THE ORIENT LIBRARIES

    Another small town I visited was Orient in Adair County. This burg grew in size according to the last census. 402 people live there, and with so few people it was hard to field a team that could make all the required training sessions. Roberta Hapburn, the school librarian, said they had a strong vision from the start, and this inspired them to do the training. Many felt they were already a team, having lived together all their lives, and that they did not need all the organizational development. Hapburn had not done the training, but was asked by the others to take part because they knew they wanted to combine the school library with the volunteer public library. This involved far more than the purchase of computer gear. The state of Iowa had certain standards for public libraries to receive funding. Marilyn Geidel was very active in the community and worked toward that goal. Roberta regretted that the plans had not been made two years ago when the elementary school library was added. Had the two merged at that time, it could have been located in a more accessible site. It seemed to me that Roberta was quite upset because her position was being eliminated, and she and her husband, also an educator, were moving in a couple of months. Without a professional librarian, Orient could have difficulty retraining the status of its public library, and recruiting one for such a small place would be difficult.

The school was all Macintosh computers. A group of seniors was working on the iMac cluster as Roberta and I spoke. Lana Pals arrived just before Roberta had to leave for a class in the elementary school library. Lana is a grant writer who is married to a retired ATT executive and lives on a farm near Orient. She had originally worked in public relations for a farm organization. She knows where the money is and has been a great resource for the people of Orient, according to Roberta. Both Lana and Roberta have been using the Internet for almost ten years. A former school principal allowed Roberta to take part in an early state project before the Internet became popular, so they are both old hands. For a small town Orient had a very sophisticated lab of eighteen computers, projector, and high-speed access line. Across the hall, the Iowa Telecommunications Network facility allowed for video conferencing around the state. Iowa was one of the first states to build an advanced fiber network, much to the consternation of the telephone companies, who wanted to provide the service and not have the state own it. I found that Iowans seem much more comfortable with video conferencing than people in other states where the centers are far apart and costs are higher than in Iowa.