From the Editor
by Michael McGrorty
August 2004
As I write these words, a pair of young men are outside my window, turning tricks on their skateboards in the street. It is a bright, sunny afternoon; the sky is especially blue. In the other direction a squadron of hummingbirds chirp and bustle for positions at the feeder; below, my terriers stretch themselves in the sun. A Sunset Magazine sort of afternoon: it is summer in California and if you only read the sports pages you'd think life was perfect.
We are a bit short of perfection in the library world these days, but here in California, as any Steinbeck fan knows, the sun shone brightly even through the Depression. The weather is a balm to a host of life's miseries. Up in Sacramento the perennial battle over the budget appears to be over, at least for the time being. We have taken to pushing off our problems to the future rather than solving them, solutions being rather more difficult and politically unappealing.
One problem that seems to have been solved is the identity of the next State Librarian. The wait ended with the appointment of former San Francisco librarian Susan Hildreth, our very own CLA President, who had nearly defected to Arizona before the word of her appointment came through. The contrast between Kevin Starr and Hildreth is between a much-revered scholar-librarian and a hard-nosed municipal librarian - their talents as different as night and day. Hildreth has the pleasant manner of a children's librarian at story-time, beneath which facade lies a brass-knuckles resolve to do whatever needs to be done. Her last post was presiding over that permanent circus they call the San Francisco Public Library, where you are likely to find folks lined up in tinfoil hats at library board meetings to complain about cosmic rays. She will probably handle anything Sacramento can dish out - we all hope so, for her sake and ours.
I have always been of a mind that California is entirely too big for a single librarian to supervise and monitor. Perhaps our new State Librarian could discover some way to assign folks at either end of the state to provide outreach. What we need is a touch of the office in the hinterlands on a regular basis. Any suggestions as to method would be welcomed, and let me know what you think.