Atlantans for Progressive Libraries
Home Table of Contents Archives Frequently Asked Questions Contact Us



Site updated July 1, 2009; see Table of Contents for update details.

  • Jump to LibraryLand, the "News From Elsewhere" with relevance to AFPL, updated 7/1/09


AFPL Limps into the 21st Century...




News & Comment Archives

AFPLWATCH news items and editorials are archived approximately one month after they are posted.

2009

May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
2008

December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
2007

December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007


2006

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006


2005

December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
2004

December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
2003

December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
April 2003
March 2003

  • Local and national publications were documenting AFPL's deterioration long before AFPLWATCH was begun in November 2000, and continued to do so. Read the news stories and editorials about AFPL published in other media in:
2009    2008    2007    2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000    1999    1998    1997    1996



LibraryLand Listening Post
News from All Over that's relevant to what's going on--or not going on--at AFPL.

Sources of LibraryLand Bulletins:

Contribute an item to (or recommend another resource for) "LibraryLand Listening Post"



The Webmaster's Mailbox

Post your comment to AFPLWATCH


Read comments previously posted to AFPLWATCH.



Rumors & Speculations


Hear/Say



Heard any AFPL gossip recently? Share it with your colleagues by sending AFPLWATCH an
email.

If you prefer not to tell us your name, sign your email with the pseudonym of your choice.


Read previous items posted to this section of AFPLWATCH




Inquiring Minds Want to Know...

...if yesterday's sale of the Equitable Building - whose parking lot is next door to the Central Library - isn't an excellent opportunity for library administrators to make inquiries into possibly leasing some of that parking lot's spaces to provide additional free parking for Central's visitors?  (Posted June 3, 2009)

According to a
story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, half of the building's space is currently vacant, which should mean there would be plenty of parking spaces that could be leased.

Finding the funds - either from county coffers or from some enlightened private donor - to pay for the lease would be challenging, but providing free parking at Central remains the single most important change at Central likely to substantially and permanently ramp up the number of visitors there.

The recently-announced acquisition of several (and only sometimes-free) parking spaces for library patrons at the lot behind Central is helpful, but remains far from adequate.

Investing in a reliably plentiful number of free parking spaces at Central should certainly take priority over renovating the interior of the building. And the costs for taxpayers would be spectacularly lower than the pricetag for abandoning the current facility and building a new Central Library elsewhere that would include its own parking deck.



...what's the big holdup on hiring people for the four administrative vacancies that AFPL finally began recruiting for five months ago? (Posted August 10, 2006; updated October 6, November 3, and December 31, 2006; and January 16, February 7, March 7, April 11, May 15, June 13, June 29, July 7, August 11, September 7, October 2, November 2, and December 7, 2007; February 8, March 18, April 4, May 6, June 7, July 25, September 5, September 12, October 9, and November 12, 2008; January 10, February 19, March 6, April 3, and June 12, 2009)

Four critically-needed administrative posts - Branch Group Administrator, Technical Services Manager, Community Relations Manager (aka public information officer), and Central Library Administrator - have gone unfilled since their vacancies were first advertised on March 10, 2006. All four positions had been vacant long before then - two of them were vacated before Mary Kaye Hooker was fired over two years ago. Surely by now there are sufficient numbers of applicants for all four of these positions for the current library director to choose among. Why the protracted delays in these four long-awaited hirings, and why have there been no explanations of those delays?

October 6, 2006 Update: At a meeting of library managers on October 5th, library director John Szabo stated that an interviewing team for these vacancies would be created the second week in October.

November 3, 2006 Update: At the November meeting of library managers, there was no comment on the status of these important pending interviews. AFPLWATCH has not been able to verify that any of these interviews had been conducted in October or had been scheduled as of November 1st.

December 31, 2006 Update: No further news on the scheduling of interviews for any of these four positions was forthcoming by year's end.

January 16, 2007 Update: We were reminded of the apparently interminable impasse on filling these key vacant positions when we read a recent posting at
The Librarian's Guide to Etiquette, one of AFPLWATCH's select sources of reliably-hilarious library humor. To paraphrase the LGE posting:
Hiring administrators for a public library system is a big deal. Be patient and do not rush the process, no matter how excruciatingly slow it may seem. There is a reason that it takes longer to hire a public library administrator than...
  • growing your hair out
  • filming a season of Survivor
  • confirming a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court
  • delivering due process to prisoners at Gitmo
  • creating a new human life (from foreplay to delivery)
That reason may not be obvious to anyone, but there must be a reason.
February 7th Update: At a meeting of library managers on February 5th, library director John Szabo reportedly said that he had finally received from the county's personnel office all the paperwork on the outside applicants for these four administrative vacancies, and that letters inviting candidates to the job interviews would be mailed out soon.

March 7th Update: At the March 1st meeting of library managers, an announcement was made that initial interviews for three of the four positions had either been held earlier that week, and that initial interviews for the fourth vacancy had been scheduled for later in March.

April 11th Update: At the April 10th meeting of library managers, Library Director John Szabo said that interviews were still being conducted for the four vacant administrative positions.

May 15th Update: At the May meeting of library managers, Library Director John Szabo said that he hoped to be able to announce the appointment of the new Public Information Officer "soon," and that a second round of interviews of candidates for the other three administrative vacancies was underway.

June 13th Update: At the June meeting of library managers, the status of these four critical vacancies did not appear on the meeting agenda and library director John Szabo said narry a word about them.

June 29th Update: According to an announcement earlier this week, the installation of some new software in the county's personnel department will require a month-long hiring freeze beginning July 11th. And according to today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County Manager Tom Andrews has announced he will resign by the end of the year.

How will these two things further complicate and/or delay the filling of AFPL's four administrative vacancies, we wonder?

July 7th Update: Once again, the status of the library administration vacancies was not included on the agenda of the July meeting of library managers, and library director John Szabo said nary a word at that meeting about it.

August 11th Update: Zero, nothing, nada mentioned at the August 9th managers' meeting about the filling of any or all of the four vacancies.

September 7, 2007 Update: More thundering silence at the September 6th meeting of library managers about any progress in filling the organization's four critical administrative vacancies.

October 2, 2007 Update: In an email to staff dated October 1, 2007, AFPL Director John Szabo announced appointments to two of the four positions.

November 2, 2007 Update: Status reports on recruitment efforts for the remaining two unfilled Administrative Team vacancies (the Central Library Administrator and the Technical Services Manager) were not on the agenda of the latest monthly meeting of the library director John Szabo with library system managers, nor did Szabo mention any developments during that meeting.

December 6, 2007 Update: At the final 2007 meeting of library managers, nothing about the two still-unfilled administrative positions was on the meeting agenda, and the library director made no comments about them during the meeting.

February 7, 2008 Update: Ditto.

March 18, 2008 Update: Ditto.

April 4, 2008 Update: Ditto.

May 6, 2008 Update: Ditto.

June 7, 2008 Update: Ditto.

July 25, 2008 Update: At the July meeting of library managers, nothing was mentioned about any progress on recruiting for the two remaining critical administrative vacancies. (Two positions if one doesn't count the still-vacant Deputy Director position.)

However, recruiting announcements for the Technical Services Manager and the Central Library Administrator positions were distributed to library staff July 18, 2008.

September 5, 2008 Update: Although the July 30, 2008 deadline for submitting applications for these positions has long since come and gone, Szabo did not include on his agenda for his monthly meeting of managers on September 4th a report on his progress in hiring for either of these positions, nor did he refer to this issue in his comments during that meeting.

September 12, 2008 Update: Library managers received an email this past week notifying them of yet another county-wide freeze on hiring, this one through the end of the year.

Not received so far is any email explaining whether (or how) this decree affects the recruitment/hiring of AFPL's long-vacant Central Library Administrator and Technical Services Manager positions. This lack of information leaves everyone needlessly wondering whether these two positions are indeed caught in the freeze along with all the other vacancies at AFPL, or whether they will be filled before Christmas because recruiting efforts were (formally, anyway) already in progress, or because the library director will be able to convince the county manager to exempt these two key positions from the hiring freeze.

County-wide hiring freezes are just one reason library employees hate to see library directors - and the slow-footed, obstructive-at-every-turn AFPL personnel department - dilly-dallying with filling the library system's vacant positions.


October 9, 2008 Update: At his October meeting of library managers, library director John Szabo mentioned nothing about the progress - or reasons for the lack of progress - in filling either the Central Library Administrator position or the Technical Services Manager position.

November 12, 2008 Update: Ditto for Szabo's November meeting with library managers.

January 10, 2009 Update: Ditto for Szabo's December 2008 and January 2009 meetings with library managers.

February 19, 2009 Update: Ditto for Szabo's February 16th meeting with library managers.

March 6, 2009 Update: Ditto for Szabo's March 5th meeting with library managers.

April 3rd Update: Ditto for Szabo's April 2nd meeting with library managers.

June 12th Update: Szabo cancelled his May meeting with library managers. At his June 4th meeting with managers, Szabo discussed the latest hiring freeze resulting from the current round of county budget cuts, but he did not mention how the freeze had affected or would affect his decisions about or plans for filling these particular key administrative vacant positions.

Read items previously posted to this section of AFPLWATCH


Notice something about the library that makes no sense? Contribute an item to "Inquiring Minds"




Dept. of Wishful Thinking

Read items previously-posted to this section of AFPLWATCH


Heard or read a prediction about the library that's wildly unrealistic?
Contribute an item to the Dept. of Wishful Thinking




Challenges Facing Large Library Systems Like AFPL
Webmaster's Note: The still-exhausted survivors of Hurricane Hooker remain preoccupied with the excruciatingly slow and energy-draining project of gradually freeing themselves from the embarrassing mediocrity and dysfunctionality they find themselves and their patrons still mired in. Meanwhile, luckier librarians in public library systems elsewhere have been spending at least part of their time figuring out what they need to do to be more useful to their users. While AFPL's customers have learned to expect mediocre service from Fulton County's libraries, AFPL administrators can't expect the library's users to wait indefinitely for better collections, for better-equipped, better-staffed, and better-maintained facilities, and for mission-relevant programming. This section of AFPLWATCH aims to highlight some of the dozens of current library service issues and challenges AFPL administrators should be paying attention to, and finding ways for AFPL managers and staff (those who give a damn about improving customer service, that is) to effectively address.
Making the Public Library More Environment-Friendly
Posted May 8, 2009

The public library is one of those rare government-operated institutions whose good deeds seem to far outweigh whatever frustration, harm, or damage it may wreak upon the citizenry.

On the other hand, governments in general and public libraries in particular are not widely regarded as role models for environmentally-sensitive ways of doing business.

Library collections include all sorts of information on how individuals, families, and businesses can become better stewards of natural resources. But there are many, many specific ways that libraries could increase the number of environmentally-responsibile procedures they use to accomplish their own mission.

Last month, Learn-Gasm posted
100 Ways to Make Your Library a Little Greener.

We see no particular obstacles to implementing many of these techniques, policies, and tomorrow. All that's lacking is a decision among the library system's administrators and managers that environmental sensitivity be factored into how things are done within the library.

The adoption of even a few of these ideas could make a subtantial difference in the library system's "carbon footprint" and go a long way toward making the library an even better steward of the taxpayers' dollars than it's already trying to be.

We found 100 Ways via Stephen's Lighthouse.


Previously-posted "Challenges"

Contribute an item to this section of AFPLWATCH




Wasted Taxpayers' Dollars

  • Federal Fines So Far for Fulton County's Sewage Spills into Chattahoochee: $687,676   Posted March 24, 2009

    The fines date back to a ten-year-old court order. And the problems are far from fixed, according to a
    story in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    Unfortunately, the county isn't obliged to publicize the portion of its budget devoted to paying various fines resulting from court orders and lawsuits.

  • Federal Judge Threatens Fulton County Commissioners with Fines and/or Imprisonment   Posted January 28, 2009

    Instead of complying with earlier court orders, the commissioners recently cut the budget for the county's jail, making it even more likely that the county will be noncompliant with numerous court orders handed down over the past few years. Perhaps this latest development will get the commissioners' attention?

  • Fours Years and a One Federal Lawsuit Later, County Jail is Still a Mess   Posted January 13, 2009

    And county commissioners wonder why everybody who can rid themselves of entanglements with Fulton County Government is trying to do that, having plenty of evidence that the county cannot, or will not, reform itself.

    Yesterday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an update on one of several county departments in chronic disarray, the county-operated jail.




Spooky Quotation
Posted July 16, 2007
"What happens when we stop focusing energy on things that we can’t control? That energy gets focused on things that we can control, and ironically, we end up exerting more influence."
--Peter Bromberg, from a July 6, 2007 posting to Library Garden
* * *

Read previously-posted quotations from the Post-Hooker era;  from the Hooker era




Comic Relief

Dietary Laws for the Library
Posted June 7, 2009

The Illinois-based Anglican Library Society's website includes a section of library satires it calls
Librariana Anglicana. These items are grouped into sub-sections labeled "The Sublime," "The Ridiculous," and "The Sublime AND The Ridiculous." Enjoy them all, but be sure to find the Library Dietary Laws, a sobering list of verboten edibles (and drinkables) rendered in Old Testament-ese.

* * * * *

Read library humor items previously posted to AFPLWATCH:

Contribute an item to this section of AFPLWATCH


Relibably-hilarious library humor Internet sites (updated June 21, 2009):





History Lessons




The Library Lawsuits



Upshot




County, Librarians Settle Discrimination Lawsuit
Posted January 8, 2004
Additional links posted January 9 and January 17, 2004
Final two paragraphs updated monthly between January 2004 and July 2004


A settlement has been reached in the case of the racial discrimination lawsuit against the Atlanta Fulton Public Library. According to reports in local media, the settlement consists of three payments of over $6,000,000 each, for a total of more than $18,000,000, to the 8 plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The settlement ends a bitter struggle that began in September 1999 with the arrival of Mary Kaye Hooker as AFPL's library director. Testimony and evidence at the trial showed that library board members repeatedly expressed their concern to Hooker over the racial make-up of management at the Central Library. On two occasions, the board demanded a list of Central managers by race, and board committee minutes recorded board members’ comments about the race of the Central managers and a need to do something about it. The plaintiffs argued that a May 2000 transfer of most of Central's managers was the outcome of the board’s concern over the race of the managers, and that the transfers were equivalent to demotions.

At the federal trial in January 2002, the jury found for the plaintiffs. The county appealed the verdicts and the amount of the jury's damage awards: $23,364,400 million, plus court costs of an additional $371,316 (later reduced by the judge to a total of $16,859,400).

In June 2003, a panel of the appeals court judges affirmed the lower court rulings; in July, it rejected the county's request for the entire court to review the case. The county then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was scheduled to decide on January 9, 2004 whether or not to grant the appeal.

At its December 17, 2003 meeting, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, whose new chair had been elected the previous month, authorized the county's attorney to make another settlement offer to the plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs accepted that offer later in December. The confidential settlement agreement was revealed by WSB-TV News on January 7th.

Contrary to the initial media report (and subsequent ones), all eight of the plaintiffs--Janet Bogle, Sherri Bowers, JoLynn Burge, Jean Cornn, Maureen Kelly, Nancy Powers, Mary Starck, and Katharine Suttell--are white. Monica Foderingham-Brown, an African-American librarian, had been part of the suit from the beginning, but the trial judge removed her from the case after ruling there was insufficient evidence to support Foderingham-Brown's claim that her transfer had resulted from her having spearheaded a petition calling for the board to resign well before the May 2000 transfers.

Read the story as reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Read the story as reported in the online edition of Library Journal.

Read the story as reported in the online edition of American Libraries.

Read a summary of the court's decision written by librarians for librarians.

Read an analysis of the court's findings published in the Stetson Law Review.


Beween June 6, 2003, when the appeals court upheld the lower court's guilty verdicts and multi-million-dollar damage awards against Mary Kaye Hooker and William McClure, and May 19, 2004, when the County Manager fired Hooker, the Commissioners met twenty-three times. At any one of those meetings the commissioners could have voted to no longer pay Hooker's salary and recommended that McClure be removed from the library's board of trustees; they did not do that.

The library system's Board of Trustees met fourteen times between the appeals court's June 6, 2003 ruling and May 19, 2004, when the County Manager fired Hooker. At any point during that period, the board could have fired Hooker for violating federal anti-discrimination laws, but they did not do so. The trustees also failed to remove McClure from the board, despite the fact that he, too, violated federal anti-discrimination law.

The Commission's and the library board's failure to dismiss Hooker and McClure took place amid various demands - for example, the Fulton County Tax Association's June 2003 "Call to Remove Fulton Library Director and Library Board Member Found Guilty of Practicing Discrimination" - that these two individuals be prevented from further damaging the library system.

After library and county officials failed to act, Georgia's legislators passed a bill in the spring of 2004 that abolished the library board of trustees as of June 30, 2004, thus ending McClure's tenure on the library board. On May 19, 2004, the county manager (empowered as Hooker's supervisor by the recent legislation) finally fired Hooker.


Read previously-posted updates on the lawsuit, including a photo of the plaintiffs




Library Settles Second Lawsuit
Filed for Retaliation Against AFPL Employees
Who Won Previous Lawsuit


In December 2003, a settlement was reached in a separate lawsuit against AFPL filed by librarians Mary Starck and Maureen Kelly, two plaintiffs in the previous lawsuit against library system.

The second suit charged both discrimination and retaliation. Kelly protested a punitive transfer and Starck protested the denial of a job - she had been the preferred candidate and eventually was chosen only after she filed a grievance.

The second lawsuit was settled for $250,000. This settlement was in addition to the $18 million that Fulton County paid to settle the lawsuit filed by Kelly, Starck, and other AFPL employees in 2000.

One of our favorite quotes from the various
news reports about the second lawsuit:
"When I learned we had two of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit before us again in EEOC grievances, I was incredulous. Then I was furious. Nobody could be that stupid, I thought."

-Stephen Dorvee, Vice Chairman, AFPL Board of Trustees,
Alpharetta Revue & News, October 15, 2003

AFPLWATCH's reaction (posted October 20, 2003) to Dorvee's comment:
All library personnel transactions, including recommendations for hire (like the one for the position Starck interviewed for) and transfers (like Kelly’s) go through the library's administrative chain of command before they reach the full board of trustees. That chain includes libary human resource manager Sylvia Culver, library director Hooker, and the library trustees' Personnel Committee. Every single person along that chain of command who signed off on these transactions had to have known the names of the two individuals involved in those transactions, and that those individuals were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the library. If the "system worked", how did both these actions get past Culver? Past Hooker? Past the members of the [trustees'] Personnel Committee?

Despite Hooker's attempts to spin to the trustees and to the county's Equal Employment Opportunity Office how these incidents occurred, Hooker's fingerprints are all over these personnel actions, right next to those of former Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes.
Not long after the EEOC grievance was filed that led to the second lawsuit, Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes abruptly resigned; eight months after that, Library Director Mary Kaye Hooker was fired. Culver, however, still works as AFPL's Human Resources Manager.



Background




Documents




Hurricane Hooker
(August 19, 1999 - May 19, 2004)




Attention
Library Boards of Trustees
and
City and County Managers
Throughout North America!

If you have already received--or if ever in your life you do receive--an application for your city's or county's vacant library director position from this individual--Mary Kaye Hooker, aka Mary Kaye Donahue-Hooker aka Mary Kay Donahue--instruct your interview team to request and review a free copy of The Hooker Dossier before offering a job to this applicant.




The Hooker Dossier, provided courtesy AFPLWATCH, is a conveniently-packaged set of materials that includes:
Libraries of North America! Do yourselves, your library's managers, your library's front-line employees, and your library's users a favor and send for your free copy of The Hooker Dossier today--before it's too late and you've doomed yourselves and everyone you know and care about to years of unmitigated, expensive misery.




"Hooker's Howlers"

Grab yourself a barf bag and read a sampling of the
lies and distortions from the mouth or word processor of Mary Kaye Hooker before the County Manager finally fired her on May 19, 2004.



"Daily Affirmations" for Mary Kaye Hooker?
Posted February 21, 2004




"Still Strategizing..."
Posted August 17, 2003



The Ideal Library Director...

...is the opposite of what AFPL had from 1999 to 2004.
Updated May 9, 2003




Library Staff Morale:
In the Proverbial Toilet

Posted May 5, 2003

By the time former library director Mary Kaye Hooker was finally fired in May 2004 and the former library board was abolished in June 2004, morale among library workers had sunk to its lowest level in over a decade. To find out why, read
"The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!"



The Amateur Hour:
AFPL's Trustees at Work



Peacocks on Parade:
Embarrassing Antics of AFPL's Clueless Trustees

Updated May 16, 2005


Examples of the cluelessness and/or ego tripping of AFPL's board of trustees.




"Scoundrel Time"
Final Update: January 21, 2004

William McClure once chaired AFPL's library board and--despite the successful $18 million lawsuit brought against him and others for race discrimination against library employees--McClure remained a board member and committee chair until the former board was abolished by Georgia law on June 30, 2004.

Shortly after leaving AFPL and until he died on October 25, 2005 at age 57, McClure "served" the citizens of East Point as a city council member. For comments from East Point citizens outraged about McClure's antics on the council, read
"Reports about One of Our Former Illustrious Board Members".



Damning Documents




Down the Rabbit-Hole:
Dispatches from The Surreal Library



Sobering Thoughts in a Troubled Time


Read these Sobering Thoughts, posted during Hooker's regime:
  • "Teamwork - and, at AFPL, Its Opposite"
  • “Brutal Bosses and Their Prey”
  • “Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Bully”
  • Does this sound like any library director you know?
  • Does this sound like any board of trustees you know?
  • The Secret Wellspring of "Hookerspeak" Revealed!
  • “Does Your Boss Put the ‘I’ in Idiot?”
  • "When Dopey's in charge, it's you who's always out of your mind..."
  • "Being a Library Director Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
    --No Matter How Sorry You Are"
  • Workplace sociopathy + sadism + narcissism + paranoia = the Business Psychopath
  • "Clouds of excuses and disclaimers..."
  • "The 10 Deadly Sins of Leadership"
  • "Deception of others is closely linked with self-deception...."


A Library System in Shambles




The Bad Drives Away The Good:
The AFPL Brain Drain, 1999-2004

Updated August 17, 2004

For the breathtakingly long list of the many administrative employees, subject specialists, and computer technicians who were involuntarily transferred, prematurely retired, or resigned from the Central Library during (or shortly after) the five-year tenure of recently-dismissed Library Director Mary Kaye Hooker, check
"Would the Last One Out Please Turn Out the Lights?"





AFPL's "Disappeared Ones"
1999-2004
Here one day, gone the next. No official explanations--but plenty of speculation around lots of water coolers and copy machines...

George Tuttle - former Ivan Allen Dept. Manager

Rodney Poitier - former Library Board Chair

Brian Williams - Library Development Officer
Reappeared 10/27/03; Re-Disappeared 10/28/03

Carolyn Garnes - former Deputy Director

Willie Kellings - former Building Maintenance Manager
Reappeared early April, 2004

Annette Steed - former Library Board Chair




The Strip-Mining of AFPL's Tech Services Department
Posted November 18, 2003


"Not So Long Ago and Not Nearly Far Away Enough..."  




Chronicles of Mediocrity

Some library systems meander into mediocrity; others are dragged, kicking and screaming, into mediocrity by lousy administrators.





Crater Watch! 2002-2007

Final Update: January 16, 2007

March 12, 2004
“A 3rd quarter [2004] completion date is anticipated [for repairing the two-year-old crater in front of the Central Library].” --Mary Kaye Hooker's "AFPL Project Status Report: February 2004" [page 2]
  • September 2004 Update: According to an announcement at the August 5th Agency Managers Meeting, the completion date has been moved ahead again, this time to "the 1st Quarter of 2005."

  • March 2005 Update: According to a "Project Status Report" dated February 14, 2005 ("Board Document #05-17"), the completion date for repairing the crater has again been moved forward, this time to "2nd Quarter 2005." Somehow we just knew that Hooker's successor would get a chance to see the gaping crater Hooker left for posterity.

  • May 2005 Update: According to a "Project Status Report dated April 20, 2005 ("Board Document #05-43"), the completion date for repairing the crater is now July 2005.

  • June 2005 Update: According to a comment made by AFPL Library Director John Szabo at the June 2nd meeting of library managers, work on the crater should be completed by "late September/early October [2005]."

  • September 2005 Update: According to the "AFPL Project Status Report, August 2005" (Board Document #05-78), work on the crater is now projected to be completed in November 2005.

  • October 2005 Update: According to the “September 2005 Project Status Report” (Board Document #05-85), the anticipated date of completion has been moved to “December 2005.”

  • December 2005 Update: According to the minutes of the library board's October 26th meeting, the project is now expected to be finished sometime during the first quarter of 2006.

  • March 2006 Update: From the minutes of the library board's January 25th meeting [page 46]: “…the [latest] Fast Track Contractor was not acceptable and they were kicked off the job….Another contractor that the County has worked with…[is now] on board. They’re working on pricing and we hope to get it from them soon….And once they give us the pricing…a construction start date can be set. And so hopefully we’ll have a construction start date set by [the board’s] February meeting."

  • April 2006 Update: From the minutes of the library board's April meeting [pages 24 and 30]: Library Director John Szabo: "…It is only a dollar issue at this point, and it is in the County Manager’s hands. Everything is ready: all pricing, all sub-contractors, one hundred percent [of the] construction documents. The dollars available in that project budget, however, are short. And understandably so, given that it’s been there for four-plus years. The amount in the budget is in the upper $300,000…and the dollars needed…range between half a million and a million. So it’s not a tiny amount of money that the County Manager will be looking for. What options are available…to him I don’t know….”

  • May 2006 Update:
    “…Six, seven, eight hundred thousand dollars…is just a phenomenal amount of money to spend [on renovating the plaza in front of the Central Library]. I think we could…plant grass on it and buy books…rather than whatever we have done or spent. And heaven only knows if anybody ever does an audit of how much money has been spent on that space, it will boggle the mind of anybody and everybody. And look at the cost…to kick out the last contractor and the one in between…I think our ability to deal with the public monies is sort of short in the foot on this project….If anbody does an audit and somebody writes an article [in some newspaper] on [the stewardship of] public expenditures of Fulton County and/or Library, we are going to be in deep trouble…." -Trustee Roger Rupnow, Transcript of the Board’s May 24, 2006 Meeting, pages 24-25]
  • June 3, 2006 Update: Library Director John Szabo said at a June 1st meeting of library managers that the county commissioners would vote on funding for the crater repair at its meeting on June 7th. If the expenditures are approved, an already-approved "fast-tract" contractor would be swiftly notified to resume the repair work immediately.

  • June 30, 2006 Update: According to a June 28th email from Interim Central Librarian Bill Munro, work on the plaza is scheduled to resume on July 5th and be completed in "about 4-5 months."

  • August 2006 Update: At a meeting of library managers on August 3rd, library director John Szabo stated that workers had begun work on the plaza and that he expected the work to be completed by mid-November.

  • October 2006 Updates: At a meeting of library managers on October 5th, library director John Szabo explained that, due to the extra precautions being taken to waterproof the plaza, the work's completion date had been moved forward into December 2006. In an October 13th progress report to library staff, Acting Central Library Administrator Bill Munro mentions a December 6, 2006 completion date.

  • November 2006 Update: The latest projected completion date, announced at a Nov. 2nd meeting of library managers, is December 19, 2006.

  • December 31, 2006 Update: At year's end, the work behind the screening looks mostly completed, but the final walk-through, removal of the screening, and the re-opening of the adjacent street reportedly won't be possible until early 2007.

The Saga of the Central Library Plaza came to an end the second week of January 2007, when the work atop the closed crater was completed, the fencing surrounding the work site was removed, and the adjacent street and sidewalks were reopened.
Webmaster's Note: If anyone has other photos of the yawning crater or of what's currently sitting on top of it that they'd like to share with AFPLWATCH readers, contact the webmaster and we'll post them.


!!! READER CONTEST !!!

What Was the Darkest Day
in the Library System's
Recent History?

The library system's staff and patrons have endured a lot of Dark Days during the past ten years.

Undoubtedly the lowest point was reached the day in 2002 when a library employee whose troubled relationship with his manager was known to library administrators for at least four years murdered the manager and then killed himself.

Apart from that senseless tragedy, what do you think was the incident in recent years that has had the most far-reaching negative consequences for the library system? Was it:

  • The day Commissioner Hightower (later imprisoned for malfeasance in office) first appointed William McClureto the library system's board of trustees?

  • The day the AFPLS Friends of the Library group was disbanded because the group's president (who happened to be the wife of the library board chair at the time) had run afoul of federal tax laws?

  • The day Julie Hunter, exasperated by the trustees' relentless micromanagement of the library system, announced her resignation as Library Director?

  • The day the library board of trustees, ignoring the legal proceedings she was mired in at the El Paso Public Library, hired Mary Kaye Hooker as Julie Hunter's replacement?

  • The day the library board, after its "exhaustive, nation-wide search," decided Carolyn Garnes was the most qualified applicant on the planet for the job as the library system's Deputy Director?

  • The day when director Hooker, with a mass involuntary transfer of employees--and for that most worthless of reasons, the race prejudice of certain trustees--eliminated from the Central Library the majority of its most seasoned managers and subject specialists?

  • The day Mary Kaye Hooker ordered the Central Library's Film Department to be dismantled, its staff to be transferred to branch libraries, and its highly-regarded collection of videos to be disbursed to multiple sites--without security cases?

  • The day Mary Kaye Hooker ordered the dismantling of the library system's nationally-renowned telephone reference department, sending its founder and virtually all of its excellently-trained specialists to work in branch libraries, allowing its well-honed collection to be decimated, and crippling the public's use of telephone reference by reducing the number of reference phone lines from four to one?

  • The day Susan Earl was installed as Central Library Administrator?

  • The day the library board, instead of firing Mary Kaye Hooker for authorizing multiple illegal personnel transactions, announced that it would require her to attend "sensitivity training"?
So many "Dark Days" to choose from! Send your vote to the webmaster--or suggest your own candidate for The Darkest Day in the Library's Recent History. As soon as a substantial number of readers have voted, we will announce the, umm, "winner."





This web site is operated by Atlantans For Progressive Libraries, a group of concerned citizens interested in fostering an ongoing, public discussion of the current dysfunctional state of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library system.

"Hidden agendas are just as important to expose as hidden bank accounts."
--Ron Rosenbaum, The Secret Parts of Fortune (Random House, 2000)




Home Table of Contents Archives Frequently Asked Questions Contact Us