After more than 11 years as the first full-time president of the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), Eleanor Jo (Joey) Rodger announced earlier this year that, at 63, she would begin a new job in September as the founding director of the Pendle Hill Peace Network, a new national interfaith agency based in Philadelphia.

Rodger served as executive director of the Public Library Association (a division of the American Library Association [ALA]) from 1986 to 1992 and previously worked in libraries as chief of State Network Services at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and as coordinator of Evaluation and Information Development at the Fairfax County Public Library, VA, among other jobs.

Founded in 1971, ULC now has about 140 members, including libraries serving populations of 100,000 or more and corporations that work with those institutions. Rodger is particularly proud of helping ULC create a "respectful, helpful community of practice," of developing an Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) to train emerging leaders over three years, and of encouraging members to be "urban players," not merely advocates.

LJ's Oder talked to Rodger, speaking from her office in Evanston, IL, about some challenges and controversies facing libraries, how new urban library directors are bred, and what tenets she thinks the library establishment should reexamine.

LJ: What should leaders at urban and large libraries be focusing on in the next five to ten years?

JR: Staffing is one huge issue. I would hope we could find more flexibility in hiring. We have new kinds of work to do and need to think carefully about what those jobs really require.

So an MLS is less important?

The work in urban libraries will continue to be the organization of knowledge, but it will also be public service, public administration, the place of the library in a community, and the technology of information systems. People doing specialized work in libraries need specialized degrees: academic qualifications in adult literacy or childhood development, for example. Everyone doesn't need an MLS.

You say librarians should be aware of how the lives of users and potential users are changing.

What kinds of technology do users have? What languages do they speak? What innovations in science and medicine might they need or want to solve problems in their lives? What kind of customer service do they expect? Our libraries are not organized for the most part for the levels of customer convenience people find in retail establishments.

How should libraries be organized?

For a start, our signage should make sense to all customers right away! "Ask a Librarian" is clear; "Reference" is not. We should tell people where various books are with words, not just numbers. Would you shop in a grocery store where you needed a number to find the oatmeal? We should have several different kinds of space in our buildings—comfortable seating, places for small group work and for private work, places that encourage interaction among customers. That's beginning to come back, particularly in some of our newer buildings. Finally, we could appear less punitive and rulebound. For example, we could let customers pay ahead of time for an "extended loan period" rather than fine them if the book or video isn't returned on time.

So it's OK to pay for some library services?

We are stuck in a limited framework. We have used the presence or absence of fees as the sole indicator of service equity. Free services in a library funded at $12 per capita are not equal to those in a library funded at $75 per capita. Because of our commitment to free services, we have offered people one service pattern: invest your time and we'll make our resources available. We have not given people the opportunity to invest their money and buy convenience [such as paying for book delivery]. In many families, there is more money than time.

Libraries are eager to provide Amazon-like customer services to users, but this means collecting, storing, and manipulating user data. ALA opposes such retention of patron data. How should this be resolved?

Library customers should be given the choice of whether they want this higher level of service, knowing the possible privacy compromises. Why should we decide for them all? We live in an era of technology-enabled "mass customization."

We periodically see nonlibrarians chosen to lead urban libraries. Why?

The drivers seem to be library board members or elected officials who tend to want reassuring business skills and expertise in the management of large complex organizations in times of change. It's a very difficult skill set to learn in an urban library, where staff development is directed at making better librarians. The second desired skill set is the ability to lead customer-centered decision-making throughout the organization, rather than tradition-centered decision-making. The final factor I hear from foundation staff as well as from political leaders is that some nonlibrarians, if they are in positions of community leadership already, can walk into the library director position with civic clout, which is crucial for raising private money as well as for successful public funding. Our ELI Fellows learned how to gain such civic clout. Some do it naturally. But it's kind of counterintuitive for many who enter a self-effacing service organization like a public library.

What do you think about ALA's effectiveness as a lobby and as an organization?

ALA, working in partnership with others, has obviously been very effective in getting federal support for libraries. I have personally differed with ALA's position on some other issues, notably filtering. [Note: ULC does not take policy positions on such matters.] We as a profession did not understand the Internet. We went to our old convictions about access and censorship without understanding that this new technology was something totally different, and we missed the opportunity at the beginning to sit down with parents, creators of software, and community leaders and say, "How shall we fold this new technology into libraries and still ensure that they are good places for children?"

Does this mean you support the Children's Internet Protection Act?

If we had been more skillful in understanding the concerns of parents, it would have made the Children's Internet Protection Act unnecessary. Families could have chosen safe access for their children, without the rather unrealistic assumption that every child be accompanied by his or her parent when they're in the library. Policies on Internet access need to reflect local communities. Local public libraries do not belong to ALA or to the librarians. They belong to the local communities.

Are some libraries limited by old decisions such as where branches should be located?

I am much more concerned about limitations rooted in old ways of thinking. Geno Schnell [of ELI] observed that our professional strengths have flip sides that have become weaknesses. For instance, our high value on collegiality and sharing keeps us from challenging the decisions of colleagues and friends. It's not a question of closing branches—almost a political impossibility—so much as repurposing them to support community learning.

What would you like to change about urban librarianship?

I would have us be bolder, as advocates for knowledge and learning, not simply as advocates for libraries but for schools, museums, public broadcasting as well. We're all in the learning business. I'd like us to be bold in saying to every parent of a newborn child, at the library we can help you be an effective parent and so can the visiting nurse and the staff of the local children's museum.

How could librarians think expansively about the future?

At ULC we're talking with the Global Business Network, where scenario planning was invented. In the past, public libraries have made assumptions and decisions about incremental steps in planning. What about disruptive things we have no control over? What happens when PDAs are $5 and searching software is great? What do we do if public funding really dries up because of our spending for homeland security and huge national and state deficits? What do we do if the public prefers to pay fees rather than taxes?

So how should libraries reconfigure their missions?

Robert Bellah, the sociologist, has written, "Institutions are socially organized ways of paying attention." The public library is the way America has paid attention to equity and lifelong, free choice learning. We need to stay rooted in those two purposes. As access to information via Google becomes more ubiquitous, what is the library's role in the support of lifelong learning? How do we continue to be an institution that levels the playing field, supporting the success of all regardless of economic position, when the economics of learning resources shift because of e-publishing? What changes in library capacity are coming, beyond Internet access? As long as we stay faithful to those two deep purposes and stay flexible regarding what's going on elsewhere, we'll be fine.

What does your library experience bring to your next job?

As I go to do this new work of peace and justice, it gives me complete confidence that whatever the knowledge base we need for the creation of social and political systems that are more just and less violent, librarians can help us find it. A peaceful world needs good libraries, and good libraries will be much better funded when we have a peaceful world.