John Szabo Named AFPL's Next Director; Starts April 4th
Posted February 26, 2005
Additional links inserted February 28 and March 4, 2005
Reader's comment posted February 28, 2005
In a memo emailed to library employees February 25th,
Fulton County Manager Tom Andrews announced his appointment of
AFPL's next library director. Andrews' choice is John F. Szabo, currently
director of the Clearwater (Florida) Public Library.
The information about Szabo in Andrews' announcement is repeated in a
press release on Fulton County's web site and in a similar
press
release by the City of Clearwater. That information and gleanings from
the results of several Internet searches reveal these facts about Szabo:
- Szabo is 37 years old. He was born in Orlando, Florida in 1968.
- He earned his B.A. at the University of Alabama and his library degree
from the University of Michigan.
- He's been director of the Clearwater Public Library since October 1999.
- Before that, Szabo was director of the Palm Harbor (Florida) Public
Library; of the Robinson (Illinois) Public Library District; and of the
University of Michigan's Residential College Library. Before that, Szabo
was a map cataloger for the University of Michigan's Map Library, and
before that, an announcer for public radio station WUAL/WQPR.
- Szabo was one of the finalists for the recent director vacancy at
the Jacksonville Public Library (a position Mary Kaye Hooker had also
applied for after being fired as AFPL's director in May 2004).
- While president of the Florida Library Association (2003-2004), Szabo took a
leadership role in organizing a successful
protest among Florida library users of Governor Jeb Bush’s plans to
dismantle the Florida State Library.
- Szabo has served as
board president of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium, and as a member
of the Florida's Library Advisory Council.
- In 1996, Szabo won an award from ALA "an outstanding contribution to the advancement of
library services for the blind or physically disabled in Illinois."
- Szabo is the author of a 1993 bibliography about the funeral industry,
Mortuary Science: A Sourcebook (Scarecrow Press).
For a photo of Szabo, look here and scroll to page 3.
Some of the issues Szabo has dealt with during his tenure at CPL that
will be of keen interest to AFPL staff:
- Deciding not to filter
CPL's Internet terminals, foregoing the federal telecommunications grant
given to any library that (like AFPL) agrees to install filters.
- Successfully locating an adequate amount of
free parking
for patrons of CPL's main library, including the leasing of
commercial space near the building.
- Dealing with an extended hiring freeze.
- Coping with $150,000 in cleanup costs for damages to a branch library
caused by three teenaged
arsonists.
- Defending CPL's practice of prosecuting and
jailing patrons who owe CPL exhorbitant amounts of money in overdue fines.
Szabo has been quoted in newspaper reports or professional publications as:
-
Opposing the USA PATRIOT Act.
-
Opposing the hiring of non-librarians to do the jobs librarians have
been formally trained to perform.
Among the interesting facts (again, gleaned from the Internet) about the
Clearwater Public Library:
- CPL has a relatively new main library, opened during Szabo's tenure
and four branch libraries, one of which was opened since Szabo's arrival
at CPL.
- The main library, opened in 2002, has won a half-dozen design awards.
Here's a design sketch and a photo:
According to a
construction history of the main branch, the building "features a café, story
time room, local history center, teen room, computer lab, meeting rooms, rooftop terrace and
galleries...a dramatic four-story grand staircase,...and breathtaking views of Clearwater Harbor and
the Gulf of Mexico."
The building
includes 40,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and
approximately 40,000 square feet of City Hall space on the top floor (which
includes City Commission chambers, offices and 10,000 square feet of
meeting room space available to the public).
- CPL's board has the word "Advisory" in its name, and
consists of seven members.
- CPL patrons are given "keychain" cards along with regular-looking
library cards.
- The dues-paying members of CPL's
Friends of the Library recently donated $20,000 to the library's
foundation and another $17,000 for enhancement at library branches.
CPL's Friends operate a permanent book sale staffed by dozens of volunteers.
- CPL’s rules allow staff to remove from the library any patron "beglecting
bodily hygiene so as to constitute a nuisance to others."
Library Journal's
report on Szabo's appointment includes a brief statement by Szabo about
his new job, and mentions the $120,000 salary he'll be earning at AFPL.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported the story (and another photograph) on March 4th.
AFPLWATCH readers are invited to email the
webmaster with additional tidbits of information about Szabo that come
to their attention over the next few weeks, so we can post that
information to the web site. And, as always, readers are also invited to
email their reactions to the news, letting the webmaster know whether or
not to post those comments to AFPLWATCH.
A Former AFPL Employee's Comment:
Posted February 28, 2005
I actually met Szabo last year when he was at the library "looking at the architecture." I had a
sense he was checking us out to possibly apply [for the vacant director position] but he didn't come
out and say that. He asked some very intelligent questions, got an earful from me about what I
thought, and seemed to have a very clear understanding of AFPL's problems, especially where the
board was concerned. After we talked for about a half-hour or so, I found myself really liking him.
I liked how he asked questions and the kinds of questions he asked. He was really doing his research.
I hope he turns out to be as positive as the feeling I got from him.
Editorial Posted February 18, 2005
When No News Ain't Good News
This coming Saturday marks nine months since the library system was
delivered from the disastrous clutches of Mary Kaye Hooker.
The inexplicable delay in the county's appointment of the library
system's next director has gotten more suspcious-looking with every month
that's come lumbering down the pike.
Nine months. Gee, give Mother Nature nine months and she can go from
sperm/egg to cooing baby. Give Fulton County the same nine months and it
can’t even produce a permanent director for its library department.
You’d think The Powers That Be would feel so guilty enough about what the
library had suffered up to the beginning of that nine months that they’d
move swiftly to appoint a new director to begin cleaning up the mess.
After firing Hooker last May,
County Manager Tom Andrews reassured library employees that
we would probably see our new library director by Labor Day. (Silly us, we
thought Andrews meant Labor Day, 2004!) With Easter 2005 now fast
approaching, most of us in the library have been focusing our
understandable annoyance on Andrews. This was somewhat ironic, as at first
Andrews had been something of a hero in these parts for having the guts to finally
do something about Hooker, and for doing so at the first possible (legal)
moment. Our expectation back then of Better Days Fairly Soon was based on
assuming that Andrews wouldn't waste any time finding a new director.
Unfortunately, the Obligatory Great Pause that ensued as Andrews conducted
the Obligatory Nationwide Search eventually began to look and feel like needless -
bordering-on-abusive - foot-dragging.
The other day it occurred to some of us that the delay might have less to
do with Andrews and more to do with that old nemesis of our beleagured
library system, County Politics.
We're not talking about any fallout for the library from the recent flap
between Andrews and certain county commissioners after Andrews neglected
to get formal commission approval for greenlighting a big county contract.
No, our fears are about a much more longstanding--and more serious--problem
in Fulton County government.
Along with other still-infuriated taxpayers, we'd like to think that two
recent library-related multimilliondollar court settlements against the
county would have discouraged any commissioners from tampering with the
county's hiring practices, even when it comes to hiring department heads.
On the other hand, we know that bad habits are hard to break. We certainly
relearned that lesson when certain commissioners brazenly reappointed to
the "new" library board the same individuals they'd appointed to the
discredited "old" library board that the state legislature had dismantled.
We're also aware that certain commissioners are prone to making loud
and frequent pronouncements about merit-based employment and purchasing
practices while at the same time pushing an agenda that makes a mockery of
merit-based county governance. The awarding of county contracts to
poorly-performing or non-performing vendors of library materials and
library services is one example of how such an agenda manifests itself in
library department operations.
Given the current cast of characters and what we've all seen--in and out
of courtrooms--over the past few years, it's certainly plausible that some
commissioner might have somehow expressed displeasure with Andrews' choice
of the most qualified candidate for the next library director--or perhaps
expressed a preference for a less qualified candidate.
We hope that Andrews is resisting any behind-the-scene maneuverings on the
part of any county commissioner that are intended to influence his choice.
The commissioners pay their county manager to, among other things, hire
qualified department heads. We hope that, recent rumor to the contrary,
the commisioners have kept their mitts off the process for selecting the
next library director, and have resisted what, for some commissioners,
might be an almost irresistable temptation to force Andrews' "choice"
to fit some predetermined profile of what they'd like the county's next
library director to look like.
Whatever the cause or causes of this inexcusable delay in hiring the next
library director, it's certainly bad P.R. for Fulton County Government.
It's also bad government, period. For nine months now, Interim Library
Director Anne Haimes has soldiered on, doing the scut work of keeping the
library functioning, trying to get it back on course without the necessary
resources or authority to do that job, without being accorded the common
courtesy of being given a decision on the director’s position. (Talk about
jerked around - it’s a wonder Ms. Haimes doesn’t tell them to Put It Where
The Sun Don't Shine. Of course, this being Fulton County, that storage
area’s probably already occcupied.)
Speculations and Haimes' increasingly untenable personal dilemma aside,
the library needs its new director. The serious problems in the
library created by the trustees and the director who preceded Haimes'
tenure haven't magically vanished, and a host of unresolved customer-service
issues continue to work the nerves of increasingly impatient library
users--the customers, that is, whose patronage we didn't lose a long,
long time ago.
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