Retiring librarian: Libraries still best place to get information

And, he quickly adds, libraries, with their modern resources and spirit of cooperation, are still the best places to obtain that information.

“There are really no phases of life that can’t be enhanced for having the best information possible,” says Brennan, who is retiring June 30 after 24 years at Chadron State. “That goes for citizenship, parenting, health care, financial decisions, your spiritual life and everything else.”

Brennan believes the low voter turnout in the United States is due primarily to lack of information.

“Many of those eligible to vote don’t do so because they feel they can’t make an intelligent, informed decision,” he says. “They don’t go to the polls because they’re lazy or indifferent, but because they are afraid of making the wrong decision. They haven’t had the time or taken the time to learn enough about the candidates and the issues.”

He believes libraries are among society’s best examples of cooperation and unity. Nearly all of them around the world are interconnected and share access to their holdings. The CSC library, which has particularly strong collections of Native American and High Plains history, has sent books to Harvard and many other places and has obtained information from all over by tapping WorldCat, which gives libraries access to more than 100 million volumes.

“Our electronic data bases are the great equalizer between Chadron State and larger schools,” he says. “Years ago, there were instances when our college could have been what I call ‘information isolated,’ but now we have equality.”

Brennan grew up along the Iowa-Minnesota border and lived in both states as a youth. He graduated from St. John’s University at St. Cloud, Minn., in 1963. For the next six years he taught English at high schools in Iowa. During this period he became one of the first persons to earn a master’s degree in library science at the University of Iowa.

He was the librarian at two Iowa high schools five years and was the head librarian at Clinton Community College six years before coming to Chadron State in 1980.

Brennan succeeded the late Reta King, who also was the college’s head librarian 24 years. It was his suggestion that the library be named in her honor.

He commends his predecessor for making the library what he calls “user-friendly,” and for allowing non-college personal access to the library’s resources if they hold a public library card.

Brennan says the King Library has some 200,000 printed volumes, up from about 140,000 when Miss King retired in 1980. Nearly 10,000 more volumes, mostly newspaper and magazines, but also a few books, are on “microform,” or rolls of film or cards. The library also subscribes to about 600 periodicals, but through its information data bases, it can provide access to nearly 10,000 periodical titles and can quickly obtain the entire text of articles from more than half of them.

He likens libraries to brokers in the financial world. “If we don’t have it, we can get it,” he says.

While some believe everything they need to know is available through the Internet, Brennan advises that it is much safer to utilize printed material because most of it has been pre-screened or at least there is a source to which it can be attributed.

The retiring CSC librarian knows “of whence he speaks.” The dissertation for the doctorate that he earned in 1995 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison gave instructions on how to locate, evaluate and document information needed in life skills.

Brennan’s wife Carolyn is also a native of southeastern Minnesota. She is a CSC graduate while their three sons and a daughter-in-law attended the college.