After reading of the latest ugly chapter in the Fulton County Library suit, I think we shouldn't have to wait for a jackpot-hunting trial lawyer to get justice ( "Race divided Fulton libraries," Metro, March 21). The problem with that plan is that the taxpayers who are also victims of the injustice have to do all the paying and the actual culprits get off free.

We need an energetic prosecutor who could find a way to prosecute the library board members who caused the mess. The fact that they have been sued again and lost again makes it clear they aren't learning from their experience. A little time in the Fulton County Jail instead of the library would provide the cure. As a Fulton County taxpayer, I want to see these people stopped before they cost us more money.

R. LAMAR SMITH, Atlanta

1. Has Hooker reduced the frequency of abusive verbal assaults on employees and stopped making critical remarks about employees behind their backs?
   
   
2. Does Hooker seem more reflective and less prone to knee-jerk reactions, personal put-downs, and impulsive decrees?
   
   
3. Has Hooker begun seeking the advice of knowledgeable colleages before reaching decisions, or cut down on the number of discussion-stopping pronouncements on major issues facing the library?
   
   
4. Has Hooker stopped taking credit for other people's accomplishments? Has she stopped routinely disparaging the abilities of her predecessors?
   
   
5. Is Hooker making fewer grandiose claims for how rapidly the library is improving or expanding its services? Has she stopped slapping new names on longstanding library programs, collections, departments, or services?
   
   
6. Has Hooker stopped barging into other people’s meetings uninvited? Does she make fewer irrelevant remarks at the meetings she insists on barging into? Is she still abruptly leaving meetings she's barged into before those meetings have been adjourned?
   
   
7. Has Hooker stopped dragooning AFPL employees into attending meetings with her where she’s supposed to represent the library?
   
   
8. Does Hooker show more respect these days for library employees' work schedules and workloads or is she still blithely assigning them to show up at meetings or events for the sole purpose of allaying Hooker's anxieties about information about the library she might be asked at those meetings or functions to provide?
   
   
9. Are Hooker’s attempts at humor still confined to dismissive sarcasm? Has she at least stopped mocking employees who ask her questions in public?
   
   
10. Has Hooker gone a full month without publicly blaming “The Staff” for “dropping the ball”?
    
    
11. Has Hooker stopped flirting with library vendors?
    
    
12. Has Hooker--who's been employed at AFPL now since September 1999--gotten any better at remembering library employees’ names, most of whom have been working at AFPL decades longer than she has?
    
    
13. Does Hooker still annoy Central Library employees in the staff lounge, interrupting their break periods and lunch hours by trying to wheedle information and gossip out of them?
    
    
14. Has Hooker slowed the torrent of confusing and/or insulting euphemisms and evasions she uses to deflect attention away from her obvious lack of skills and even more obvious failures in leadership?
    
    
15. Has Hooker acknowledged an inkling of responsibility for any recent miscalculation, misjudgment, blunder, error, or failure?
    
    

[The headline above and the text below has been corrected to reflect the fact (as stated in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's story) that Hooker filed her complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), rather than the county's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (OEEO). In our haste to call attention to this remarkable development in the never-ending saga of Mary Kaye Hooker, AFPLWATCH got its acronyms mixed up.

The county created its OEEO to investigate EEO-related allegations and, whenever possible, to propose administrative resolutions to compelling complaints that otherwise might morph into expensive lawsuits. Hooker chose to circumvent the county government and instead lodge her complaint directly with the federal government.

We doubt that Hooker flipped a coin to help her decide which agency's protection she hopes to obtain. We suspect Hooker--realizing her complaint might get a rather chilly reception from investigators who've examined so many EEO complaints naming Hooker as the perpetrator (rather than the victim) of discrimination--chose the EEOC precisely because she imagines she'll get a more sympathetic ear there, or that she could buy herself more time on the county payroll this way. We shall see. Meanwhile, as Hooker bides her time in her bunker waiting for the EEOC's ruling on her complaint, the library continues its steady, sickening descent into the abysmal depths of mediocrity and dysfunction.]

Doesn't Fulton County require Managers (of which Hooker is lamentably one) to promptly report any instances of EEO violations? If they don't, are they not subject to disciplinary procedures? Or perhaps, one wonders, to additional training?

One also wonders what attorney would be willing to take on this hot potato? Will Balch and Bingham do it? Perhaps Griffin Bell at King & Spalding? Or will Hooker work from the Yellow Pages, Googling to find an attorney of note who doesn't mind a little perjury in the background?

--"Once Bitten, Twice Shy"

I am so glad that Hooker has finally and publicly bit the collective hands that have been feeding her for years.

According to the article it seems that our own Mary Kaye jumped the gun. She filed this complaint assuming that she would be terminated. Now it has backfired on her. The board showed support for her at a time when her termination would have been justified. Now she has placed a magnifying glass on the board's inability to make good decisions.

Bad board, Bad board, what you gonna do? What you gonna do when the director you sic on us, starts attacking you?

--"SicknTired"

About the Library System

The 32-branch library system was created largely from the 1983 merger of the Atlanta and Fulton County systems.

The system now has a circulation of about 3 million annually and a similar number of visits. The system claims 301,980 registered users.

It is semi-independent from county government--employees are county staff, but they report to the director and the library trustees, not the county manager and board of commissioners. The system has a $30 million annual budget and about 400 positions. The system doesn't fare well in national rankings. The annual Hennen's American Public Library Ratings use such factors as staff, circulation, budget and material resources to grade systems across the country. Atlanta's score of 413 came in at less than half of the top-performing systems. Denver, which boasts the top-ranked system, scored a 909.

Georgia ranks 45th nationally for the quality of its libraries. Atlanta's score comes in slightly higher than the state average of 374. Washington, D.C. ranked last with a 291.

• “The Instructional Learning Unit is growing out in the branches.” This announcement was baffling not only for its horticultural implications but also because the ILU remains limited to the 4th floor of the Central Library, so we don’t know what kudzu-like growth our director is envisioning. Also according to Hooker, the ILU is getting “national recognition” for its GED testing program. Not only have we heard this line before, we are still reeling at the idea that it’s possible to get “national recognition” for something that hasn’t started yet. In Ms. Hooker’s world, directors probably get Oscars for movies that have yet to see a camera roll.
  
  
• Partnerships, we’ve got partnerships, get your partnership right here! The audience nobly resisted the urge to recite this part in tandem with the director, which would be easy to do, since she’s been singing these lyrics for one year now: we are partnering with Grady, Emory and the CDC on a health literacy program because this is a national need! She has proclaimed this to the board and at Agency Meetings for a year, and we have yet to see one result of this “partnership.”
  
  But we did learn something new. She mentioned a contribution she had made to this partnership: having noticed the CDC had produced a 17-page pamphlet on prostate cancer, she had pointed out to them that no one wanted to read a 17-page pamphlet on prostate cancer. We say they might if they had prostate cancer, Mrs. Hooker! Not to mention, if she thinks people don’t want to read a 17-page pamphlet, then she probably thinks they aren’t going to read a whole book on the subject, which pretty much removes any reason for a library to participate in this project!
  
  Moving right along, Ms. Hooker then brought up the AmeriCorps project, a partnership which she also has been touting as an achievement for one year (and the funding for which, it was acknowledged, is eating up the equivalent of a part-time library assistant's salary).
  
  Question to Ms. Hooker: What is the statute of limitations on achievements? If President Hooker (God forbid) were giving the State of the Union address to the nation in 2005, she’d probably start by claiming the War of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Spanish-American War and the invention of the cotton gin as achievements of her administration.
  
  
• "We’ve got our first human resources department” and “We’ve got our first security department.” Again, we say, “Huh?” If we only just got our first human resources and security departments, then what are those offices on the first floor of Central, which have been labeled “Personnel” and “Security” for years--possibly decades? People went in and out of those offices, and claimed to work in them. Were they part of a giant scam? Did Ms. Hooker uncover the fact that up till now these offices were actually peopled by large cardboard cut-outs?
  
  
• The new East Atlanta Branch Library, at least 4 years in the making, is delayed again. Let us recap for you the total explanation given staff by the director: “There was an ‘oops’ in the bid.” Come to think of it, that’s probably how the head of Coca-Cola discusses major industry developments with staff - “We had an ‘Oops!’ with New Coke, guys!” We can’t wait to explain to patrons that all we know about the East Atlanta branch is that it’s in The Oops Phase.
  
  
• We’ve outsourced all our printing to Fulton County. Of course, it wasn’t mentioned that this means we now have to pay for printing. But Ms. Hooker did mention what became of the two staff in the printing unit. One "elected" to retire, and one was transferred to a public service site--“so that’s been successful,” said she. We wonder how the two affected staff would characterize it.
  
  
• But more outsourcing is to come. Hooker reported that the Board has voted to outsource our courier service to Pitney-Bowes. Staff in that department will have to find a slot elsewhere in the library or Fulton County, or they may opt to go with Pitney-Bowes (for comparable salary and benefits? what about losing their pension, etc.?). Somehow Ms. Hooker’s cavalier attitude toward the workers of the world suggests that while she may once have selected "Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book" for a library she once worked in, she didn’t read it.

  Our favorite remark made by Hooker at the March 3rd Agency Meeting: "It doesn't work! Nothing works!" (Amen to that, Sister! For once, Hooker moves her mouth and God's Own Truth falls out of it.)

• On another front, Ms. Hooker mentioned that we are “completely re-doing” the 7th floor of the Central Library. (From this perspective, we can now see that what Sherman actually did on his March to the Sea, was to "completely re-do" Georgia.) We at last "have productivity standards up there" (as in, paying a vendor to do what staff once did?), and we’ll be "cleaning up the database."
  
  
• Our favorite part of this portion of Hooker's presentation? “Catalogers” are going to lead an effort, "along with reference," to make GALILEO more usable by cataloging it. It’s our favorite part, not only for the absurdity that we’re going to catalog a product from the State of Georgia while we outsource our own cataloging, but because we love that s on the end of catalogers. We have one, count her, one, cataloger in this library system, Ms. Hooker, thanks to your slash-and-burn tactics in Technical Services. If you have an army of cataloguers in mind for this project, you must be planning on getting them the way Jason got the Argonauts.

    
Look Who’s Turning Two!
Posted March 4, 2004

Every parent has experienced it with awe and sadness: the swift passage of time, from the early days of sleepless nights and relentless feedings, through the appearance of the first baby tooth, and then those first Godzilla-like lurching movements across the floor. Ah, how quickly those baby steps give way to toddler tantrums, and leave us wondering how the first two years could have slipped so swiftly away!

Yes, our baby is growing up. It’s been two years now since the blessed event. We know you remember it as well as we do: that day in spring 2002 when our formerly smooth-surfaced and svelte Central Library plaza convulsed and burst open, and lo, A Hole Was Born. Like all healthy infants, it grew rapidly. Pretty soon there was more Hole than plaza! More chunks of sidewalk were pushed into the all-consuming maw of the Hole, but its hunger could not be appeased. It wasn’t long before it had to be put in its very own crib, complete with green opaque bunting, through which visitors peered to make cooing sounds and comment on its appetite and size. So large was the baby Hole by then that the crib took up pretty much the entire sidewalk, creating a hazard not only for pedestrians but also for drivers attempting to pull out of the side street who find their vision totally blocked by that very attractive green bunting. But what are these small drawbacks compared to the privilege of hosting the birth of the Georgia version of the San Andreas Fault!

So we hope you’ll take a minute over the next couple of weeks, as you come and go at the Central Library, to peer into the abyss and express your best wishes for a happy birthday to our toddler Hole, as it leaves babyhood behind forever. Maybe you could drop in a birthday card...or even a cupcake with a candle or two. Hell, maybe you could do us all a favor and dump in a wheelbarrow of Spackle - it couldn’t hurt.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE AFPL CRATER!!!

---

"Mary Kaye Hooker and William McClure
Must Be Ousted from The Library"
Posted March 3, 2004

Read the

If you're a regular visitor to the site, you're familiar with the misdeeds, mistakes and incompetence that have left the library in its present state of near-chaos.

The words of a federal appeals court, pressure from Fulton County, editorials in the local paper, employee activism--none of it has been enough to bring down the house of cards that is the Library Board of Trustees.

Now it's up to the state legislature. Senate Bill 231 would mandate reform of the library board. That bill passed the Senate last spring, but languishes in the House.

Contact your state representative (and urge friends and neighbors to do the same) and ask them to pass this legislation. Tell them how important a state's major urban library system is--not only to local library users and local schools, but also to the state as a whole. How can Georgia hope to improve its educational ranking, when every day the public library system of the state capital slides further into disrepair?

The list below of local legislators is pulled from the March 2004 newsletter of the Fulton County Taxpayers Association. The Association is urging its members to support SB231. Join your voice with the voices of taxpayers and library patrons across the Atlanta metropolitan area to ask the legislature--now in the final two weeks of the 2004 session--to save the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library.