Common Purpose

As I was catching up on my blog reading I spotted the comment below on the Demos site. And interestingly, the Amazon UK site (which the British author of the comment understandably linked to) has more positive reviews than does the US Amazon site here.

"I am currently reading an extremely inspiring and interesting book called Common Purpose by the Harvard scholar Lisbeth Schorr. Using a multitude of examples and wide-ranging evidence she talks about why successful community initiatives and programmes in social care and education in the US have found it so difficult to 'scale-up' and how the 'system' can be transformed to allow effective grassroot interventions to reach the lives of millions rather than hundreds."

I haven't read the book yet, but the subject would seem to be closely tied to the discussion in the Scan about the receding public interest in funding the "public good" as is so clearly evidenced by numerous stories of libraries at risk. Mind you, to balance this a little, is the Library Journal story of the wonderful community support that the Haines Borough Public Library in Haines, Alaska, receives. This little community (and it really is...I've been there) is made up of people "who tax themselves to the tune of $113 per capita for library service." How amazing and heartening. HBPL deserves its "Best Small Town Library in America" award.

The topic of funding the public good was on my mind anyway as one of the Montana State Library Commissioners brought this up during my day with the Commission on Tuesday. He asked (and I am paraphrasing) why a psychology of scarcity has pervaded what is by any standards a wealthy country. And the question was rhetorical only because none of the 9 people in the room had answers as to why people seem to be perfectly willing to take on a lot of debt to increase their house size and their vehicle size, and to spend a lot of money on gadgets and adult toys, but be mostly unwilling to support increasing public funds to libraries. And in some cases, perfectly willing to see their local libraries close or severely reduce access.

So, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from Haines and the book, Common Purpose.