Nyquist Article

Nyquist begins his article by reviewing of what he calls trends which effect librarianship. The first, “interlocking complexity,” is actually a trend and refers to public libraries co-operating with different levels of government, private institutions and schools in order to obtaining funding, reach more patrons and also improve educational services for all organizations involved. I think it’s easy to agree with the merits this kind of setup as Nyquist portrays it but the fact that forty years after he wrote this article the kind of co-operation he envisioned is not a reality shows it more easily said than done. Perhaps that is why he doesn’t offer advice or a concrete example of how to go about achieving “interlocking complexity.”

The two other trends of urbanization and racial integration become part of a discussion about how the library can help combat poverty and racism and also promote education and multiculturalism. Nyquist gives examples of New York state library services that meet these ends and provides a list of things to keep in mind for your own library. Nyquist puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of making the community aware of what the library has to offer and even mentions Community Coordinators whose job it was to be “salesmen” for the library. He also suggests bringing in a specialist to offer a professional outside opinion on creating new library services with respect to the community. Nyquist’s attitude seemed to be that getting traditional non-users into the library was the hard part but once they were there they would keep coming back. Nyquist was probably right in assuming that attracting new users, which involves encouraging changes in behavior, would be more difficult for a library than providing popular books and easy to read materials for adults.