Farewell to Osborne-Harris
Posted November 30, 2004; reader comment posted December 2, 2004
AFPL Branch Group Administrator Barbara Osborne-Harris' official farewell
party was last week, and today is Osborne-Harris' last day at AFPL; she's
taking a job with a library system located just south of Fulton County.
Osborne-Harris was the only D-level manager recruited for AFPL by Mary
Kaye Hooker. She is leaving the organization seven months after Hooker hired
her, and four months after Hooker was fired.
When Osborne-Harris arrived last September, Hooker-weary library employees
had high hopes that she might bring some sanity to the management of the
organization, despite fears
that Hooker would sabotage whatever positive efforts Osborne-Harris might
make in that direction.
With Hooker finally out of the picture by the end of May 2004, library
staff rekindled their hopes that Osborne-Harris would take steps to fill the serious
management void created by the elevation of the other Branch Group
Administrator, Anne Haimes, to the position of Interim Library Director.
Alas, those hopes were not realized.
From the vantage point of workers on the front line at AFPL, Osborne-Harris'
five post-Hooker months didn't seem any different than the previous eight
Hooker-encumbered ones.
We don't know what these past five months have seemed like from
Osborne-Harris' point of view, or what she views as her contributions to
AFPL. We realize that she was preoccupied toward the end of the summer
with overseeing the interviews for the new staff at Ocee. And we don't
know the details of any counterproductive tensions that might've been
playing themselves out between Osborne-Harris and her former-colleague-then-suddenly-boss
Anne Haimes and between Osborne-Harris and AFPL's other remaining D-level
administrator, Doris Jackson. We do know that, whatever the reasons,
between June and November 2004 when she had no Mary Kaye to contend with,
the total number of more-than-superficial interactions from between
Osborne-Harris and the thirty-odd branch managers she supposedly supervised
during that time was not, shall we say, impressive. And that there are
plenty of library employees who, after Osborne-Harris' having been at AFPL
over a year, never laid eyes on the woman.
For the sake of the library users in Georgia's Coweta County, we hope
Osborne-Harris will be interested in exercising more effective leadership
in her new job--or at least that her subordinates there will see her more
often than her subordinates at AFPL did. We also hope that Interim Director
Haimes has already obtained authorization to immediately fill the
vacancy Osborne-Harris' departure creates. AFPL's branch system, like
everything else in the organization, has been adrift for years, and AFPL's
branches need and deserve far more than the benign neglect they've been
subjected to for quite a while now.
A Reader's Comment Posted December 2, 2004
I am glad to see that I am not the only staff member that questions what
exactly Ms. Osborne-Harris has been doing during her time with AFPL.
Several times when I needed a quick decision or acknowledgment of receiving
important personnel documents I submitted, I got nothing but crickets even
after trying to communicate via email, fax, phone and semaphore. It was
very unsettling knowing that there really was no one looking out for
branches when managers needed help in a pinch. Furthermore, I was tired of
my paperwork getting lost and being told it was somewhere in the offices
of her assistants.
However, after having three supervisors in as many years and seeing other
key administrative positions go unfulfilled; I cannot in all honesty say
that I am even hopeful about the prospect of a new Branch Team Manager.
[Signed] Tired and Disillusioned
Our Illustrious Library Trustees
Atlanta Ethics Board to Investigate Steed?
Posted November 19, 2004
A story in the November 18 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Metro, p. C-1,
C-7) lists Annette Steed, former chair of AFPL's board of trustees,
as one of 85 individuals who failed to file or filed incomplete
financial disclosure forms with the city's Ethics Board before the
February 17, 2004 filing deadline. The story says that hearings for
violators who are members of boards will start in January 2005.
Steed's problems with the Ethics Board may be moot since she abruptly
--and mysteriously--resigned early last year, and because a few months
later the entire board was dissolved by the Georgia legislature.
Still, it's worth noting that the history of AFPL's board is
littered with embarrassing incidents like this one. It would certainly be
nice if our county commissioners would start appointing people to the
library board who could at least steer clear of the city's Ethics
Board--not to mention county and federal equal employment opportunity
enforcement agencies and the federal court system.
Our thanks to an eagle-eyed AFPLWATCH reader for sending along to us
this "Steed Sighting." We'd still like to know why Steed resigned from
the board so suddenly last year.
Postscript:
Another eagle-eyed reader espied among the 85 investigatees' names
(in his capacity as a member of the county's Empowerment Zone board of
directors) Keith Chadwell, the Deputy County Manager--and the library
director's immediate supervisor.
Self-Checkout Machines:
Another Approaching Trainwreck
for AFPL?
Posted November 18, 2004
News of public library systems around the country installing self-checkout
machines is now appearing with regularity in the library press. Most of
these library systems are far smaller than Atlanta's. (For example, read this recent
report
from a library system in Medford, Oregon (population 66,450) that has installed self-checkout
machines in its central library.)
It’s only a matter of time before AFPL administrators get around
to installing self-checkout machines to cut down on the long lines of
impatiently-waiting customers at AFPL's busiest branches. Many library
users of our busiest branches are people who have moved
to Atlanta relatively recently. They were exposed to these time-saving
machines elsewhere, and have begun clamoring for them here. The fact
that more and more retail establishments all over metro-Atlanta
are installing self-checkout machines exposes even more library users
(including non-newcomers) to these time-saving devices.
Unfortunately, the problem with installing self-checkout machines in AFPL
libraries is not "merely" the problem finding the money to pay for the machines.
Alas, one of AFPL’s dreary little open secrets is that thousands upon
thousands of items in its collections are labeled with barcodes that
machines can’t scan.
- Even branches whose collections are machine-scanable
have patrons who regularly receive Holds items from branches whose
collections are not properly labeled with machine-scanable barcodes.
-
There's the further problem that very few branches attach barcodes to the
outside of their nonbook items: patrons trying to use a self-checkout
machine would be forced to fumble around and remove their videos,
audiobooks, etc. from their cases before they could scan them--just like
the library's circulation staff are doing now with those inconveniently-labeled
materials.
- Finally, there's the issue of the much-needed security cases
some nonbook items (well, at some branches, anyway) are kept in. Can
self-checkout machines unlock these cases, or will self-checkout be
available only to patrons borrowing books?
Whatever self-checkout machines we end up purchasing, how many we buy, how
much money we divert from other services to pay for them, and wherever we
end up putting the ones we buy are themselves problematic issues. But
suddenly foisting thousands of nonscannable or hard-to-scan items onto the
hapless public--a portion of which will be initially resistant to
learning how to operate them no matter how "easy" that's supposed to be--is
a customer service nightmare waiting to happen.
Until AFPL makes a few quantum leaps in de-bugging its SIRSI circulation
software--or gives up trying and buys a better system--another
circulation-related customer service nightmare is the last thing
AFPL needs, especially given all the other problems (chronic staff
shortages and imbalances, underfunded collections, out-of-order computers,
zero leadership, an unclear vision of its mission, etc. etc. etc.) that
AFPL forces its customers to cope with.
Would it be too much to ask that library’s administrators come up with
and implement a plan to make sure that every branch has its collection
scan-ready before we start installing self-checkout machines?
Handel Proposes to End County’s Hiring Freeze
Posted November 16, 2004
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Karen Handel, the
chair of the Fulton County Commission--and Acting Chair of AFPL's Board of
Trustees--has proposed a county budget for 2005 that would end the county’s
long freeze on routine hiring for vacant positions.
Hiring has been frozen for over a year for dozens of vacant positions in
the library system, including numerous management positions.
The proposed budget for 2005 is subject to negotiation among the other
county commissioners between now and January 19th, when the commissioners
will ratify a final version of the budget after a final public hearing
on January 5th.
Read the AJC story.
Hooker Sighting Update
Posted November 11, 2004; updated November 13, 2004
Jacksonville: Thumbs Down for Hooker
On November 10th, Jacksonville's mayor announced the name of the next
director of the Jacksonville Public Library, and that person's name
is not Mary Kaye Hooker.
Another Hooker Sighting!
Hooker Now Trying for Post in Jacksonville
Posted November 1, 2004; reader comment posted November 8, 2004
Unsuccessful in her recent bid for a vacant library director position in
Michigan, former
AFPL director Mary Kaye Hooker is currently a finalist for a similar job
in Florida.
An AFPLWATCH reader sent us an
article
published in the October 11th edition of Jacksonville's Financial News
& Daily Record that includes the scary details.
The executive search firm handling the recruiting of candidates for
Jacksonville's next director is the
same firm that recommended Hooker for the Michigan post. The company
chose Hooker as a finalist for Jacksonville shortly after the September
30th deadline for applications.
According to an
editorial in the current Library Journal,
the magazine's editorial staff recently discussed (among other things) the
ethical implications of any executive search firm naming Hooker as a
viable candidate for any library director job anywhere after the federal
courts ascertained that she had engaged in race discrimination while
director at AFPL. Like the hundreds of employees working in Atlanta's
(and, before that, El Paso's) public libraries, LJ's editors found
"reassuring" the news that other libraries have so far declined to hire
Hooker.
According to another October 11th article, this
one published by the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville's library
trustees apparently plan to choose their next library director "before the
end of the year."
For the sake of the library-using citizens of Jacksonville and
especially for the sake of the employees of the city's public library
system, we hope that Jacksonville's library trustees are wiser than their
counterparts in Atlanta who who hired Hooker back in 1999. With almost a
dozen other job finalists to choose from, picking any one of them at
random would be smarter than entrusting Hooker with another library
system--regardless of what Hooker's resume
says or whatever grandiose claims
Hooker makes in her job interview.
Of course, we hope at least one person on the Jacksonville interview team
asks AFPLWATCH for a copy of The Hooker Dossier.
In the meantime, individuals familiar with Hooker's slash-and-burn tactics
in El Paso and Atlanta might want to contact Jacksonville's trustees with
comments about Hooker's candidacy. They will find the trustees' names and
the library's mailing address on the Jacksonville Public Library's
web page.
A Reader Responds:
I have wrestled with my conscience since reading that Mary Kaye Hooker is
pursuing the director's post in Jacksonville. After much soul-searching,
I have decided to write a strong letter of protest to the Mayor, the Chair
of the Library Board, and the Jacksonville newspaper, begging them not to
hire this woman. I strongly encourage your readers to do the same.
Having survived the war and walked amongst the ruins of AFPL, we
cannot allow her to annihilate another system. My first reaction
to reading about her candidacy was to lift the people in Jacksonville up
in prayer and hope for the best. However, as dedicated librarians, and/or
people who love libraries, I came to the conclusion that we must stand
united in contacting folks in Jacksonville to give them a serious "heads-up"!
Mary Kaye Hooker does not deserve to hold any position that
requires any potential contact with any human beings!
After World War II, Jews around the world adopted the slogan "Never
Again" to declare a solid position about the atrocities conducted by
Nazi Germany. I firmly believe that anyone who has ever worked
for the infamous Mrs. Hooker must do the same! Therefore, alerting the good
people in Jacksonville is not only the right thing to do, it is ethically
and morally just. They are our brothers and sisters in librarianship and
deserve better!
[Signed] "Sojourner Truth"
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