Public Input Sought on Library Services

Looking into the future, will readers cruise the stacks and delve into tomes for information, or jack into computers to feed their imaginations? Will libraries hold books, or CD-ROMS? In a cyber-era, what will libraries--and librarians--be?

These are the kinds of questions Ventura residents are invited to discuss this morning at a town hall meeting on libraries in council chambers at City Hall, 501 Poli St.

The meeting from 9 to 11:30 a.m. will culminate weeks of discussions--held in focus groups of three to nine people--about what residents want their libraries to be.

“We’ve heard all kinds of interesting stuff,” said Beverley Simmons, a library consultant from San Francisco hired by the city to formulate a library plan. “It’s apparent . . . that a library can be the heart of this city. It represents the pride of the community.”

These days that pride is receiving less and less budgetary support.

Ventura libraries have traditionally been run by the county’s library agency, but in recent years the agency’s budget has been slashed, cutting staff, hours of operation and new book acquisitions.

In an effort to keep its cash-strapped libraries open, Ventura has already pledged to supplement the diminishing county budget with $270,000 of city money. The money helped to keep the three city libraries open longer and kept the Avenue library from closing completely.

But this morning’s meeting is not to talk about present inadequacies, says Simmons. It is to talk about the future.

With new technology to retrieve information, libraries are changing, and people are more concerned about facilities than services, Simmons said. Librarians of the future will be cy-brarians, she quipped.

“With technology you get the idea of a library without walls,” she said. “You can expand the resource base to the World Wide Web, which can take you anywhere . . . and librarians are your knowledge navigators.”

The meeting will be broadcast live on cable channel 6.