...how long the Fulton County Commission is going to tolerate the
continuing mismanagement of the county jail?
Posted June 13, 2007; latest update June 29, 2007
The latest in the multiple-year-long saga over at the county jail
is the story in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Jail Officials Shred Documents: Auditor Says Materials Included Inmate
Complaints".
The downward spiral in this part of the county government's
vast empire certainly rivals the expensive and destructive mess emanating
from the county's library system a few years ago that the system is still
suffering the consequences of.
The county can hire all the consultants it wants to study the allegedly
dire consequences of losing territory to a proposed Milton County, but it's
crap like the stuff that's been going on in the county sheriff's office
and at the county jail that's convincing
more and more citizens that the only way to rein in the mismanagement of
county government is to disintangle themselves from the current batch of
county politicians (and their inept appointees) and start their own
governments.
...if AFPL's Personnel Office will be explaining to AFPL employees
currently taking advantage of the county's discounted MARTA Transcards
how
the upcoming replacement of Transcards with "Breezecards" will affect
them? And will do that soon enough so that AFPL employees won't be
forking over a fee for their Breezecards, or (worse) not having a Breezecard
on the day they become mandatory? (Posted March 7, 2007)
At the March 1st meeting of branch managers, concern was expressed that
employees getting MARTA cards need two things from AFPL's Personnel Office:
advance instructions about the impending Transcard-to-Breezecard transition,
and a more reliable, convenient way to get county-discounted MARTA cards
into the hands of employees who depend upon them. We hope both concerns
have been conveyed by the Branch Group Administrator to AFPL's Personnel
Officer by now, and that the Personnel Office will address both concerns
before the next round of MARTA cards are delivered.
...how come AFPL's librarians haven't been given their annual
opportunity to evaluate the library's materials vendors?
(Posted November 13, 2006)
There were HUGE problems with the vendors AFPL gave this past year's
shelf-ready contracts to. In previous years librarians were given a
vendor evaluation form to fill out. Routine ordering was stopped this year
on August 15th - but so far nobody's seen the evaluation forms, and it's
already mid-November.
We hope this mysterious witholding of the evaluation forms doesn't mean
that AFPL's Collection Development Unit is uninterested in staff comments
and observations of our vendors' performance, or that those comments and
observations would be deemed irrelevant to which vendors get next year's
contracts. There are too many millions of dollars at stake every year to
ignore staff experience with AFPL's shelf-ready vendors. Surely no
vendor contracts would be automatically renewed without taking into
account staff comments on recent vendor performance?
...why branch libraries have not received the book orders their selectors
placed months ago with one of the library system's primary vendors? And why
the few orders for nonbook materials from this vendor that have been
received are arriving, sometimes, one at a time, each in its own individaul cardboard
carton, complete with a mysterious "fuel surcharge" tacked on to each
invoice? (Posted June 21, 2006)
Why aren't branch selectors being kept informed of what went wrong with
orders from this vendor, and what, precisely, is being done to correct
the problem(s)?
It's the end of June, and some orders were placed with this vendor last
February. Isn't there something in the library system's contracts
with its vendors stipulating a reasonable turnaround time between order
placement and order shipments? February to July is a long time to expect
library selectors to keep holding their collective breath, waiting for
these materials to arrive.
What library administrator is in charge of monitoring vendor compliance
with library materials-purchasing contracts? Will the logjam with this
particular vendor's orders be broken up before the dreaded flurry of
end-of-buying-season cancellations kick-in? (And if that doesn't happen,
what kind of frenzied, confusion-riddled last-minute budget transfer/spendout
mess is going to ensue?
Worst case scenario: a huge amount of needed materials will not
arrive and hundreds of items will have to be re-ordered next year - either
from this same vendor or some other one. Talk about wasted time and
money...not to mention large numbers of disappointed - and ill-served -
library patrons.
June 22nd Postscript: A reader reports
that a shipment of books from the Problem Vendor arrived at a branch
yesterday. Unfortunately, it was a batch of uncataloged, non-processed
books that had been recently ordered - not the hoped-for batch of
cataloged, processed titles on the Summer Reading Program booklist for
kids that was ordered months ago, nor the hoped-for batch of cataloged,
processed titles, also ordered months ago needed for the Teen Summer
Reading program. Note to library administrators and Problem Vendor: The
summer reading programs at AFPL started June 1st....
...when AFPL headquarters personnel who don't work public service desks
are going to learn to stop scheduling any training or meetings for AFPL
on Mondays and Fridays for AFPL employees who staff the library system's
public service desks? (Posted February 20, 2006)
This past Friday afternoon, the library system's Collection Management Department
sent out a notice announcing that it had scheduled training sessions in
navigating the website of one of this year's primary materials vendors.
Every one of the six training training sessions was scheduled for a Monday
or a Friday.
We realize it's easy for people working at the Central Library who
don't work weekends to forget this, but the greatest difficulty in
arranging public service desk coverage in branch libraries (or at Central,
for that matter) are Mondays and Fridays. That's because Mondays
and Fridays are the days branch employees take off work to compensate for
their working on Saturdays and/or Sundays. Any Monday or Friday training
session or staff meeting that involves a branch or Central public service
employee - and especially an event that involves more than one employee at
the same branch or Central public service department - creates a
triple-whammy for those responsible for scheduling or providing coverage
in those facilities:
- First, a Monday or Friday training session or meeting at Central
unnecessarily inconveniences those employees expected to attend training
or a meeting on what would otherwise be an off-duty day.
- Second, the inevitable reduction in the manpower pool every Monday and
Friday negatively affects those colleagues left behind, who must deal with
the consequences of those every-Monday and every-Friday scheduled absences.
- God forbid there should be any unexpected absences on top
of any scheduled ones. Oddly enough, those unplanned absences seem to occur
more often on Mondays and Fridays than on other days.
Inadequately-staffed branches (and we don't know of many adequately-staffed
ones) and the Hooker-strip-mined Central Library public service departments
have enough coverage problems without administrators and others at Central
scheduling (or approving) training on the very two days that scheduling
public service coverage is the most difficult. Training sessions and
meetings involving public service personnel should always be scheduled on
Tuesdays or Wednesdays or Thursdays - never on Mondays and Fridays!
...what library committees exist these days, who's chairing each of them,
and who these committees' members are. (Posted
February 17, 2006)
Library systems the size of AFPL - and library systems with the number
of vacant administrative positions that AFPL has been enduring for several
years now - depend heavily on committees to get a lot of their work
accomplished. Why the continuing mystery about the committee work
currently going on at AFPL?
The only systemwide committee whose existence, membership, accomplishments,
and activities are evident to everyone is AFPL's circulation committee.
That's probably because it was one of the earliest post-Hooker committees
that was established and because that committee's chair wisely decided to
publicize its work in a widely-distributed newsletter.
Since Hooker's departure almost two years ago, however, various individuals
have heard at various times that there are (or were or soon would be)
committees established to work on the library's
- collection development policy
- computer use policy
- Internet use policy
- reference service training
- staff training
- staff morale
- meeting rooms procedures
- public relations logo
- regulations for patron conduct
Have some of these rumored committees actually been formed? Have some of
them not only been formed, but finished their work already? If so, what
was the upshot of that work, and what recommendations coming out of those
committees are still in the pipeline?
Also important: how - and with whom - could AFPL employees interested in
having a role in shaping The New AFPL register their interest in
participating in library committee work?
With an alleged re-emphasis among post-Hooker AFPL administrators on
"better communication," we don't think it's too much to expect that library staff be
informed of what committees their colleagues are working on - and which
colleagues were selected to do that work. The dissemination of that
information would allow staff members not selected for those
committees to communicate their concerns on topics the committees are
addressing - before it's too late to have those concerns taken into account.
As the library staff conintues to wait - and for how much longer, we wonder? - for
the organization chart that AFPL's director told the trustees months ago
he was planning to distribute "soon," would it be so difficult for him
to at least distribute a comprehensive list of the library's staff
committees?
...how Fulton County personnel regulations can be used to fire librarians
who don't meet their continuing education requirements, when those same
regulations are blatantly ignored by the county's tax assessors?
(Posted October 31, 2005)
Read the details from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution
news story. (Warning: The AJC requires annoying registration to read
its online edition.)
...if a lawsuit is becoming the only reliable way to get Fulton County
employees to do their jobs? (Posted
October 31, 2005)
This time, the lawsuit's being filed by a prisoner who was kept behind
bars in a Fulton County jail 22 months longer than he was supposed to,
because some government clerk forgot to forward to the correct department
the paperwork authorizing the prisoner's release.
We wouldn't be surprised if a few of the dozens of county job applicants
whose applications never reached their proper destinations join this
particular lawsuit!
Naturally, a county attorney tried to get the lawsuit dismissed by under
a "legal immunity" statute. Wisely, the judge refused, commenting that the
county can't shield itself from the legal consequences of clerical
employees failing to perform their routine duties.
...if there isn't something odd about Branch Group Manager Anne Haime's
recent solicitation for staff volunteers to help clear up the notorious
shelving mess at the East Atlanta Branch Library? (Posted
October 3, 2005)
What mystifies us is that, almost three months after East Atlanta was
re-opened, the shelves are still in so much of a mess that extra staff
must be imported to correct that problem.
Was the branch opened before it was ready? Is the branch not adequately staffed? Is the staff not
adequately managed? Why does this relatively small branch need (and receive)
extra attention that was never offered to the much-larger, much-busier new
regional libraries after they were opened? How can library staff "volunteer"
to help at a library during a weekday when they're being paid by the county
to work elsewhere?
Did Haimes' unusual one-day "shape up the shelves" effort at East Atlanta
successfully solve whatever the persistent problem is there?
...if we're the only ones who see an uncanny resemblance between
AFPL's website and
this one? (Posted September 29, 2005)
…why the county doesn’t, like many other governments do, print directly
on its publications the total and per-copy cost of those publications?
(Posted September 21, 2005)
For example, the latest issue of AFPL’s Access, a master catalog of upcoming library
programs, does not include such a statement. We suspect it doesn't because
taxpayers would be outraged to learn how much tax money was wasted on this
project.
The county-printed version of Access is a perfect (though by no
means the only) example of why Mary Kaye Hookers’ abolishing the library’s
print shop to “save money” was counterproductive. Back when the library’s
top-notch print shop employees printed this publication themselves, they
didn’t waste money on printing this calendar of events in an outrageously
expensive four-color-on-glossy-paper format. Access was not only
a lot cheaper then, but the library was able to produce it monthly,
instead of quarterly, so it was a lot more informative and complete -
and much less bulky.
Since all the information in Access is posted at the library’s web site
these days, we’re not sure why this publication has been continued anyway,
but it would certainly be cheaper to print out the needed information from
the web site and mail it to a library users who don't own computers than
it would be for Fulton County’s print shop to continue printing Access
in its current format.
With the extended lead time for getting something printed by the county,
and the money wasted on inappropriately elaborate formats, we don't see
how abolishing the library system's print shop is serving the library-using
citizens of Fulton County any better than the previous, more efficient,
arrangement.
...if a public
library in North Carolina can maintain three blogs for its
patrons, and a public library in Michigan can maintain seven of them, why hasn't AFPL launched at least one library-sponsored
blog for Atlanta’s library users? (Posted September 12, 2005)
..how many assistants does a C52 manager need, anyway?
(Posted August 19, 2005)
With the arrival this week of a Librarian II (C43) in the Central Library's Library
Express/Circulation Department, the wheel has come full circle - and then
some.
Five years ago, as part of the Hooker/McClure “re-organization,”
Central's Popular Library (managed by a C52 and a C51) was split into two
separate departments, Library Express and Central Circulation. The stated
goal: get those high-level librarians out into branches where they can earn
their big salaries, as they definitely aren’t needed at Central!
Of course, the real story was more along the lines of Some Librarians Are
More "Needed" at Central Than The Ones Who Happened to Have Been There
When Hooker Arrived.
Hooker imported from a branch library (!) a C51 to manage one of the newly
created departments on Central's ground floor; Doris Jackson (who Interim
Library Director Anne Haimes later appointed Interim Central Library
Administator) eventually promoted that C51 to a C52. In the meantime, this
Central department head had acquired an assistant, another C51. A few
months ago, management of the other ground-floor Central department was
assigned to a specially-promoted B31. To that component of Central's
ground floor has now been added a C43...and the two departments have been
united once more.
To summarize:
Management of Central Library's Ground Floor
| 2000 |
2005 |
| Popular Library + Circulation |
Library Express + Circulation |
| C52 + C51 |
C52 + C51 + C43 + B31 |
That’s right. It now takes 4 high-level supervisors to run the newly
reconstituted department that only needed 2 before Ms. Hooker and the
board embarked on their “cost-saving” redistribution of high-level staff
at Central.
One of the ironies here (and there are several layers of them) is that the
multiplication of managers on the Central Library's ground floor was
accomplished after Hooker's and McClure's exits. True,
Doris Jackson, who authorized the ballooning, is a Hooker/Garnes appointee,
but why AFPL's new director went along with Jackson's plan is among the
early mysteries (and chief disappointments) of the post-Hooker era.
Correction Posted August 22, 2005:
An alert reader has detected two factual errors in our claim that there
are way too many managers in the Central Library's ground floor public
service department.
Error #1: There is no C51 employee on the Library Express/Central
Circulation Department's staff, like we said there was.
Error #2: The B31 supervising the circulation staff has been in the
department's staff for five years, not "a few months."
We're sorry for our errors, and appreciate the corrections. Our little
chart should have looked like this:
Management of Central Library's Ground Floor
| 2000 |
2005 |
| Popular Library + Circulation |
Library Express + Circulation |
| C52 + C51 |
C52 + C43 + C42 + B31 |
...if we're the only ones who think it's ironic that the Auburn Avenue
Research Library (which, the last time we checked, is a branch of the
Atlanta-Fulton Public Library) is recruiting for a Public Information
Officer to promote Auburn's programs, collections, etc. when AFPL doesn't
have a full-time PIO on staff?
(Posted July 27, 2005)
...what days during 2005 the library system will be closed.
(Posted May 13, 2005)
Last week when AFPL's re-designed web site burst upon the world without
warning or explanation, the section of the site that listed holiday closings
was nowhere to be found. As we head into Memorial Day, that information is
still missing. Could the elusive webmaster be persuaded to restore it? --No,
wait, the list that was posted before was for 2004 closings, so
"restore" isn't the right word. Could we get on the web site an accurate,
current listing of library closings for the rest of the year, please?
And, also, how about posting a way to directly contact the site's webmaster?
May 28th Update: We finally located the list
of 2005 holiday closings: it's buried in the
"Library Forms" section, of all places, which itself is buried under
"Library Services." This is hardly where library users are likely to be looking
for this information. (About as likely as they're going to look under
"Library Forms" for the schedule of the library system's ESL classes,
which is also located there.)
Meanwhile, on May 24th, library staff received an encouraging and
informative email promising further tweakings of the new AFPL website,
and were invited to contribute suggestions for improvement. We urge
library employees to take a few moments to make such suggestions.
June 30th Update: When we checked the web site
again this morning, we were relieved to see that although the information
about holiday closings is still rather hidden, the section it's hidden in
has been rechristened to a more accurate "Forms and Schedules." Unfortunately,
the information about the holiday closings doesn't yet jibe with Szabo's
June 29th email about those closings. We look forward to a speedy update,
so that library patrons will have accurate information on this matter.
...how long it will take for all the banished signs in the Central
Library to reappear. (Posted March 15, 2005; update posted March 23, 2005)
We've heard that Central Library Administrator Doris Jackson recently
decreed the removal of virtually all signage in the Central Library -
reportedly at the behest of a Fulton County feng shui expert (someone we
hadn't realized was on the county payroll). Whatever the reason the signs were removed, we
predict they'll be back one day - with good reason. Here's what others
have to say about the subject, contrary to Jackson's notion that patrons
should be forced "to interact with library staff" whenever they visit
Central:
“The signs in a library building set the stage for a friendly or a
hostile environment, for a helpful or a confusing library visit,
especially for first-time users. --Effective Library Signage
(Association of Research Libraries)
"To be self-sufficient, patrons need the guidance of well-thought-out
and appropriately placed signage....If the first view your patrons
have upon entering the building is not the reference desk, offer some
guidance. Clear, positive signs will tell them where to find what
they need, whether it’s the children’s area or the ladies’ room. Help
them help themselves." --Julie Winkelstein, “What’s Your Sign?”
Library Journal, March 1, 2005, page 64
Update (March 23, 2005): The
"Spooky Quotation" posted today to AFPLWATCH also seems appropriate
here.
...when Interim Library Director Anne Haimes will announce whether or
not the library system will be closed on Easter Sunday 2005?
(Posted February 21, 2005)
February's almost over, and the legions of library workers scheduled to
work at branch libraries usually open on Sundays would like to be able to
make their plans for Easter this year.
Maybe this annual task of announcing Easter library closings would get done
a lot sooner if administrators were on the Sunday duty rosters??? Otherwise,
it always seems to be a very low priority, and the announcement is never
made soon enough.
Why not just do the reasonable thing, and make Easter closings a
permanent thing--for the simple and accurate reason that
we've often closed the libraries then: "expected low usage." Then the
Sunday schedule-makers could skip over making any Sunday assignments on
Easter, thereby eliminating a lot of confusion--not to mention a lot of
unnecessary uncertainty about who can make plans for Easter and who can't.
Update: In a memo to library staff dated
February 24th, Interim Library Director Anne Haimes announced that the
library system would be closed on March 27th (which, this year, is
Easter Sunday). The closing was approved by AFPL's board of trustees at
its monthly meeting on February 23rd.
...whether the four bold predictions made in Fulton County's recent
press release about the upgrading of the library system's computers
will come true. (Posted February 10, 2005)
We certainly hope so. We know several hundred county employees and
several thousand library users who have gotten mighty weary of coping with
the county's efforts to modernize the library system's computer
infrastructure.
...when AFPL's web site will begin displaying the correct information
about the library system's year-end holiday closings?
(Posted December 1, 2004)
For many months now, the web site's
Holidays page has been displaying the fact that the library will be
closed Thursday, December 23rd and Friday, December 24th...without
mentioning that AFPL will also be closed on Saturday, December 25th.
The Christmas closing notice also refers to the 6pm closing on "Wednesday,
December 23"; what it should say is Wednesday, December 22nd.
Also, the page lists New Year's Day as a Friday, when New Year's Day falls
on a Saturday in 2005; it also says the library will close on
"Wednesday, December 31st," when New Year's Eve this year falls on a
Friday.
The last thing the library needs are patrons schelpping off to
their local library on a day it's closed because they believed what
they read on AFPL's web site about when we'd be open. So, please, could we
get this holiday closings information corrected really, really soon?
Incidentally, we very much doubt that this sort of snafu would've happened--
or would have gone uncorrected for so long--if the library system's
webmaster hadn't been snatched out of the library and gobbled up by Fulton
County's IT department, if only because it's got to be more problemmatic
for library administrators to remember to notify the webmaster of
everything he needs to know to keep the web site accurate.
Update: Accurate year-end 2004 holiday closing information
was posted later on in December.
Update to Update: Accurate information for 2004 was posted;
as of February 10, 2005, a list of holiday closings for 2005 had still not
been posted on the web site. So much for the wisdom of moving control of
the library's web site from the library to county IT headquarters....
Update to Update: As of March 1, 2005, a list of 2005 holiday closings
(including one for March 27th) had not been posted to the library system's
web site.
...if Fulton County's IT manager has thought about resigning?
Posted October 11, 2004
Headline from the October 8, 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution (page D6): "State Data
Center Director Steps Down." The story reports that the state government's
data center chief resigned "after a major computer crash disrupted some
key government services for 16 hours" in September.
No computers for a mere 16 hours?!? Anybody want to guess how many times
the library system's computers have crashed since Fulton County IT Manager
Robert Taylor annexed to his unwieldy empire AFPL's computer system and
computer support employees? Or for how many cumulative hours since then the library's
thousands of customers using its hundreds of computers (i.e., the ones
without OUT OF ORDER signs on them) have gone without Internet access, and
how many cumulative hours the library staff has been deprived of access to
county email?
We wish Taylor would stop barraging us with announcements of all the
awards Fulton County's IT department is winning and focus on radically
improving the day-to-day reliability of the county's computer services.
The citizens using the county's libraries and the staff working in those
33 libraries deserve better service than we've gotten since Taylor
was allowed to begin overseeing AFPL's computers and computer support staff.
...when is an "Acting Manager" not an "Acting Manager"?
Posted October 7, 2004
If a library employee is expected to sign other employees' time sheets,
deal with personnel problems, attend administrative meetings, fiddle with
work plans, and publish coverage schedules, that sounds like a Manager to
us...no matter what library administrators decide to call her.
Why, we wonder, is the Alpharetta branch library's managerless situation
being treated so differently from the managerless situation at the South
Fulton branch library???
...Whether the systemwide committee working on revamping the
method of staffing branches open on Sunday will be calling for
the East Point Branch to drop its Sunday hours.
Posted August 23, 2004
East Point is the only Area Library open on Sundays, and staffing
East Point along with Central and the Regionals open on Sundays makes
the Sunday staffing rotations more difficult than necessary. We've
never understood why East Point residents enjoy Sunday hours when
the users of Area Libraries in other parts of the county do not enjoy
them. East Point's Sunday hours are one of several glaring resource
allocation anomalies of the William McClure era: why not take this
chance to make things more equitable? And while correcting that little
bit of political favoritism, the library administration should also
take a look at the outrageously uncalled-for overstaffing of the
East Point branch relative to the staffing at other--and busier--Area
Libraries.
...Whether the Interim Library Director is including in her plans
for temporary assignments of managers to branches-without-managers the
C52-level managers of Central Library departments.
Posted July 20, 2004
We're thinking especially of the managers installed at Central by
Hooker and Garnes in the aftermath of Hooker's May 2000 illegal
transfers. If there's a crisis in staffing branch libraries with
managers--and with almost one-third of AFPL's branches operating
without permanent, full-time managers these days, we think "crisis" is
not overstating the case--no C52 should be automatically exempted from
such a temporary reassignment merely because he or she manages a
Central department.
...How soon the library will begin recruiting for the management
vacancy at East Atlanta now that East Atlanta branch manager Gayle
Holloman has been hired as the manager for the new Ocee branch library.
Posted July 13, 2004
At a recent board meeting, Deputy County Manager Keith Chadwell
repeated an earlier promise to authorize hiring for any vacancies
created by lateral transfers or promotions of library staff to Ocee.
August 6th Update: The first week in
August, library staff received copies of a vacancy notice for the East
Atlanta manager position.
...how long it will take Acting Director Anne Haimes to dismantle
the formidable "secretariat" Mary Kaye Hooker assembled in her office
over the past four-and-a-half years. Posted
May 25, 2004
Assuming the days are over when the library board is constantly
flooding the director's office with assignments, we don't see why
we can't return to the days when the Director's Office made do with
two full-time secretaries.
If Haimes decides to bring in her own secretary, perhaps the others
Hooker was using--including Hooker's C-51 (!) administrative
coordinator--could be reassigned to some other administrator. Or even
better, be reassigned to one of the many busy branches who desperately
need the extra help!
May 25th Mid-day Update:
Kudos to Ms. Haimes! Library staff received an email early this morning informing them of
Haimes' reassignments of several Director's Office secretarial staff to
other parts of the organization. This is definitely an encouraging
early signal that common sense will play a role in the New AFPL,
and that the Acting Director apparently doesn't intend to barricade
herself behind--or exaggerate the importance of the Director's Office
with--an impenetrable screen of secretaries.
What is it with Hooker and her "Administrator in Charge" thing?
Posted April 21, 2004
Before Hooker's arrival at AFPL, the library director would send out
a memo to staff letting them know who was in charge of the library
only when she was going out of town, or was taking annual leave or
sick leave.
Shortlya after Hooker arrived, staff began receiving an apparently
unending series of memos that perpetually force someone other
than Hooker to take charge of "any public service, legal, public relations,
personnel, budget, or Library Board related matters."
As these memos continue to pour forth from her office, it's clear that
it doesn't faze (or embarrass) Hooker one bit to burden some hapless
administrator with the library director's primary duties.
Hooker's also apparently unconcerned that over 350 library employees are forced
to keep track of the stream of memos notifying them of "who's really
in charge today." Or that staff struggle with the confusion Hooker sows by
inserting into all her overlapping notices the following bizarre instruction:
"All other matters that may arise during this period will be
handled by the Director’s office."
Well, gosh, what's left over after the "Administrator of the Moment"
handles all the director's work?
Why is Hooker--despite her hundred-thou-a-year director's salary--too busy
(with what? with "strategizing"?) to run the joint?
Of course, after four long years of experience with Mary Kaye Hooker's
so-called "leadership" of AFPL, library employees have learned there's a
simple answer to this question. Hooker doesn't have a clue about how to
operate a library system. Never has, never will.
How much money and staff time and energy library administrators spent
on all the arrangements and paraphenalia (balloons, fancy invitations, etc.)
for "celebrating" the debut of the library's new automation system--an
extravaganza attended only by library staff and the odd Board member?
Posted April 8, 2004
Why library administrators require librarians to teach
patrons how to set up free email accounts, when the Internet
filter the administration has chosen often prevents patrons from
opening their email messages once they set up those accounts?
Posted April 6, 2004
Why one part of the administration (its SIRSI subcommittees) are
telling library staff to hurry up and get bibliographic data into CARL
so it will migrate to SIRSI, while another part of the administration (Michelle
Carnes) is telling Tech Services staff to hold back materials so an
outside vendor can create bibliographic data for them?
Posted February 25, 2004
The items being set aside for
the outside vendor aren’t even new to AFPL’s collection, they are
merely added copies of things already in CARL-and there are staff in
Tech Services available to do this work. Sounds to us like more
evidence that this outside vendor was not something the library needed
in the first place, that the library director lied to the county
commissioners when she claimed we needed a contract with them, and
that now Carnes is “making work” for the vendor to justify our
selecting them as a vendor. Classic, clueless Hookerism.
What qualifications were possessed by the individuals Hooker
instructed to review and rate the responses from vendors to the library
systems bid for 2004 library materials?
Posted January 16, 2004
Who the Sam Hill took it upon themselves to authorize however many
dollars of the library system's $500,000 electronic resources budget
it cost to pay for, of all things, a subscription to JSTOR, "a database
of archival scholarly journals...intended for graduate and research
scholars"??? Posted December 19, 2003
Why does the county and the board keep opening new libraries?
Especially without closing down underused ones? Where do
they think these staff positions are going to come from, except from
the libraries their predecessors have already opened and which
desperately need their staff members to keep those libraries functioning?
Posted December 12, 2003)
We ask this in response to the following statement made by Mary Kaye
Hooker in her "Highlights of Monthly Activities: October - November 2003"
(page 2): "As a general rule, Fulton County is required to keep a maximum head
count of 6,000 employees; hence, to increase staff such as [those that
will be required when the library opens its new branch] at Ocee,
somewhere else must take [staff] cuts.”
If Ambassador Andrew Young--scheduled to be honored by the library
on December 6 at a reception celebrating the donation of his papers to
the Auburn Avenue Research Library--is looking forward to hobnobbing
with a library director and a library trustee who a federal jury found
guilty of race discrimination against library employees.
Posted November 18, 2003
What a great photo-op for an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story
highlighting the irony of the occasion!
December 5th Update: The library has
postponed its reception for Ambassador Young.
December 19th Update: According to a December 18th Fulton County
press release, a press conference celebrating the donation of Young's
papers will be held in the Fall of 2004. Perhaps Hooker and McClure
will be long gone by then?
How a part-time secretary working on the Central Library's
7th floor managed to score one of those notoriously scarce parking spots
in Central's parking garage. Posted November 4, 2003
Why the library system is paying the salary of a Development
Director who's no longer working for the library system.
Posted November 5, 2003
In late October, AFPL Development Director Brian Williams returned from an
extended period of (paid) Administrative Leave. The following day, the Deputy
County Manager and a county EEO official informed Library Director
Mary Kaye Hooker that Williams was being reassigned for at least six
months to the county's Department of Mental Health & Mental Retardation.
Why haven't the library's trustees looked into why this unusual
transfer was deemed necessary? After all, Williams' continued prolonged
absence profoundly hampers the library's ability to garner grants for
improving library services, no matter how many grants he obtains for
some other county department. What information in Williams' EEO
complaint against Hooker is so explosive that the county manager's
office cannot allow Hooker and Williams to work together?
April 6th Update: We were told by a reliable source
that Fulton County has refused to transfer Williams back to the library,
but that it did find a vacant empty position in the Dept. of Mental Health &
Mental Retardation to move Williams into, and returned the library
position Williams was occupying to the library. Hooker recently announced
she is recruiting for Williams' replacement. If the library is lucky, that
individual won't be hired by Hooker at all, but by Hooker's replacement.
Hey, maybe with Hooker gone, Williams would be interested in re-applying
for his old library job?
Why it's taking so long for library administrators to distribute
recruiting notices for the numerous vacant positions throughout the
library system. Posted October 20, 2003
Hooker told employees at the October General Staff
Meeting that the county had lifted its hiring freeze for vacant
library positions. A week later, she told managers at the November
Agency Meeting that the hiring freeze had not been lifted (except for
a few positions). Which is it, Ms. Hooker? Is there a hiring freeze or
isn't there? If hiring for some positions has been authorized, why
have staff seen only one recruiting notice (for a Bookmobile postion)?
How do you justify any delays whatsoever in setting up
interviews for so many long-vacant positions? Could it be that
Hooker plans to fill certain vacancies through more "temporary"
appointments or "temporary" transfers instead of recruiting
qualified candidates from open pools of applicants, as required
by the county's merit system regulations?
Since the library system's Collection Development Librarian
resigned October 7th...
- who, if anyone, is supervising the Collection Development Unit's staff?
- who, if anyone, is overseeing this year's spendout of unexpended
materials funds?
- who, if anyone, is shepherding next year's book bids through the
approval process to make sure those contracts are in place as of January
2004?
- who, if anyone, is making sure the library system's licenses with
online database vendors are renewed before they expire, is responsible for
resolving staff and patron problems in accessing the databases, for
ensuring that the library system's Electronic Resource Committee evaluates
new databases that become available and meets its deadlines for deciding
which databases to renew or to cancel?
- who, if anyone, is fielding calls from and resolving problems with the
library system's numerous materials vendors?
- who, if anyone, is overseeing the content and delivery of the Board-required
"Basic Resource Set" for all library facilities--a process that should
have been completed this past October for 2004--and is monitoring other
collection-related library system policies and procedures?
- who, if anyone, is following through on whatever collection-related
assignments and projects had been delegated to the Collection
Development Unit by the library director?
- who, if anyone, is planning any necessary training or retraining for
the library system's one hundred materials selectors?
- who, if anyone, are selectors supposed to call for answers to their collection-related
questions?
- who, if anyone, is in charge of spending the $40,000 earmarked every year
for the library system's Professional Collection, and for keeping that
Collection functioning?
Will the salary of the hapless person(s) inheriting these
responsibilities be increased to what the Collection Development
Librarian ended up being paid after the Technical Services Manager
retired without being replaced?
Is there anyone in the organization whose primary job is to
think about the future of the library system's collections, compile and
analyze data about the quality of the library's collections, and advise the
administration and branch staffs about collection-related issues???
Posted October 20, 2003
Since the departure of Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes, how many
of Garnes's proteges (aka cronies) has Mary Kaye Hooker
told to "start looking for other jobs"?
Posted September 11, 2003
Why, twice within a single two-week period, AFPL's
"Director of Libraries," claiming she was in imminent danger of violent
personal outbursts from disgruntled library managers or angry library
patrons, posted police officers outside her office door.
Posted October 20, 2004
Are these fears of Hooker's justified, or is Hooker trying to obscure
her reputation as an incompetent, ruthless victimizer with a
"Library-Director-as-Victim" scenario that she used successfully back
in El Paso?
Why is it that the only place in the Central Library where Hooker
has added staff instead of removed them has been the Director's Office?
The latest bloating of the Director's staff: Hooker's transfer to her
office of the former secretary to the former assistant to the former
Deputy Director. Posted July 28, 2003
Why is the Library Director parking her car in the loading dock
instead of the parking garage? Posted July 23, 2003
If there's a security concern,
shouldn't other Central Library employees be told what it is?
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