Portales librarian retires

PORTALES - Denise Burnett has overseen plenty of changes in over three decades serving the Portales Public Library. But there's plenty she expects will stay constant for the community institution.

Some of those changes have included an expansion that more than doubled the library's size in 1997, and a Microsoft grant that brought four computers to the location and allowed PPL to be the first to offer internet service to the public.

Burnett recalled learning how to use a mouse and manually updating the card catalog from paper to a bar code system for some 30,000 books.

"I don't think anybody had any idea the influence (the internet) was going to have on us," she said. "It was far more reaching than I had ever anticipated, but certainly we knew that with libraries being the information center of the community, we were going to have to be the ones to step up and embrace it, for our community."

Raised on a farm outside Portales, Burnett met her husband in Albuquerque and moved back to Roosevelt County in the early 1980s in search of a quieter environment and good schools for their growing family.

She started working at the library soon after and had been the director there since 1991. Burnett retired Monday and will be honored in a come-and-go reception from 2 p.m. today at Portales' City Hall. In between, she spoke with The News and shared insights from her 32 years with PPL.

What first brought you into library work?

My background is in early childhood education and there was a job opening in 1986 for a children's librarian. They had never actually had that position, and they were looking to expand children's services.

It wasn't at all (a planned career move), but I tell you what, when I walked in the back door - and they stored some older editions in the back room - I walked in and that smell of books hit me, I was home.

Anyway, time flies and in 1991 my mentor Sandy White moved on to Clovis-Carver (Public Library) and I've been (PPL) library director since then.

What other changes have you seen over the years?

The way we do business every day has done a complete turnaround. I loved to share those stories with my staff, because they think it's funny to learn how we did it in the old days. But that has always been my goal as the librarian, was to make sure Portales was up on every trend and all technologies as they came about. The only way to do that is to stay ahead of the ball; you can't be reactive.

We have now 35 computers for the public, and each of the staff has not only their station, they also have a surface, they can do electronic work that way.

But there's still books. And that's the good news. Some things change, and some things remain the same, and we can accept that - that a changing time is not a bad time.

I don't think we ever had 8-tracks in the library, but we did have records at one point, and we've gone on to cassettes, and then to CDs, and we have books that are downloadable, audios that are downloadable.

My last goal for the library before I retired was to make our public library accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week to the public. It's not possible that we can be there all the time, but we've added a huge online database of encyclopedias, references, even how to repair your car. You can actually browse the shelves of our books (on a website), request one and it will be there the next day.

There's been many, many exciting things I have been able to be a part of because I work for a city government that has been 100 percent for our library.

What else do you still expect to change, and what will stay the same?

I think that books are always going to be a mainstay. So many people thought they were old-fashioned, that they had served their purpose and we didn't need them anymore, but we still have a strong group of children and young adults that love that tactile learning. They love to touch those books and see those pictures; I think that's always going to remain the same. I think we're always going to have books and I'm glad that we are.

We do still have an entire generation for which having a CD, or having a film is something they may not comprehend, but as an older generation, we need to also realize that the way they're learning is good, too.

If we want to look to the future, all we have to do is go to Golden Library (at Eastern New Mexico University), and look at how technology has impacted the libraries.

Our library has a different goal, if you will, a mission, than the (ENMU) library; we are more community based and they are more education based, but there's a lot of things that meet in the middle with that. I think you can look at Eastern and see all the changes that are currently happening.

Can you give me some examples of what you've seen at the Golden Student Success Center, formerly Golden Library?

A lot of gathering spaces, individual study spaces. We think that technology has kind of isolated us, but when you go into Eastern's library and you see groups of students that are learning together, so that group effort, that community learning that they're doing, cooperative learning, however you want to put that, I think that that's where we see our future. That's where our generations are going. They work together well.

What are you going to miss?

Seeing my patrons every day, goodness. One of the things that I love most is being asked, "Hey Denise, have you read a good book, or do you have a good book about this?" It's a small town. I know my public and I know what they read, and I know when I read a good book who's going to want to read it, and I have been able to share that enthusiasm about literature with thousands of people, and I'm going to miss that so much.

What role should a library have in the community?

I feel very strongly about this, so I'm glad you asked. I think your library should be what your community wants. So many times, we as professionals know the classic literature, the best books you should read. We know, based on our research, but it really doesn't matter. A used book is worth the world. You give them what they want.