development, manage the budget and try to develop programming that will help our community. And a lot of customer service. I do a little of everything, as most of the staff does. We all have to. We all work the desk, do some form of collection management, whether it’s weeding or processing. Almost every item that comes through needs us to look at it for one reason or another.

How many employees do you have?

There’s 10 full-timers and one part-timer. We are open to the public 48 hours a week.

What do all of your volunteers do?

Mostly, the volunteers get books back on the shelves. One volunteer just does “shelf reading,” going through the library a section and shelf at a time to keep the books in order. Our patrons will browse, pick it up and think they’re putting it in the right spot. But sometimes it’s a few [spaces] off or the shelf below or above [the correct place]. If a book gets mis-shelved somewhere and we can’t find it, [we have to wait] until someone eventually pulls it out.

And because Taos was an artists colony, the collection [of art books] is really astounding. I’m not an expert, so we use some volunteers who are former employees who know our patrons and collection [to cull those books].

Let’s talk numbers: How many books are in here?

We’ve got 65,000 items, and that includes movies and CDs. Not everything circulates. The Southwest Collection – you have to look at that here in the library – it’s local authors and books about Taos that are kind of hard to come by, and that’s why they aren’t allowed out of the library. Circulation was approximately 117,000 last year.

Holy moly, that’s more than I’d expect. How many people are checking out that many items?

The average is 500 people a day. Fridays and Saturdays, it’s a little bit less, but Monday and Tuesdays – we’re swamped. Some people ... only check out just one item at a time and others ... use their whole limit of 10. I have 14,000 cardholders and only half are active — and that’s someone who’s used the library in the last three years. Our legal service community is the town of Taos (about 5,600 people), but we serve the whole county of 32,000. The last I checked, it’s two county residents for every town resident. The ones who use it really use it.

What’s your budget look like?

Mostly, funding comes from the town of Taos, which is over $600,000 a year. That mostly covers salaries and benefits for our staff, utilities, maintenance for the building. About $22,000 goes for books and subscriptions. We get another $25,000 from Friends of the Library, a nonprofit organization that raises funds just for the library. Only $7,000 comes from the state in grants and aid. And the bond issued passed in November, so we’ll get about $30,000 from that, too, though we can’t count on it on a regular basis because it’s based on voter approval.

I have to ask — how much do you get from fines?

From that, paying for damaged items and also our printing services, about $26,000.

How do you decide how much of your budget goes to digital services?

We keep hearing about libraries in California and [on the] East Coast closing. They’re saying libraries aren’t being used anymore, but that’s not the case. A lot of things are being accessed electronically. But in Taos, I can’t allocate that much to digital because my patrons are computer illiterate, even though everything else is going digital.

We have 18 computers that are for public use, and they are used heavily. We try to upgrade our computers every three or four years, but as you know, everything technological becomes obsolete as soon as you buy it. I’m looking at getting “hot spots” for patrons to check out because the internet is not as readily available as we’d like it to be. There’s a lot of people who’d like to have internet at home, but don’t have it because of connectivity issues. More and more things are only being offered digitally — job applications, Social Security, taxes.

As a book lover, how on earth do you decide which books to keep and get rid of?

We are constantly going through the collection. That’s what “weeding” does. We take a section at a time and use the statistics — a standard method for libraries — to check and see if it’s still being used.

If a book becomes damaged, that will take it out. Water damage is the big one. Even if it looks like it’s dried out, there can be mold that’s still there and it can spread [to the rest of the library]. We’re working really heard to take any water-damaged books out of the library.

And we pull out anything that’s out of date. The medical books are harder because they aren’t being printed anymore, but my community isn’t that computer literate. I don’t want to keep something that’s not accurate on the shelf. So do we keep it in there because we can’t find anything else?

Do you lend Kindle books?

Yes. I can’t thank the prior director enough for having the vision to get that. It’s really expensive to do, but as a consortium with 25 other rural libraries in New Mexico, we can share the audio books and digital versions in that collection of about 7,000 items.

We also lease [physical] books. The library gets about 30 new best-sellers every month, so we hold on to them until we don’t need them anymore. Most of the time, one copy is enough.

So it’s sort of like the Kindle Unlimited or any other subscription service, just scaled up for the library?

I want to say it’s around $6,000 a year and we’re allowed to keep [about] 600 items at a time.

What’s your favorite part of the library?

I happen to like audio books. You can’t go wrong with the “Harry Potter” series. The last one I listened to was “Gone Girl.” I read the book, then listened to the audio book, then watched the movie. All three give you a totally different take. Read it first because it’s your imagination.

What programs do you have going on and what would you say is the most successful?

We have a couple giveaways of Dr. Seuss books for kids in the winter to keep them interested in reading. There’s the summer reading program for kids and teens. The Friends of the Library has been very gracious to help us out with the summer lecture series.

The computer classes were actually the most successful program. We need to teach those very basic skills — it’s surprising how many people don’t even know how to use a mouse. It was a two-week program that ran a couple of different times. I just don’t have the money to pay an instructor.

And what about something that hasn’t worked so well?

We’re having the most problems attracting the teenage years. Seniors are big proponents of the library. But it’s that 20-30 age group. … I’m not sure how to get them in here. Once they become parents, they’re back in. But without kids, they must be doing their reading somewhere else.

Is 2017 going to bring any big changes or initiatives?

We are looking at rearranging where our computers are now. We did self-checkout kiosks last year, so the companion is the self-check-in. I’m hoping to get enough funding to get that done. I get really good comments [on the self-checkout] and a few people who think it’ll take our job away — it won’t. Of course, some people come in just for the [socializing], so if you need us, just look. We’re here.