“She's gone.
Oh I,
I'd better learn how to face it.
She's gone.
Oh I,
I'd pay the Devil to replace her...”
---Daryl Hall

• Recognize that the library and its staff have been damaged. Don’t try to push the wreckage under the rug as a way of making nice or looking good. The anger and distrust of the staff needs to be acknowledged if we’re ever going to get past it.
  
  
• Immediately ask for all library vacancies to be unfrozen.
  
  
• If all 50+ vacancies in the library system cannot be immediately thawed for hiring, then immediately reduce the library system's hours of operation and put on ice the opening of the Ocee Branch.
  
  
• In particular, revisit the issue of what library facilities, if any, will be open on Sundays during periods of staffing shortages and county hiring freezes like the one we've been in now for many months.
  
  
• While re-examining the issue of Sunday operating hours, revisit the Sunday staffing rotations. Either put everybody into the pool - including staff in Personnel, Finance, and Admininstration - or decrease the burden carried by public service staff and the staff of Technical Services. If the library insists on trying to be all things to all people everywhere at all times, then let’s make sure every staff member carries their share of the load.
  
  
• Look at every “temporary” appointment Hooker made. Establish when all those positions will be advertised for competitive applications.
  
  
• Begin the process of re-creating the library system's Technical Services Division. Hooker's and the board's systematic dismantling of centralized "behind the scenes" ordering, cataloging, and processing operations is one of the most serious and far-reaching ways they crippled the library's ability to provide decent, accessible collections to library users.
  
  
• Put someone in place, full-time, right away, as Acting Circulation Manager to mop up the huge number of serious and less-serious unresolved SIRSI messes and to restore some consistency into our circulation rules and regulations. Then re-establish a permanent Circulation Manager position for the library system.
  
  
• Look at revitalizing the library system's traditional staff advisory committees - Reference, Electronic Resources, Collection Development, etc. With competent and experienced library staff working through permanent committees with clearly-delineated functions, a tremendous amount of post-Hooker-era reconstruction work can be accomplished in our own lifetimes!
  
  
• Acknowledge that Hooker's branch cluster system is a sham and a mirage. Stop pretending it exists, at least until such time as the new (permanent) director makes a decision about the structure of the library and opts for grouping facilities into groups for certain clearly understandable purposes. As it stands now, the cluster system is a non-functioning extra layer of bureaucracy used only to disguise the fact the group managers weren’t working with their branches, they were doing Hooker’s work instead.
  
  
• Begin an audit of every library contract or agreement Hooker committed us to and objectively assess it. Where do we stand, for example, with Cadence, the outsourced cataloger? What about Pitney Bowes and the outsourced courier deal, which was supposed to be starting shortly but appears to have been mysteriously delayed? Where are we with all vendor contracts? With all the famous “partnerships” we’ve heard so much about but seen so little of?
  
  
• Cancel the re-opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. branch library, a tiny branch with virtually no circulation. The board decided two years ago to close it, then in one of their recurring fits of board amnesia, decided to re-open it. (At that time, the board suddenly discovered the MLK Branch was two miles from the nearest other branch and on the far side of a set of railroad tracks. The board ignored the fact that people in the neighborhoods near the MLK Branch are able to cross the tracks and cover considerably more than two miles when they want to go grocery shopping, so presumably they can make the same trek for library services.) More to the point, if there are no county funds for needed additional library positions, how can there be any justification for re-opening and staffing an underused branch library that's already been closed?
  
  
• Put aside the board's Strategic Plan till the new permanent director gets here.
  
  
• Spell out for the board that its new role is advisory only. If that doesn’t happen, and the board doesn’t get out of the library management business, then nothing will have changed, because it’s the board’s interference that got us into this mess in the first place. Especially if there are any holdovers from the present board on the new one, any board attempt to make assignments, make a management decision, or create a policy needs to be firmly repulsed. Setting the tone for the library administration's relationship with the revamped board is perhaps the most crucial task Ms. Haimes faces.
  
  
• Begin routinely sharing useful, accurate information with employees. There’s no need, and no point, in trying to spin stuff or gloss stuff over - employees will find out what’s true and resent the attempt to manipulate or mislead them. Be open to staff advice. Library staff care very much about the library and its patrons, and want to share their ideas on how things should be done.
  
  
• Put some energy into radically changing the library system's corporate ethos: by administrative example, end the mindset that criticism is unacceptable “negativity.” Sometimes there really is an iceberg on the horizon. Hauling down the lookout and keelhauling him for his "negativity" and "resistance to change" won’t make the iceberg melt.
  
  
• Tell us what safeguards are being put in place to ensure that we never again can fall prey to a regime that ignores county and library policy, puts favorites into key positions, intimidates staff, applies rules inconsistently, and punishes dissent and criticism. And tell us what re-training the library's Human Resources Department personnel will undergo to make sure the department never again goes along blindly with a library director or deputy director who flouts the law and county policy.

"Check out the AFPLWATCH website (http://www.afplwatch.com) to understand the magnitude of what was going on. Certainly it's a biased source, but it's probably the best collection of materials relating to the case. It seems to have been quite a wild, if torturous ride. Also, Ms. Hooker has apparently cried racial discrimination herself not once but twice (in Atlanta, because she wasn't black, in El Paso, because she wasn't Hispanic). It's interesting how the race card played out in this situation, although frankly, it seems to come down to personal vendettas/agendas vs. the good of the organization/area served, at least from the various reports I've read." (Posted March 23rd by "The Rabid Librarian".)

"Training initiatives for the Director have been provided to Fulton County Attorney, the Personnel Committee and the Personnel Director for Fulton County to look at and recommend what they think would be the most attractive or appropriate. One of the things I'm concerned about is that we bring all of the senior staff on board so that there is just not one person knowing all of this information. But I would like to have all of us that lead this organization go through the training at the same time."
--Mary Kaye Hooker to the library board of trustees at the board's March meeting [Minutes, pages 21-22]

"The Library System has embarked upon the development of a Master Training Plan....

...Have each employee complete the attached Staff Training Data Sheet listing courses completed during 2003 and 2004. Attach the course completion certificates and forward the entire Department/Branch package to Wanda McMullen in the Library Human Resources office no later than May 17, 2004.

Here are the document completion instructions:

• Click on the e-mail attachment (Training Database Input.dot)
• Open the mail attachment (do not save it at this point)
• Once the Microsoft Word file opens, move the cursor to the upper left FILE position on the tool bar.
• From the drop down menu, select ‘SAVE AS’
• Save the file in this format: employee last name, comma, space, employee first name
• Repeat this process until a file has been created for each of your employees
• Forward the named file to each employee
• Each employee should complete the form electronically
• Once completed, each employee should print the form and attach copies of the completion certificates
• The completed Data Sheet and certificates should be returned to you for verification that the package is complete
• Once verified, the Department/Branch Manager should sign the form
• Forward the entire Department/Branch package to Wanda McMullen in the Human Resources Office at Central Library...."

"In those cases where an employee is required to have verification of attendance, and the training was administered or facilitated by someone on the Learning Center staff, the employee should complete all of the Continuing Education Verification Form and present the completed form to Andrea Akiti for signature."

Dept. of Here We Go Again--and Again and Again...

Choo-Choo Training
OK, folks - hop right into our Time Machine, and let it take us back to the early months of the year 2000....

At that time, and after many years of its being recommended and clamored for, AFPL had a actual, genuine TRAINING DEPARTMENT.

Staff attended classes. They learned good stuff. They learned computers, customer service, circulation, materials selection, time management. Two full-time staff (Stephanie McIver and Joy Burson) coordinated the training. Shortly after the new department was announced, staff were told they needed to send in a list of all the training they had attended during the previous two years.

Then came the big whoopsie: Hooker's and the board's Mass Deportations of May 25, 2000.

Presto change-o! McIver is exiled to Southwest Regional. Burson is also exiled: to the Central Library's Learning Center, where she baby-sat computers for a while. When Hooker destroyed the Training Department, all staff training records were lost.

The Central Library's Learning Center becomes sort of responsible for staff training--although under the new and invisible non-organization chart nobody really knew what that responsibility was. Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes and Learning Center Sylvia Cordell can't seem to make up their minds about what staff training (if any) Mary Starck--the library system's former Circulation Manager, who the Learning Center also inherits--should schedule and/or plan and/or conduct. Meanwhile, nobody takes over Starck's job of training staff in AFPL's circulation policies and procedures.

Also meanwhile, selected staff--selected by whom and for what reasons remaining mysterious to this day--are sent to training outside AFPL: at SOLINET, at Fulton County's headquarters, elsewhere. Many of the people sent to these trainings had no idea why they were being sent, but they got the message loud and clear that, by George, they'd better show up. If you didn't, you'd receive a nasty letter. At least once during this period, AFPL's Human Resources Office is charged with coordinating staff training--which presumably means, at a minimum, keeping records of that training.

One day, Hooker reads somewhere that it would be A Good Idea to assess the needs among employees for staff computer training. She has then-Assistant Director for Technology Ted Koppel crib a survey from another library system and send it out to AFPL staff, accompanied by a threatening letter saying that the survey results will be kept in each employee's personnel file.

Unfortunately, some of AFPL's managers couldn't understand the survey questions that they were supposed to be using to assess the computer skills of their staffs. Nevertheless, the survey results poured into the Learning Center and were promptly placed in a big cardboard box. In a subsequent morphing of the the Learning Center's mission, the survey results got shredded.

When Hooker and Garnes dismantle the the Collection Development Unit (eventually replacing the Unit's collection specialists with different, untrained individuals), selector training, like circulation training, goes by the wayside and yet another set of training records--all the selector training sessions that had been conducted since the mid-1990s --is lost in the shuffle.

Before Garnes is eventually jettisoned from the organization, Garnes' henchperson Michelle Carnes put her fingers into the ever-expanding, ever-more-imaginary pie called "Staff Training." For quite a spell there, not much training happens inside the library walls, and of the training opportunities available elsewhere, Garnes & Carnes become the individuals who choose who goes where, for what, and when. Besides shoring up more power for themselves, Garnes & Carnes generate yet more calls for documenting these efforts to use outside trainers to train the library staff. That's when the Deputy Director's office gets into the business of maintaining staff training records. When Hooker finally succeeds in getting rid of Garnes--and abruptly assigns Carnes elsewhere--those training records apparently evaporate along with everything else in the Deputy Director's office.

Before Garnes' ouster, something called the "Circulation Quality Council" --a crew of untrained, already-overworked public service employees Garnes dragoons into coping with the need for ongoing circulation training after Hooker abolished the library system's Circulation Manager position--begins conducting some classes. No one knows, apparently, what happened to all theirattendance logs--perhaps, those records, too, got fed into the shredder?

Central Library employees will recall that under the iron-fisted regime of Central Library Administrator Susan Earl, staff were instructed to cough up several pieces of paper after each training session they attended: one copy for their manager, one for Earl, and one for the Human Resources office. Poor forests!

The Earl Regime comes to a long-overdue end. After Hooker's usual dithering, a new Acting Central Library Administrator comes upon the scene. Shred, shred, shred.

In other words, like virtually everything else Hooker or Garnes touches, responsibility for staff training becomes increasingly ambiguous and unfocused. Depending on who you ask and what day of the week it is, people will tell you staff training is being coordinated by the Central Library's Learning Center, by AFPL's Human Resources office, by Fulton County's Department of Human Resources, by the Library Board, by the non-existent "Cluster Managers," or by trainees from train-the-trainer sessions conducted by various and sundry vendors and/or trainers du jour.

The Time Machine brings us back now to the Spring of 2004. Having nothing better to do, the Director is now attempting to Direct. A suddenly bigger-if-not-better Human Resources office is solemnly charged with ushering into existence the ever-elusive Holy Grail of a long line of AFPL directors: The AFPL Staff Career Ladder. That means--guess what?--more staff training. And--surprise, surprise--yet another call for employees to document their previous training! And this time, with copies of the certificates they were supposed to have received for all that training!

But hold on a minute. The Learning Center--by now rechristened by the adjective-happy Hooker as the Instructional Learning Center--has on its staff something called a "Training Coordinator." What has this individual been doing all this time? She doesn't plan classes. She doesn't conduct them. She doesn't even create attendance logs. She certainly hasn't developed a comprehensive system-wide training calendar--much less worked out with the library's webmaster an arrangement for posting the calendar on the staff web site to help managers plan their service desk schedules around whatever training's being offered.

What, then, is this person's role? To have lunch with vendor training reps and "coordinate" the work of the "under-coordinators"? Merely to affix her signature to the latest round of documentation demanded from employees who've received some training, somewhere, sometime in the past two years?

What a crock! Why doesn't Hooker take a tiny baby step into Reality? Charge the library's current "Training Coordinator" with doing some work. Once and for all, centralize the location of all staff training documentation. Then use the documentation for something.

Otherwise, we are doomed to an eternity of document, document, document, and shred, shred, shred.

Signed,

"Anonymoose"

Public service staff are often invited to attend in-house workshops on the use of various databases provided for the public. Has anyone ever received a "certificate" for learning how to search NewsBank, Reference USA, ProQuest or other such training--a benefit which, unlike some of the half-day and whole-day "training" that we are forced to go to--is immediately applicable to public service work?

[Signed]

"NoName"

Commissioner Emma Darnell: "...I just still am at a loss to understand why this organization is so controlled by rumor, gossip, false statements, and out-and-out lies. And the report [of "the EEO climate" at AFPL, written by board consultant Nancy Reynolds] suggests that a lot of it comes from the fact that employees are in the dark about so many things; is that correct?"

Board Consultant Nancy Reynolds: "Well...they get a lot of their information through the rumor mill because they're not getting it elsewhere....A lot of people--I had managers report to me that their staff spends, you know, time going to the [AFPLWATCH] web site and reading that and assuming that that's all complete, factual and--co-workers who have said that it is continuing--that's continuing to be the prime--or a primary--source of information. And it's not necessarily completely accurate information."

Darnell: "But that is extremely disappointing. And this will be my last statement. That is extremely disappointing. And I can certainly hope that we will come up with something on that. The web site has clearly been devoted to attacks upon the Director. That is the major thrust of that web site. That is the major thrust of the anonymous letters that we receive. You know, we're not talking about a web site here that is related to the legitimate goals and purposes of this Library which is to serve the people of this County. I am extremely disappointed, and, yes, I think the word is disturbed, that employees look to a web site that engages in personal attacks as the major focus of what they're doing. I didn't even know anything about the web site until this year. You know, that is extremely disappointing. I'll tell you why it's disappointing. Because I would think where we would have--we have a large caliber of professional employees here. We have Masters degrees in Library Science. We're dealing with professionals here. One of the major, most elemental requirements of intelligence is not to consume a lot of your time, you know, with viciousness and unfairness. So that's extremely disappointing in my opinion, just speaking as one member of the Board. You know, what kind of professional would get their information about the Library from a web site that has one mission and that is to attack an individual?"

Board Chair Annette Steed: "I agree, Commissioner."

Darnell: "That's very disappointing."

• "I'm happy she's in Atlanta and not here, for the sake of our employees." --El Paso City Councilman Larry Medina [Source: "Library Boss Had Rocky Time in Last Job," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 29, 1999, p. C-10. Read the whole article.]
  
  
• "Ms. Hooker and Mr. McClure's actions have caused unnecessary expense, embarrassment, and liability to the county." --John Sherman, president, Fulton County Taxpayers Association [Source: "Taxpayer Group Urges Dismissal of Library Officials," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 9, 2003, p. JN-2. Read the whole article.]
  
  
• "When I learned we had two of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit before us again in EEOC grievances, I was incredulous. Then I was furious. Nobody could be that stupid, I thought." --AFPL Trustee Stephen Dorvee [Source: "Taxpayer Group Says Library Execs Must Go," Northfulton.com, October 15, 2003. Read the whole article.]
  
  
• "...The Director has a tendency, at least on a subconscious level, to lead through fear, threats, and intimidation. She is not only perceived to target individuals at whim, but has reportedly in some cases openly announced her desire (and ability) to have specific individuals removed. Moreover, she is consistently described as unpredictably prone to belittling and berating staff either publicly and/or in other improper forums....The Director's management style appears to have the opposite of the expected effect. Rather than instilling confidence in her leadership, it has created the impression among many that she either lacks the ability to lead effectively or lacks the knowledge and/or skills to manage a library. It creates the appearance that she not only fails to respect staff in general, but further does not respect her management team. It appears to have led to a lack of respect for management on many levels....The perception at all levels of staff is that the Director is either unable or refuses to lead...." --Nancy Reynolds, consultant to AFPL's board of trustees [Source: "AFPL Workplace Audit," December 31, 2003. Read all the excerpts from Reynolds' report. ]
  
  
• "There is no question we need a complete change in leadership there." --Fulton County Commission Chair Karen Handel [Source: "Report Alarms Library Board; Fulton Staffers Cite Mismanagement, Bias Under Director," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 3, 2004. Read the entire story.]
  
  
• "You can make a good argument to get rid of her." --Fulton County Commissioner Bob Fulton [Source: "Report Alarms Library Board; Fulton Staffers Cite Mismanagement, Bias Under Director," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 3, 2004. Read the entire story.]