From the Wine Library

Meet the New Guy
We have a new wine librarian in the Healdsburg Library. Jon Haupt, the new wine librarian, comes armed with youth, talent, energy and intelligence, edging out 60 other applicants from around the world. He most recently worked as a Music Librarian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and he is an avid wine and food enthusiast. There is a profile of Jon elsewhere in this paper, and I urge you to read it. After being the wine librarian for 20 years, I have been the branch manager AND the wine librarian for a year and a half now. I am so glad he is here to take over the wine librarian duties.
Working alongside him, I see he is a caring, wise librarian. He knows not only how to find the answers, but how to find out the question. Getting somebody to tell you what they don’t know is tough. Although he comes from an academic library background, he seems to thrive on the raucous mixed bag of questions and work challenges that come in a public library.
Challenging Future. He arrives at a time when the Sonoma County Wine library’s future, the Healdsburg Library’s future, the Sonoma County Library’s future, and the future of libraries, in general, presents a series of challenges and unknowns. It is an exciting time and we welcome and rise to the challenges. The Wine Library is an unusual partnership between the private sector and the public, and wineries pay voluntary dues – that we call ‘subscriptions’ – to sustain the library. Tough economic times threaten that support. Our income and percentage of wineries that subscribe both are shrinking. The technology of the Internet, social networking, digital books and libraries are changing the information landscape in ways we are still trying to discern. But one thing is clear: people do not want to come to the library; they want the library to be pushed to their computer, their tablet, their smart phone. As a special library within a public library, the wine library must not only solve the technical, legal and financial issues associated with getting the right resources digitized and to the right people; we also have to overcome the institutional barriers within our own library.
A case in point is winefiles.org. From the wine library’s opening in 1988 we built a clipping file of wine business technical and historical articles. We called this the Wine Information Files, and we got a grant in 1999 to put indexing and summaries on the web. We named this new web-based information file, winefiles.org.
It is a great source of wine information and local history. Go to winefiles.org and put in any local winery and see what you get. I get 58 unique relevant hits for Preston Vineyards. Or if you work in the wine industry, try putting new wine technique or marketing strategy. I get 79 for carbonic maceration and 35 for wineries using social networking to market their wines. Back in the day these started as paper.
The grant paid to convert the back files, and we have kept adding to the database, using a solid corps of volunteers to do the data entry. Their work is overseen by a paid employee, Karen Holmes, daughter of Rex and Rosinda Holmes, longtime Dry Creek residents. Karen’s mother coordinated the charming mosaic storybook pictures that adorn the children’s part of the Healdsburg Library. Her father Rex co-founded the Dry Creek Valley Association, and grew prunes and then was one of the first locals to switch to wine grapes. We pay for Karen’s twelve hours a week from funds raised by the Wine Library’s support group, The Wine Library Associates of Sonoma County. We are running short of money for her position.
As I stated, working with Jon is a pleasure. What I have observed of Jon in the few weeks we have worked together gives me great hope. He is resilient, resourceful and wise. He has helped me see that winefiles.org is a valuable resource and worth fighting for. We have gotten an agreement from the Wine Library Associates to fund Karen’s salary for few more weeks and approval from the library administration to fund her position in this way while we figure what to do. We have some fundraisers coming up for the Wine Library. Both Pedroncelli and Williams Selyem, two wineries with plenty of class and heart are going to be hosting events for us. Keep tuned for details. In the meantime drop by the library and meet the new guy. I am sure you will like Jon.
The Sonoma County Wine Library is a special library within the Healdsburg Regional Library. It exists as a technical and business library as well as an historical archive. It serves the area wine industry that supports it, but also has plenty for the casual or dedicated wine lover.
Bo Simons is the Branch Manager of the Healdsburg Regional Library and the librarian in charge of the Sonoma County Wine Library, a business and technical and history library serving both the public and the wine industry.