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Posts Tagged ‘value’

The Library Business Model

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 4, 2025| 2 Comments »

Photo: Emil Widlund/Unsplash.

Funny how quiet, unassuming institutions like libraries keep getting in the news! Today’s story is one example. But it’s not about libraries as sanctuaries during riots or about mild-mannered librarians standing up to book banning. It’s about the way libraries run themselves and how companies could learn something from them.

Criag Shapiro writes at Fast Company, “Walk into a library and you’ll feel it right away. It’s quiet but alive. People are reading, learning, applying for jobs, finding shelter, escaping for a moment into a story. No one’s selling anything. Yet the value being created is enormous.

“In 2022 (the most recent year for which we have data), there were 671 million visits to public libraries in the United States. … Despite changes in media habits, younger generations use libraries more than any other cohort (54% of Gen Zers and millennials in the U.S. reported visiting a physical library in the past year). And that’s not counting the millions more who use the myriad digital services public libraries offer. …

“We’re living in a time of rapid change. Trust in institutions is slipping. … AI is transforming the nature of work. Economic pressure is rising for employees, founders, and leaders alike. Against that backdrop, it’s tempting to think only in terms of efficiency, cost-cutting, and optimization.

“But there’s a deeper opportunity. What if long-term success is more about building environments where people feel inspired, curious, and connected? That’s what libraries do. And that’s what the best organizations of any kind are learning to do, too.

“Libraries don’t ask you to justify your interests. You can check out a book on astrophysics or attend a poetry reading. No one’s measuring your productivity. The door is open, and the invitation is simple: Explore.

“Great companies operate with a similar principle. They give people space to think. To chase ideas that might not have an immediate return. Not because it’s soft or unfocused, but because it leads to better breakthroughs. 

“On the way to becoming a company worth more than $2 trillion, Google famously gave employees ‘20% time,’ encouraging them to pursue passion projects without immediate commercial goals. This freedom led directly to innovations like Gmail, Google Maps, and AdSense. …

“A library is not about monetization. Yet its value shows up everywhere: literacy rates, employment readiness, civic health. The best organizations understand this. They offer more than a product. …

“Patagonia demonstrates this principle powerfully through its environmental activism, which goes far beyond selling outdoor gear. The company’s bold stances — from suing the government over environmental policies to donating profits to climate causes — might seem risky from a traditional business perspective. Yet Patagonia’s sales have quadrupled in the past decade to more than $1 billion annually. Patagonia’s commitment to meaning over pure profit resonates deeply with its community, strengthening brand loyalty and trust. …

“Libraries recognize that people are more than readers or borrowers. They offer after-school programs for children, job training for adults, and social services for those in need. They understand visitors have complex lives, and that growth rarely follows a single, predictable path.

“The best organizations understand this, too. Work is not just work. It’s identity. It’s purpose. It’s how people spend the majority of their waking hours. When leaders recognize that … people stay longer. They perform better. They build things they’re proud of. …

“Healthy people build healthy organizations. The modern library is more than books. It hosts résumé workshops. Offers tax help. Provides warmth in the winter. It meets people where they are. That’s a powerful concept for any organization.

“Consider Airbnb. What began as a way to find short-term lodging is steadily evolving into something broader: a platform for travel, connection, and cultural exchange. Now the company is expanding from where you stay to how you explore, offering everything from pasta-making in Rome to wildlife walks in Nairobi. It’s a bold attempt to transform a transactional service into a layered, participatory ecosystem that reflects the ways travelers want to feel at home in the world. 

“What if you stopped thinking of your offering as a single product or service? What if you thought of it as a foundation people could build from?

“Libraries remind us that value isn’t always immediate or measurable in quarterly reports. But it’s real. The impact accumulates over time, quietly compounding. The same can be true for any organization willing to think more expansively.

“Invest in culture. Make room for imagination. Support your people. Serve your community. Not because it looks good, but because it works.” More at Fast Company, here.

At this moment of pervasive anxiety in the US, I’m not sure businesses or employees can relax enough to experiment with being like libraries and librarians. What do you think? Is the analogy a stretch?

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Humanities Grads Finding Jobs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 1, 2025| 1 Comment »

Photo: Mason Kumet/The Hechinger Report.
The University of Arizona campus in Tucson, where the number of undergrads majoring in the humanities has in creased by 76% since 2018, when a bachelor’s in humanities was introduced.

For years, the value of a postsecondary education has been measured by how much money someone can make after graduation, with the result that classes in the humanities were devalued.

Now there’s evidence that in addition to the intrinsic value of the humanities, they can make the difference between getting the job and not getting it.

Jon Marcus wrote at the Hechinger Report (a nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education) about what’s going on, and the Christian Science Monitor reprinted the story.

“Olivia Howe was hesitant at first to add French to her major in finance at the University of Arizona. She was afraid it wouldn’t be very useful in the labor market.

“Then her language skills helped her land a job at the multinational technology company Siemens, which will be waiting for her when she graduates this spring.

“ ‘The reason I got the job is because of my French. I didn’t see it as a practical choice, but now I do,’ says Ms. Howe, who, to communicate with colleagues and clients, also plans to take up German. …

“The simple message that majoring in the humanities pays off is being pushed aggressively by this university and a handful of others. They hope to reverse decades of plummeting enrollment in subjects that teach skills employers say they need from graduates but aren’t getting.

“The number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities at the University of Arizona has increased 76% since 2018, when it introduced a bachelor’s degree in applied humanities that connects the humanities with programs in business, engineering, medicine, and other fields. It also hired a humanities recruitment director and marketing team and started training faculty members to enlist students in the major with the promise that an education in the humanities leads to jobs.

“That’s an uncharacteristic role for humanities professors, who have tended to resist suggestions that it’s their role to ready students for the workforce. But it has become an existential one.

“Between 2012 and 2022, the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in the humanities – English, history, languages, literature, philosophy, and related subjects – fell 24%, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It’s now below 200,000 for the first time in more than two decades.

“In response, universities and colleges nationwide have started eliminating humanities departments and laying off humanities faculty as policymakers, parents, and administrators put a premium on highly specialized subjects they believe lead more directly to jobs. …

“ ‘What we are up against is the constant negative storytelling about how the humanities are useless,’ says Alain-Philippe Durand, dean of the University of Arizona’s College of Humanities and a professor of French. …

“ ‘When you tell them we are teaching the life of the mind, they laugh at you,’ Dr. Durand says over lunch at the student center. ‘You have people saying, “Do we really need this?” ‘ he says. …

“Dr. Durand’s department went so far as to put that declaration on a billboard on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, conveniently near the campus of rival Arizona State University. ‘Humanities = Jobs,’ it said, with the college’s web address. Dr. Durand keeps a model of it on a shelf in his office.

“The skills he’s talking about include how to communicate effectively, think critically, work in teams, and be able to figure out a way to solve complex problems outside of a particular area of expertise. Employers say they want all of those, but aren’t getting them from graduates who major in narrower fields.

“Eight out of 10 executives and hiring managers say it’s very or somewhat important that students emerge from college with these kinds of skills, according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. …

“What employers want ‘is people who can make sense of the human experience,’ says Rishi Jaitly, who has developed an executive education program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute that uses the humanities to help mid-career managers be better leaders.

“Along with Arizona, Virginia Tech is among a small group of universities taking steps to change the conversation about the humanities. A surprising number are technology-focused. These include the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has also started drawing a connection between the humanities and good jobs at high pay. That has helped boost undergraduate and graduate enrollment in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts by 58% since 2019, to 1,884 students in 2023 – the most recent period for which the figure is available.

“Before then, ‘we were doing almost nothing to explain the value of the humanities,’ says Richard Utz, interim dean. That’s important at a technological institute, he says. …

“A medievalist, Dr. Utz uses the example of assigning his students 15th-century Robin Hood ballads. ‘They read something that is entirely alien to them, that is in late medieval English, so they’re completely out of their comfort zone,’ he says. Then they split into groups and consider the material from various perspectives. It makes them the kind of future workers ‘who are versatile enough to look at a situation from different points of view.’ …

“In the first two years of the humanities-focused executive education program at Virginia Tech, the participants have come from Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow, and other companies. They study history, philosophy, religion, classics, literature, and the arts. They use these to consider questions about, and qualities of, leadership, and to see how what they learn can be applied to technology trends including data privacy and artificial intelligence. …

“Says Virginia Tech’s Mr. Jaitly, a former technology entrepreneur and founder of a venture capital firm whose own undergraduate degree was in history. ‘The superpowers of the future emanate from the humanities: introspection and imagination, storytelling and story-listening, critical thinking.’ …

“Some humanities faculty [bristle] at the idea that their work is relevant only when combined with more career-oriented disciplines, says Dr. Durand, at the University of Arizona. ‘But you have to be aligned with your students,’ he says. … ‘We can’t do things the way we always have.’ ”

More at the Hechinger Report via the Monitor, here. No firewall.

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Artists Decide Whether to Sign

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 15, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Luana Rigolli/T293 Gallery).
Art by Dylan Rose Rheingold, “Hot Skates” (2022), oil, acrylic, paint pen on canvas. Although growing numbers of artists question the value of signing their works, Rheingold is one who has chosen to sign.

When my mother died, there were decisions to be made about several works by our neighbor, the Abstract Expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart. For most of his career he rebelled against the custom of signing work. But toward the end of his life, he came around to the idea that in the art market, his family and friends needed to have his signature. He offered to sign our paintings. We sold some and kept some. The photographs and brass jewelry were never signed.

Anoushka Bhalla wrote recently at Hyperallergic that the issue of signing keeps coming back in the art world.

“It all began during the early Renaissance when a young Raphael Santi forwent the long-held tradition of co-operative art making under guild systems to autograph his first painting, ‘The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine.’

“While Raphael was modest in breaking long-established customs, obscuring his signature within decorations behind a Virgin Mary figure, his male successors centuries down the line would not remain as bashful. The signatures of Picasso and Keith Haring are far more familiar than that of, say, Helen Frankenthaler. …

“Signed artworks by male artists fetch astounding prices in the secondary market as compared to their female counterparts. A recent study states that ‘For every £1 a male artist earns for his work, a woman earns a mere 10p.’ The same study also states that ‘while the value of a work by a man rises if he has signed it, the value of a work by a woman falls if she has signed it, as if it has somehow been tainted by her gender.’ Female artists have long been conscious of this gender disparity, with some feeling paralyzed against the market and choosing to forgo their signatures to make their works more ‘collectible.’ Are these artists signing away their autonomy too?

“I spoke to Baseera Khan about these troubling statistics. A femme artist of color, they were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2021. ‘No, I don’t sign my works. I think it’s an old tradition,’ they declare. ‘I don’t think I’m valued because of my gender, because I’m a femme artist, quite not as much as the male artists — and that’s a fight.’ …

“Artists Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher, who operate LABspace, an artist-run gallery in Hillsdale, New York, often find themselves in awkward positions, having to ward off collectors who demand signatures from their artists and sometimes even return works for them to be signed. But for others, like Lucia Hierro, whose work was recently acquired by the Guggenheim Museum, and who often does not sign her pieces, says she will stand her ground. There is a finality to signatures, she says, which she dislikes.

“[Although Xayvier Haughton] makes art that is difficult to collect, he feels defenseless in the face of powerful collectors who make sure to somehow obtain his signature before acquisition. He acknowledges this as a conscious decision on his part. Installations are notoriously difficult to collect, and that in itself is an anti-market statement. … While Haughton wants to adhere to his principles, he doesn’t want to be blacklisted in the art world — which he feels is the fate of artists who defy the desires of collectors. In this fickle art-world bubble, he’s attempting to hold onto his autonomy by forgoing his signature.

“But some disagree with this sentiment. Bhasha Chakrabarti, also an emerging artist, who works in painting, sculptures and installations, is a skeptic. ‘I find the idea of making installation with the motivation of evading the market to be disingenuous…. If you make art and are functioning within the gallery system, you’re not evading the art world,’ even though, she adds, she feels suspicious of the art world’s deep stake in capitalism. When I mention the Eurocentric history of asserting ownership via signatures on artwork, she counters, citing Sufi mystic poets who claimed authorship after each recital. …

“Artist Chiffon Thomas approaches the dilemma more philosophically. Thomas, whose solo show Staircase to the Rose Window was on view at PPOW Gallery in Tribeca last year. … Over time, he explains, he stopped signing his works and acquired an existential approach to art-making. He realized he wanted to capture a sense of universality in his art, to the extent that he grew uncomfortable using his childhood, his family, or any personal signifiers. …

“But perhaps the most compelling response comes from a young artist, Dylan Rose Rheingold. As more painters shy away from signing their works on the front of their canvases, Rheingold realizes this is an empowering act as a woman. Nevertheless, she will occasionally sign as ‘Dylan,’ a traditional male name, although she also uses the more feminine ‘Dylan Rose,’ and lately she is using her full name, Dylan Rose Rheingold, boldly asserting ownership over her art.

“Her resolve strengthens when she explains passionately a recent encounter she had with a ‘big collector who owns a big gallery in New York. … When I met him, he told me that I should drop my middle name because my work would be a lot more valuable. People would not assume I’m a woman.’ She countered with ‘I’m happy to take my chances.’ ”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall but memberships are encouraged.

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Arts Are Important for Colorado Economy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Helen H. Richardson/Denver Post
Denver Performing Arts Complex in 2017. The creative economy in Colorado accounted for 4.3 percent of the state’s gross domestic product in 2015, the most recent year for which data are available.

It can’t be stated too many times that the arts are often an important driver of local economies — and a reason for states and municipalities to help artists be successful. Rhode Island, for example, aims to help artists by not taxing art sales, but the lack of affordable housing in the state remains a big problem.

Joe Rubino writes at the Denver Post about Colorado’s creative economy, noting that anyone who saw a show at the local opera house in 2015, bought a painting or book by a Coloradan, or visited a local museum “contributed to the $13.7 billion arts and culture brought to the state’s economy that year, a figure that outdid both the mining and transportation sectors. …

“The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Endowment for the Arts on [March 7] unveiled their most recent analysis of the economic impact of arts and culture in the U.S. In 2015, the year with the most recent reporting data, goods and services generated by museums, architecture firms, artists and other artistically inclined businesses and agencies accounted for 4.3 percent of the Colorado’s GDP. …

“[Nationwide,] creative industries accounted for a $20 billion trade surplus that year, according to the analysis. Work in arts and culture accounted for 4.9 million U.S. jobs in 2015. Of those, 100,631 were in Colorado. …

“The analysis, collectively known as the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account, or ACPSA, looked at 36 industries that contributed to America’s arts and cultural economy. Some of them are considered core contributors — like museums and graphic design firms — and others are viewed as support industries [including] broadcasting. …

“When it comes to comparing states in the American West, arts and culture in Colorado ranked only behind California and Washington in terms of money made.”

More at the Denver Post, here.

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Art for Art’s Sake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Getty Images

I have been as keen as anyone to talk about the arts in terms of their economic contributions to communities. (You have to defend the arts in the language people understand.) But in the end, a focus on economic return is limiting. There are other values on the spectrum from “art for art’s sake” to “art for the economy’s sake.”

How about art for wonder’s sake, joy’s sake, self-expression’s sake, mystery’s sake — for the sake of just seeing what comes out and where it leads?

Over in Scotland, Tiffany Jenkins of The Scotsman is having a fit about Maria Miller, the Scottish Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Sport?!), who expressed her own take on the arts in a recent speech.

Says Jenkins, “The speech began with the right noises – ‘culture educates, entertains and it enriches’ – but quickly took a wrong turn, concentrating on what culture can ‘deliver,’ specifically for the economy, using sentences such as: ‘It allows us to build international relationships, forging a foundation for the trade deals of tomorrow.’ ”

Uh-oh.

“It matters,” writes Jenkins, “because of what happened with the funding body Creative Scotland, where there was a major negative reaction … in part due to an agenda that instructed the arts to be about the economy …

“To her credit Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet secretary for culture and external affairs for Scotland, was reported on Twitter responding to Miller’s speech stating: ‘The Scottish Government does not see arts and culture as a commodity.’ …

“That the arts are central to the economy is not an isolated idea, or a new one. … [But] it is a philistine approach that misses the value and point of culture. It is true that the Edinburgh festivals, for example, bring a strong financial return. … But even in this case, the financial return is not the best thing about the festivals – or why people come back every year to perform or to watch. They do it because they love it, enjoy it and are driven to participate in something meaningful. …

“Let us not forget the economic climate in which the Arts Council was established. This was a period in the 1940s, after a devastating war, when Britain was in a dire financial situation. The funding body was set up not to use the arts to get the country out of the economic crisis, in the blunt instrumental terms they are discussed today, but to stimulate ‘the best’ work.

“Economist John Maynard Keynes, the council’s first chairman, wanted to bring forth a ‘creative renaissance’ that was artist led, and acted at ‘arm’s length’ from the government, a vision that I would have no trouble with if it were realized today.” But it isn’t, complains Jenkins. Many of her concerns are pretty universal.  More.

It’s an argument we will never hear the end of, having been debated in every generation. I am coming down firmly on the side of “yes, and…”

In other words, the arts can be great for the economy, but that is just the tiniest part of why they are great.

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Mr. Beford’s Barn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2012| 6 Comments »

I’ve been enjoying the album “On the Road from Appomattox,” the latest release of outstanding local bluegrass band Southern Rail.

I’ve also been asking myself what makes a song on the album, “Mr. Beford’s Barn,” so moving.

An old man comes to the narrator’s farm and says he wants to see the barn he helped his daddy build years ago. The barn is very solidly constructed, nearly 100 years old now, and the refrain says it will probably last another hundred years.

It makes a person think about how fine it is to make something that lasts hundreds of years. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe the hundred-year-ness is not what’s moving.

The old man will not be there for hundreds of years and will not be enjoying the fact that the barn lasted so long. The reason he wants to see it is that he knows he helped make something that’s very fine. It’s the well-built-ness that is valuable. The hundreds of years are merely a feature of the value.

I think you will like the song. Although it is not on YouTube, the band lists its YouTube songs here, and you might want to listen to a few if you are thinking of buying Appomattox.

http://www.southernrail.com/

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