Eric Downing ’15 – During our first week of the program, we visited the Indianapolis public library for a tour and lecture. First walking into the building, I felt as though I was walking through a museum mixed with a learning and education center. The building was magnificent and breath taking, and I was astounded when I heard there are weddings that take place in the public library throughout the year. Looking at the original library and comparing it to how the library stands today, the growth and evolution of the institution is absolutely amazing. Moving to the CEO of the library, Ms. Nytes, who gave an informational and interesting presentation, I found myself interested in two aspects of her presentation.
One was the fact that they spent 15% of their revenue on something that will benefit and be used by the public, meaning they are re-feeding 15% of their earning onto the public. The number stood out to me. Earlier in the week, Roland shared that his library was spending double that amount (30%) of their revenue for the public. I began to wonder why there was such a difference in the numbers. We began to learn that libraries with different magnitudes run at different rates for many diverse reasons, and it really allowed me to connect the real world experience with what we later learned.
And the second idea that began to float in my head was this idea of the libraries being flooded with technology. Whether it is ebooks or the computers the library offers, technological advances are impacting libraries. Learning how complex and ordered a library system had to be opened my eyes to an aspect of the library I had never thought about. I always thought of the library as somewhere to get a book for a class assignment, never about the business aspects the library follows. We later learned in class how many industries are being influenced by new technology, and can connect those ideas to the library or other sites we visited this week. These two ideas stuck out to me and I was able connect them to the learning that had taken place in the Liberal Arts Bridge to Business.
