Webmaster's Note: The WATCH periodically receives emailed inquiries from AFPL patrons about various library policies, procedures, or practices, and we usually invite those patrons to email the appropriate library administrator with their question. Last weekend, we recently received a complaint that we're choosing to post here, however, and we're doing so for two reasons: (1) Cell phone mis-use inside libraries is a huge problem in libraries all over the planet (including AFPL), and (2) it's obvious from the complaint that either an AFPL staff member gave out incorrect information about AFPL's policy on cell phone use inside AFPL libraries, or the patron misunderstood that staff member's explanation.

ATTENTION:
Cell Phone and Page Users
Please place all cell phones on mute and all pagers on vibrate.

Please make calls in the public telephone area, lobby, or outside the building.

Thank you for helping to keep the Library a quiet place.

Approximately 172,000 new titles were published in the United States in 2005. The number of new titles published each year has increased in 40 out of the last 50 years.

Those figures tell us that people are still reading, maybe more than ever. And that every year librarians face an ever-tougher job in selecting for library users as many of those new titles as possible.

“Collection development” and “selection” may be professional jargon, but even laypersons can understand their import. At its best, a collection meets the needs of a broad range of its users, adding new works and replacing the older ones for which demand remains, while also reflecting the specific interests of the particular community the library serves. A library’s collection is thus a changing, living thing, shaped over decades by the work of many different selectors.

Money, of course, also plays a major role in the usefulness of our collections. Limited budgets for library materials don't allow us to purchase even one copy of every new book, let alone replacing all the worn out or lost items that patrons still want and that therefore must be re-purchased with some of our limited funds. Then there’s the ever-increasing amount of our materials budget eaten up by the purchase of items other than books. Selectors once spent AFPL's $3 million materials budget on books; we now have to stretch that same $3 million to purchase materials in a half-dozen other formats (books and music on CD and/or cassette tapes, videos in VHS and DVD, expensive licensed databases, e-books, computer software, etc.) on top of whatever books we buy each year. The upshot of the budget picture is that thoughtful book selection has gotten more crucial than ever.

And what kinds of thoughts go into "thoughtful" book selection? Take something as supposedly straightforward as, say, mystery fiction - an expected staple of almost every branch library collection. Should a selector buy the newest title in an established series that’s popular among patrons? Or buy instead the first book in a new series that inevitably will interest some reader and may eventually become part of a popular established series? That choice can come down to simply instinct on the part of the selector for what will move in his/her branch, or it could result from the selector's reading an especially glowing book review.

And speaking of book reviews, how big (or small) a role should reviews and literary awards - vs. sheer popularity or patron demand - play in purchase decisions? In some libraries, critically-acclaimed or award-winning books would sit on the shelves un-read. Likewise, there are some libraries where bestselling author Tami Hoag’s latest novel would grow moldy waiting to be picked up by a patron. That’s why good selectors know their patrons - and their patrons' reading patterns - well.

Anybody can glance at a branch’s demographics and believe they've discovered all they need to know to purchase library materials for that branch's patrons. But numbers allow a selector to make only the crudest assumptions about a user community - and broad generalizations and assumptions are not the ones a good book selector should be making. Sure, you can look at a statistic and see a particular ethnic group lives near that branch, but that doesn’t tell you who those people are. Have the individuals in that group been in this country a long time? Do they use the library with their families or alone? What do they check out? What do they ask for? For example, a branch may serve a population with a lot of single-person households. What does that translate to in real terms - young people starting out in their post-college lives? a large neighborhood of lesbians and gay men? a lot of elderly people living alone? If a selector doesn’t personally interact with the library-using members of a community every day, she might easily find herself buying totally inappropriate library materials.

Another advantage to on-site selectors is their direct interaction with their local "library loyalists" - readers with arcane interests and voracious appetites, the ones whose quirky literary tastes lead a branch selector to tap into a previously-unexplored vein of fiction or non-fiction. Selectors need to be on the scene to see for themselves what their patrons need; only by being there can they notice what books (and nonbooks) patrons choose to borrow - and what books (and nonbooks) never leave the shelves.

In addition to the crucial importance of careful selection by attentive librarians in a position to notice what's relevant to selection decisions, there is another hugely important factor in the development of a useful library collection. That factor is the diversity of that collection produced by the contributions numerous on-site selectors have made to that collection over the years.

Just like their patrons, selectors come equipped with different interests and points of view. The individual educational background, personal interests, and biases of selectors thus inevitably creep into the collection. One selector may love and/or know quite a bit about poetry, and therefore buy more than another selector would. One selector may be a libertarian and thus seek out books reflecting that political viewpoint. Another may know a subject area very well, and buy heavily in that area to make sure the important new titles are acquired for the library system, even if there is currently little local demand for those titles. It’s the existence of these inevitable biases - acknowledged or unacknowledged - that make it crucial for the library to employ as many qualified selectors as it can. The more selectors there are, the more varied the range of bias, and therefore the more likely that the collection will eventually cover the entire spectrum of patron interests. Narrow the circle of selectors, and you inevitably produce a less diverse set of library collections systemwide, no matter how good your (collective) intentions may be.

If you have, say, 10 people selecting for all 33 library collections, how wide could the range of their biases be, compared to a group of 50 selectors? Remember, very few of us are fully aware of our biases. Remember, too, that biases aren't just political, ideological or literary. A selector can deliberately - or obliviously - order only Kaplan study guides books in a world in which there are also Arco, Contemporary, Princeton, and Barron’s study guides available on the same subjects. A patron's being able to obtain something through the Holds system is a valuable safeguard against the biases of the selectors at the branch that library user patronizes - but that opportunity becomes less meaningful when a relatively small group of selectors chooses items for the entire system.

When you remember that 172,000 new titles were published last year, decentralized selection would seem to provide the patrons of our 33-branch library system with access to the maximum range of all the new materials the system can afford to purchase. A centralized, committee-driven selection system would automatically diminish the diversity of materials purchased.

Given the vast diversity among library-using Fulton County citizens, adopting that approach to selection - whatever its advantages - would be major disservice to those library-users.

[Signed] Someone Who Believes "More Selectors = Better Collections"

RE: "Boomer Librarians: Get Outta Here!"

It’s not often that employees are able to find seasoned library managers to work under who are not intimidated by a little thoughtful discourse and disagreement among the younger folk regarding the institution’s current practices. It's even rarer for managers to entertain such conversations without taking a subordinate’s criticism personally. Unfortunately, this was my experience in the early years of my tenure as an AFPL employee.

Quite frankly, that's one of the reasons I didn’t bother to recruit starry-eyed undergraduates, 30 year-old-or-under library school grads, or minorities into our profession. If you are a creative, customer-conscious, action-oriented person who is not afraid to share ideas in the hope that library administrators will - heaven forbid - shift from their traditional and librarian-centric service practices from yesteryear, then librarianship is not the career for you. You will be extremely frustrated and will eventually notice that those around you who demonstrate obedience - who never rock the boat, who never provide more than standard service to customers, who recycle the same library programs year after year, and who "resolve" staff problems by choosing not to address management issues - are the colleagues who will be held in high regard and promoted.

If you are willing to live by AFPL’s mediocre standards, then working there for a paycheck for the initial 10 to 15 years of your first career should not be a problem for you. But if you are a patron-centric service person, I suggest you reassess your career plans, decide what level of insanity you will or will not accept on the job (or by management), go feed the pigeons, and start a non-profit if you really want to help people.

[Signed] A Former AFPL Employee Thawing Off the Frost of a Brain-numbing Freeze

RE: "Boomer Librarians: Get Outta Here!"

I am finding this "debate" interesting, as I am a LATE baby boomer - which means I graduated from lib school in 1984, after the expansion of libraries which gave EARLY boomers lots of jobs. You're crying now about how they are not retiring - hey, they were entrenched in their 40s, so it's followed me throughout my career (I've started over twice). And your description of managers who don't feel they have any responsibilities - well, that fits to a T a coworker who believes at the age of approximately 30 that he has paid his dues, can write his own ticket, and went into "management" to "cherrypick the good hours". We female aging late boomers are the ones trying to keep things respectful and constructive around here - not to mention doing the bulk of the customer service while he hunches over his email. Not to mention a certain amount of institutional loyalty, although lord knows where that has gotten us. Management is management, no matter what age you are - you've got responsibilities, as well as perks.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported twice in December about how $27 million was going to find its way into the AFPL construction fund for improvements. While that makes for inspirational headlines in 2006, the chances of it surviving for the next 5 years are slim to none. Let's look at the facts and the tempations:

1. Typically, the Commissioners provide a certain amount of budget each year for capital expenditures on behalf of the library. That's how Spruill, Ocee, and East Atlanta (among others) were built -- through the multi-year accumulation of capital funds in order to pay for construction of new facilities. With the potential arrival of $27 million in Belt funds, will the Commissioners keep allocating capital funds for the library? Or will they suck these funds out (...never to be seen again)?
   
   
2. How can anyone take seriously a promise that won't begin to pay off for 6 more years? There are far too many things that could derail the Beltline plan (pun intended). I, for one, wouldn't make any plans that depend on the arrival of this money until I saw the check deposited into my account. Unlike [library trustee] Mrs. Frolick, who is jumping for joy, I would be sober and disbelieving. Promises have a way of being broken....
   
   
3. Who trusts the Fulton County Commissioners? All of a sudden they embrace giving libraries $27 million, when just the previous month [Commissioner Emma] Darnell had a hissy fit that Ocee was going to use all of their space? My guess is that the Commissioners will find a way to "reallocate" these funds to sewers, recreation centers, road widenings, or similar [non-library-related] projects.
   
   
4. And let's not forget political correctness. Will the funds be split evenly north and south? Or will funds be spent where the need is (mostly north)? How much chicanery will take place in the name of diversity?

[Signed] An Interested but Disbelieving Observer

• an article in last week's John's Creek Herald that mentions Commissioner Emma Darnell's so-called "explanation" of her opposition to Ocee funding.
  
  
• a letter to the editor of the Alpharetta-Roswell News & Revue

Ocee Politics Mean-Spirited
What fuels a person's desire to be in county politics, an opportunity to improve county services? I think not! Wisdom, tolerance, and teamwork are in short supply these days. Case in point: the Ocee Library.

Politics regarding the Ocee Library have become absurd.

The library is a 25,000 square-foot building. It's currently zoned as 18,000. Paper inaccuracies aside, size matters because the Library Board of Trustees can only spend money based on the zoning of the library. That extra 7,000 square feet amounts to $600,000 already allotted for Ocee, waiting to be spent on books and shelves.

The Library Trustees (who were appointed by these same Commissioners) were UNANIMOUS in their letter of support of rezoning, and the subsequent release of funds for this library.

The Commissioners debated rezoning the Ocee Library to its actual size on October 5. Surprisingly, the motion did not pass; three for, three against, and one who wouldn't cast his vote. If you've been following county politics lately, you know how each Commissioner voted.

The debate was ugly and mean-spirited. All the Commissioners needed to do was correct an oversight in zoning. Wisdom, tolerance, and teamwork to improve county services? Sorry, we're all sold out.

[Signed] Michele May, Alpharetta

* * *
Commissioner [Boxhill] a Disgrace
Dear Ms. Boxhill,

Your behavior as an elected county official is a disgrace. My family uses the Ocee Library daily and we reent the fact that your personal vendetta is preventing our children from reading new books. It is no wonder the popularity of a separate north Fulton government is growing. You are obviously not representing my best interests, and I do not want my tax dollars to be wasted on your salary and agenda.

Get out of the business of being a racist and look at what is the greater good for all!

[Signed] Alan Dubrinsky, Alpharetta

The communication problem among the [county's] departments in the admirable attempt to aid Katrina victims is unfortunate. Urging the public to take relief supplies to Fulton County libraries could certainly create some unintended havoc.

Rather than deciding libraries would temporarily serve in the capacity of Goodwill or Salvation Army drop-off centers, why didn't the [county's] administrative team offer a solution based on something libraries are doing every day: collecting overdue fines?

Here's an example of how a charitable initiative doesn't need to be a burden on anybody: http://www.masslib.org/hurricanekatrina/index.htm.

I have a few concerns about AFPL joining the blog-world. Do we really want our librarians displaying their poor grammatical skills and lack of e-mail/Internet etiquette for all the world to see? (Of course, there would probably be three or four committees formed to decide which employees would be permitted to write the blogs and their entries would doubtless be passing through enough hands to be at least grammatically correct.)

Furthermore, after looking at the blogs being written by the libraries in North Carolina and Michigan that you mentioned, I can't help but wonder if AFPL isn't too big for blogging. For example, would our patrons in one part of the county really care if one of our branches in another part of the county is short-staffed due to a library conference nearby? Conversely, since this is a large metropolitan area, how much information do we really want to share with our patrons? I'm thinking of privacy and safety. Where would we at AFPL draw the line between professional and personal information?

In my experience working in both large and small libraries (busy ones and quiet ones), library patrons really only care about one thing - their own immediate needs. Whether it's the newest bestseller or a computer workstation that they want ASAP, library patrons are delightfully self-absorbed. And, to some extent, they should be.

Thanks for letting me have my say and thank you, especially, for continuing to expose injustices in the library system. The busy branches have been shouldering most of the library system's workload by themselves for way too long. Maybe one day things will get straightened out.

Here's some further information [from a directory] to substantiate the recent "Unconfirmed Hooker Sighting":

MK Hooker
Georgia Medical Institute
1706 Northeast Expressway
Atlanta, GA 30329
Contact numbers:
Tel, 404-327-8787
Fax, 404-327-8980
Email, mhooker@cci.edu
[Medical Library Association] Membership: Individual

[Signed] AFPL Tipster

Your editorial of June 15, 2005 did not speak for all Central Departments or Central selectors. Several departments report missing items after three searches and attempt to reorder important missing, lost or stolen copies. Unfortunately, the library’s current vendor has a very low hit rate for replacements.

The theft rate is very serious but we don’t think certain departments or selectors should be singled out for blame. We can report all we want, but that isn’t going to keep the thieves from stealing. The thieves are the guilty ones, not the staff.

[Signed] Concerned Central Selectors

• Librarians and library administrators have a responsibility to non-thieving users to do what they can to miniimize theft by balancing accessibility with reasonable security measures.
  
  
• Selectors need to make it part of their jobs - in addition to buying new materials - to report and repair the damage to our collections that people who steal from public libraries cause.
  
  
• Not being able to order replacements from whatever vendors can supply them is definitely part of the problem. We see no reason why library administrators can't support library selectors by setting up, every year, accounts with additional vendors such as Amazon.com and other outfits that sell older materials as well as new materials. More library selectors would choose to replace lost materials if library administrators would provide an easy way to do that, and would designate staff and funds for processing those replaced materials once they arrive.

Regarding the current Central Library Administrator Doris Jackson's latest so-called "improvements" to the Central Library, are we experiencing "déjà vu all over again" with her obsession with "open spaces"?

Staff were forced to surplus Central's (new) microfilm readers and much of the furniture on the second floor because former Central Library Administrator Susan Earl and ex-Director Mary Kaye Hooker didn’t want anything to obstruct the view of the fabulous carpet squares they had selected (and which are always coming unglued or about to do so). Doris Jackson has decreed that the shelves of new books located near the elevators on the 2nd and 3rd floors be removed, presumably because Jackson decided these furnishings "interfere with the flow of chi in those areas" - or maybe she just wants to create an illusion of a larger space. Whatever her reasons, this fixation on appearances was a hallmark of the Hooker-Earl era.

Jackson’s biggest fear is the possibility that Central might revert to the way things were pre-MKH. She's said as much many times - including every time staff have pleaded with her to permit some kind of mechanism for protecting our film/video/cd collections. (“We aren’t going to go back to having a Film Department at Central.”) But Jackson herself is single-handedly turning back the clock with her HookEarlian furniture fetish and, more importantly, with her dismissive attitude toward Central managers, whom she does not consult and to whom she does not listen.

A fresh start for the Library? Sounds more like The Bad Old Days coming back to haunt us.

[Signed]

Anonymous Peon

I continue to read the AFPLWATCH in awe of the ongoing idiocies that take place at AFPL. Hooker has been gone for almost a year, yet the foolishness continues. Some of it is Hooker's legacy, no doubt, but some of the idiocies are new (feng shui dictating no signs in the library! What nonsense!) Or maybe there is something inherently debilitating about the position of AFPL Director that makes its incumbents lose their minds. If so, maybe we were all unfair to Hooker - perhaps the 6th floor is haunted by evil spirits and she wasn't responsible for her actions? (The insanity defense.)

Poor Szabo. I have a $10 bet going with [another former employee] that your new director will be gone within a year. Talented as he may be, he has a huge job ahead of him and there are any number of people and groups who will be trying to get him to fail.

Changing the subject: One angle of last week's courtroom shootings that hasn't been covered (at least from my vantage point 500 miles away) is how the Fulton County government environment - diversity considered more important than merit, commissioners naming community centers after themselves instead of voting more money for policemen, etc. - may have contributed to the killings. I wonder if the county commission will see any fault in themselves (and their financial management) as a result of this debacle?

Anonymously yours,

A WATCH Reader

Why is it that library staff are never shown a chart with the hours each branch is open and the number of staff assigned to that branch (the so-called "Full Time Equivalent" figure, or FTE)?

Could it be that such a chart would clearly show that many large branches open the most hours are severely understaffed? That some smaller branches with fewer hours of operation actually have higher FTEs than some of the larger branches?

The administration has asked managers to supply data about current hours and FTEs, but a complilation of this information has never been distributed. It would be as revealing as AFPLWATCH's recently-posted charts showing circulation statistics.

--Anonymous

A suggestion for Interim Library Director Anne Haimes: Restore the refrigerator in the staff lounge! La Hook had it removed. She claimed she did that because staff were not taking care of it properly. In fact, La Hook and Susan Earl removed all Central Library department refrigerators located below the 6th floor--including the ones staff had paid for themselves. Were they trying to force staff into dieting? Were they in cahoots with local restaurant owners? Did they do it out of sheer meanness? We shall never know.

Reinstalling a refrigerator for staff use would be a small price to pay to make Central staff a bit happier.

[Signed] Once Bitten Twice Shy

One reason Mary Kaye Hooker and county administrators probably weren't exactly eager to publicly discuss Gladys Dennard's murder: they were terrified of yet another lawsuit.

Because the difficulties between Dennard and the employee who killed her were so long-standing and so extensively documented, an enterprising lawyer could still make a good case for wrongful death, especially if the lawyer used the legal doctrine of "negligent retention" to bolster his arguments.

"Negligent retention" applies to instances in which an employer becomes aware of an employee's unfitness for duty after hiring him or her. Many courts have held that employers have an obligation to respond to an employee's unfitness for duty by retraining, reassigning, or terminating the employee, and that the employer is liable for someone else's suffering caused later on by that employee. The county's lawyers probably realize that plaintiffs have won most of these cases. (If they county's lawyers don't know this, they could find out by Googling "negligent retention"--this is hardly an obscure legal tactic. The library's security guards probably know all about it already, as "negligent retention" could potentially be used in a lawsuit brought against the library for failing to deal with a potentially violent library patron who later harms a library employee or another library user.) [Signed]

Fed Up with Library Administrators Who Turn a Deaf Ear
to Festering Personnel and Security Problems.

All due respect to your usually accurate web site, I beg to differ with what you wrote about Katherine Suttell's upcoming retirement from the Buckhead Branch.

You described Buckhead as "extremely busy." HA! NOT! Buckhead is behind Northeast, Roswell, Alpharetta, Sandy Springs, and is often tied with Ponce and Northside in terms of circulation. Compared to what busy is REALLY like at Northeast and Roswell (and the soon-to-be-opened [?] Ocee), Buckhead is a walk in the park.

Please don't "dis" libraries north of the Perimeter by calling 12,000 - 13,000 books circulated a month busy! 30,000 and more a month is busy. The people at Buckhead don't have a clue as to what busy is really like.

Respectfully,

A Fan

The recently-announced forum to discuss staff recollections of two deceased employees - whose deaths were the results of a murder/suicide - is in bad taste. With all respect to our current leaders, the question must be asked: what were you thinking?

Enough of these delayed task forces of distraction. Let us deal with the real issue, an insensitive Library system. We are already understaffed. Why take staff away from their work to recollect a previously-forbidden topic of discussion?

First we were all invited to a staff meeting with a choice of baked cholesterol (doughnuts) or frozen cholesterol (ice cream). Now this! Another distraction! This is an insult to the families of the deceased as well as to their colleagues. Can we please move on before anyone else retires or quits?

[Signed]

Bad Taste Left In Mouth

I worked at AFPL almost ten years (1983--1993) and am very interested in how things are going up there. I'm currently working in Jacksonville at one of the busier JPL branches. I am SO GLAD that things are moving in a positive direction, but I agree that AFPL may not be out of the woods completely for some time. It will be very interesting to see what follows; we hope for the best. HI to everyone who remembers me and Myron.

[Signed] Sharon Kirkes

I left AFPL about 3 years ago, in the middle of Hooker's reign of terror. I left for personal reasons, not because of AFPL's problems, and I have really relied on AFPLWATCH for information on the fate of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library. I still miss all my friends back in Atlanta, and I hope you will continue the web site. I also hope that you will cut Anne Haimes some slack. She has inherited a thankless job, and needs a lot of support.

[Signed] Cathy McCoy (Philadelphia, PA)

I hope that you will continue AFPLWATCH and that you'll edit an AFPLWATCH anthology to be included in each library's collection. You've done a good job of chronicling an important chapter in Atlanta history.

[Signed] "Anonymous"

I have read the site with great interest as a former Atlanta resident and Dekalb County Librarian. I applaud your efforts to bring institutional change to a corrupt system and hope you will continue to make contributions to improve what could be a good library system if it was allowed to be operated by professional librarians and para-professionals rather than by an appointed board and politicians.

[Signed] "A Fan"

Please continue the site. The site needs to stay until the library is on more stable ground. I have used it to keep up with my colleagues there in Atlanta and have always watched from afar and even said a little prayer for all you who I left behind. I left about a year into Hooker. I was the first transfer--not part of the [May 2000] mass transfer--but her first transfer. I wish you all luck and I hope to see Atlanta-Fulton on top one day.

[Signed] "Used to Work There"

I am a former library employee who sought and received a transfer rather than continue to suffer from the degrading and demoralizing management of Mary Kaye Hooker. My personal battle with this woman was truly the worst experience of my life, and I thought nothing could have been more devastating than the death of my beloved mother! Nonetheless, the only comfort that I had during that painful period was reading your website and realizing that I did nothing to warrant Hooker's venom. AFPLWATCH gave me strength to stand up and file well documented grievances and complaints against our former director, regardless of the consequences. Although I knew that I was putting my career on the line, your site gave me the courage to persevere. I commend you for factually reporting the library's deteriorating situation. Your well-researched documentation painted a picture of a library director out of control, and a staff under siege. Even County Manager Tom Andrews acknowledged the site "was very well written."

AFPLWATCH has carved out a niche that can have a beneficial impact on the library. By maintaining your editorial standards, you can accomplish the following:

• Provide a forum to build advocacy and support from the staff, county executives and general public for better programs and services
  
  
• Provide an ongoing incentive for the future library director and board of trustees to act as good stewards of the public trust
  
  
• Maintain your advantage as a source of information and reference for the news media, taxpayers, Board of Commissioners, county executives and staff
  
  
• Demonstrate your capacity to always act in the best interest of the library through reporting positive stories and news when warranted by the new library administration
  
  
• Lobby for Anne Haimes to seek the permanent directorship. It's time for one of our own to assume the top spot, instead of hiring another city's lunatic.

Most importantly, any future AFPL leader will be forced to exercise prudent and professional management, or their actions will be exposed. Now that I work in another branch of Fulton County, I am blessed to have outstanding leadership. However, I interact with County employees daily who express anger and frustration about the management styles of their department heads, although their actions could never approach the outrageousness of Mary Kaye! Nonetheless, if every county agency its own version of AFPLWATCH, I am positive that there would be many changes for the better.

Keep the "Watch" alive, and help bring forth a greater tomorrow!

Sincerely,

"Gone...But Still Supportive!"

I am a librarian who has followed the website with a lot of interest and some amusement. I hope you keep the site but try to make suggestions and have some good plans at the ready to make the library system a monument to your professionalism.

[Signed] Midge Galentine-Steis, Director, Okefenokee Regional Library System

I think it's a little early for the sheep to declare that the wolves are all gone and it's safe for the little boy with the slingshot to go home. We have the prospect of better days, but until they actually get here, we need to stay aware of what's actually happening. I'm sure you will be very happy to print any good news that happens, and in fact, you have done so several times. As with any purveyor of news, if one does not wish to hear the message, the easiest thing to do is not to access the source.

Please stay with us for now and keep your eyes out for any wolves in sheep's clothing trying to sneak back into the fold.

[Signed] "Mr. Spock"

I don’t think the website should be discontinued just yet. Who knows what the fate of the library will be. If the new board and the new director look and smell like the old, we will all be in the same boat. Also if they know that someone is watching, maybe it will prompt them to act appropriately. Let’s keep the WATCH and WAIT.

[Signed] "Lookin’ and Listenin’

AFPLWATCH has done an exceptional job of what it set out to do. It has been a comfort to know that others have been as disbelieving, speechless and discouraged about the day-to-day antics of the administration and board as I have. Chuckling through the pain was the best we could do most of the time. AFPLWATCH provided the support that we needed.

Since the first step has been taken now to end this destruction, the survivors need to start picking up the pieces. There will still be inevitable errors and misjudgments, but let's try to give Atlanta a good library system again.

What do the Webmaster and site supporters think? This website has taken so much energy and devotion, I would think the site sponsors would want to turn to some neglected aspects of their lives now! I for one would miss the site, but maybe the sponsors can offer their talents in other ways.

[Signed] Sherry Petry, Ivan Allen Dept.

I must disagree with [the reader who thinks AFPLWATCH is no longer needed]. We are not beginning to heal. Some of us haven't even realized that we've been sick. The fact that [the reader calling for the site to be discontinued] used a pseudonym makes this painfully obvious. AFPLWATCH did the one thing that no one--managers, supervisors, subordinates--had the guts to do. It spoke up for EVERYONE who wouldn't, couldn't, didn't speak for themselves or anyone else. For years, AFPL employees have been victims of the abusive and neglectful practices of the trustee board and, let's be honest, certain managers, supervisers, and, yes, co-workers. Mary Kaye Hooker was just the culmination of all the bacteria throughout the library system. I say let's keep AFPLWATCH. Tom Andrews himself made mention of web site during his meeting with the staff. The best advice I can give to [the reader who wants AFPLWATCH to shut down] is "If you no longer find AFPLWATCH necessary, stop accessing the web site."

[Signed] "Wake Up! The Horse is Not Dead"

Colleagues, please hear me out with an open mind. I speak as a change agent, one of the many who, during the past four years, saw wrong, spoke out, and took action at considerable expense to my family, my mental health, and my career.

If we seek only "healing," we are looking for an easy way to lay the past to rest. It is not that simple. Healing implies that there is a part that can be fixed, and that the rest of the body still works. It's not what can happen here.

AFPL is left with wreckage. Nothing works, except the staff (who are strong and wonderful).

I ask you to stand back and look clear-eyed at the damage. Then write to the web site and tell us what steps you will personally take to help us "heal." Let your determination help your co-workers turn this forum into something positive.

AFPLWATCH was never dedicated to the destruction of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library. It was dedicated to bringing attention to a reign of destruction and terror, and those with the power to fix it listened. From what I read, it seems that the primary creators of the web site write because they want desperately to be part of fixing an organization they believe in. And we read the site for the same reasons.

I can envision this website becoming part of the fix, a forum for sharing news and ideas and progress. A cheering section? Perhaps. Certainly non-adversarial.

I pledge my energy to helping rebuild this library system. And that includes sending my point of view to the creators of this web site, and believing that they will listen and respond.

[Signed] "Once Bitten Twice Shy"

I hope now with the departure of our infamous director, our system will evolve into the potentially great institution that it can be. I most certainly believe that it is possible.

The paragraph below was submitted in response to the question posed on the 27-page survey back in November 2003. I signed it then as I sign it now.

Vickie Beene-Beavers
Young Adult Librarian
Ponce de Leon Branch

Question: In your opinion, what are the greatest weaknesses of AFPL?

There seems to be a systemic problem with AFPL in either haphazardly applying or all but ignoring reasonable recommendations or resolutions offered by highly paid consultants (or staff) to efficiently implement short and long term strategic plans for the county's libraries. Instead, with the semi-revolving terms of board members and "any way the wind blows" leadership of our current Director, the problems within the library system continues to remain—inefficient procedures, duplicated efforts, technological instability in equipment software and resources. AFPL's common misappropriation of resources and expertise with personnel and equipment continues to set the stage for underperformance in many areas of its library service.

Despite the collective work experience and opinions of staff, the current director and Board of Trustees continues to implement programs, initiate staff changes, revise the collection development mission and install software and equipment without a sound plan of action. Consequently, there is a swinging pendulum of extremes with regard to constant duplication of committee(s) work, departmental functions, and staff responsibilities to aggravating strained resources within human resources and equipment. Years of mismanagement is further exacerbated by the "band-aid" leadership style of our current director. In short, AFPL administration continues to ignore the open sores of the library's insufficiently researched, half-tested, reactive plans and policies of action with today's Board-approved liniments.

The question from the field is: when will the healing begin?

To AFPLWATCH:

As long as Georgia law related to the governance of public libraries allows no mechanism to review the actions and decisions of library boards, the kinds of disruption AFPL has experienced will continue throughout the state. Section 20-5-42(d) of the Official Code of Georgia, Annotated spells out only three situations under which a library board member may be removed: 1) for failure to attend three consecutive meetings, 2) limitations on board terms in the library board's consititution and 3) "for cause." Who defines "cause?" Why, the board members themselves, that's who. In short, library trustees answer only to themselves--not to the elected officials who appoint them nor to the public they are supposed to represent. The only pressure local government can bring to bear on trustees is to withhold funding, which hurts the public far more than it would hurt out-of-control trustees.

Given the lack of accountability for library trustees, it is nothing short of miraculous that most library boards behave as responsibly as they do--but the kind of arbitrary and capricious behavior the people of Atlanta and Fulton County have endured is by no means unique. The only thing that sets your situation apart is that your board failed to hide their racial and age bias behind trumped-up complaints about "performance problems" on the part of the staffers they went after.

If your effort stops short of changing Georgia's library laws, we will have won a battle but lost the war.

Now, for some comic relief. Last fall I attended a SOLINET workshop with Mrs. Hooker. During class discussion, she told about a situation early in her career where she was afraid to purchase Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" for a library collection because of Senator Joe McCarthy's probable reaction to such a purchase. Unless my memory--and Facts on File--are badly mistaken, there was about a decade-long gap between the heyday of McCarthyism and Mao's "Little Red Book."

[Signed]
"yzkrone"

I am one of the eight "old, white women" who sued the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library for engaging in racial discrimination (see p. 14, this issue). The LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund for the welfare of librarians was such a godsend during the trial. We will never be able to thank the fund enough. I have donated a check for $2,000 for the fund. It is sent hoping that it may be used by others who find themselves in a similar situation.

I have put the names of Debra Branton, the library's acting director of human resources at the time, and former Central Librarian Bill Munro on the bottom of the check. These two people, according to our attorneys, were crucial to our winning of the case. They agreed to help us readily, knowing that it might possibly jeopardize their careers (which it did). I hope recognition of their integrity, personal and professional, as well as their sacrifice may be mentioned in American Libraries so that the whole profession may know of two top-notch librarians.

Jo-Lynn Burge
Atlanta

“…What a wonderful gift and terrific honor to Debra Branton and William Munro, the librarians on whose behalf your gifts were made…As you know, the Merritt Fund has never been large, but we have been able, through the years, to provide at least some direct financial assistance to librarians who are threatened with discrimination or job loss due to race, sex, sexual orientation, or their stand for intellectual freedom. …[The plaintiffs’ donation] has nearly doubled the Merritt Fund’s capacity to help others, and has ensured that we will be able to provide that help for many, many years to come...."

• Letter from Congressman Johnny Isakson  (copy posted November 4, 2003)
  
• Reply to Isakson's Letter  (dated January 19, 2004; posted February 10, 2004)
  
  
• Letter to Congressman John Lewis  (copy received September 12, 2003)
• Congressman Lewis's Reply  (reply dated October 6, 2003; posted October 16, 2003)
• Reply to Lewis's Reply  (dated October 16, 2003; posted October 24, 2003)
  
  
• Letter to Mayor Shirley Franklin  (copy received August 7, 2003)
  
  
• Letter to Deputy County Manager Keith Chadwell  (copy received July 25, 2003)