Making Connections with More Special Librarians

On Thursday, November 16th, the Library of Michigan's (LM's) Public and Technical Services Director Elaine Harrison hosted the librarians involved in the Michigan Council of State Agency Libraries (COSAL). Elaine has been involved with the group for years, now, and my impression has always been that they appreciate their connection with her and with LM and the State Law Library. The COSAL librarians manage the libraries at the various state departments, including Community Health, Environmental Quality, and Corrections. They are for the most part one-person operations serving significant specialized needs and unique clientele, and it's great that their COSAL participation gets them together to share their thoughts, issues, and ideas and to just plain connect with one another periodically.

I was invited to join them for a bit at the beginning of their meeting, and it was an eye-opener for me to learn how really isolated they are in their various libraries and, for the Corrections librarians especially, how the unique restrictions imposed upon their operations often challenge our customary concepts of patron services. Since prisoners are not authorized to have access to the Internet, the librarians whose operations reside inside the secure zone of the prisons they serve are not able to access much of the online information that abounds on the Michigan eLibrary (MeL) and elsewhere. They are able to order materials from the Library of Michigan, including faxed copies of law materials and so forth, but it's not as easy as it is for those of us in other, more open settings, to serve their own information needs, those who staff their institutional facilities, or the prisoners those facilities house. The librarians serving other State of Michigan departments are less constrained, of course, but they are also challenged with fulfilling the information needs of their departments' staff as well as the citizens those departments serve.

I am glad I had the opportunity to meet some of these COSAL members and to begin to learn about the special services they provide and to brainstorm a bit with them about how the Library of Michigan can make a difference for them in their successful service to their patrons and co-workers! I look forward to continuing the conversation we've just begun and am glad to have the chance to highlight them and their efforts at least in this small way.