Opelika Observer Staff Editorial - 'Piddle, twiddle and resolve'

Sherman Edwards may have been penning song lyrics about the enmity in the Second Continental Congress when he wrote these lines, but we think those words may still apply today.

“Piddle, twiddle and resolve; not one damn thing do we solve.”

Heck of a motto, but we dare say the Cooper Library Board couldn’t have written a better one for itself.

With Monday’s meeting, the recent genealogical section disagreement continues on, as board chair Aimee Sikes proposed a survey of genealogical section users be taken, so board members would have access to a “full range of information” before they made their decision.

The proposed survey would ask patrons where they are from and how they found their time in the section, and also ask if any changes need to be made to the section.

This proposal was met with nods and murmurs of approval from the various board members (save Charles Wacker, who seemed to urge greater action than the ‘Let’s put this aside for several months and pray it goes away’ mentality offered by others), while GSEA members, council officials and we members of the news media looked on with confusion, anger or extreme disappointment.

No motion was made and no vote was taken by the library board regarding this survey scheme, so, to the best of our knowledge, it has yet to be officially implemented, and for that we are thankful.

We would point out the survey would be devised by library director Susan Delmas and reference librarian Marsha Sanson, library representatives who have repeatedly stated their disdain of potentially having to reorganize the genealogical section.

In a letter advocating Dewey to library board chair Aimee Sikes, Sanson goes so far as to suggest the following:

“One of the most fundamental library principles is serendipity. this (sic) means that patrons are supposed to be able to find materials accidentally on the shelf when looking for something else.”

Speaking as people who have been library patrons for most of our lives, we say we prefer things being where they should be, in a logical, alphabetical order that makes sense.

We want to find books by choice, not by accident or happenstance.

Instituting such a survey would also fail to reach people who have given up on the Cooper genealogical collection due to its current crop of issues:

- Inaccessibility to older and disabled people due to its cramped, often over-heated third-floor locale,

- Its lack of usable workspace for research purposes

- Or those frustrated with the way the section is filed or the hostility they have encountered from various members of the library staff.

Treat people badly enough, and they stop coming back.

We agree with the library board on one thing: the library should serve all of its patrons.

We just don’t think that’s what’s happening there now.