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AFPLWATCH Stories Posted in July 2005 |
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Unconfirmed Hooker Sighting
Posted July 26, 2005
Almost a month ago AFPLWATCH heard third-hand that ex-AFPL director Mary
Kaye Hooker had obtained a job at a local medical library.
We assumed that confirmation of this rumor would shortly be forthcoming.
That hasn't happened, although a recent Googling of Hooker's name
did reveal that Hooker
has joined the Medical Library Association.
If someone out there in our far-flung readership happens to know any details
of Hooker's current employment situation, we'd love to
hear from you. Until then, we will resist our strong urges to comment on
this possible new development in MKH's career.
August 4th Update: See
the response from a reader that's posted at "The Webmaster's Mailbox."
Editorial
Some Patrons Are More Equal Than Others
Posted July 15, 2005
Earlier this week, branches received their first precious shipments of
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As expected, the processing
of every copy of this high-demand title triggered a Patron Hold, and, as
usual, many of these Holds were not for library users patronizing the
branch that owns the copies being processed into its collection. Nothing
surprising there.
What was surprising - and infuriating - was the library system’s young
adult librarians returning to their branches from a July 14th meeting
conducted by Child & Youth Services Administrator Doris Jackson and
announcing that Ms. Jackson had said it was OK for branches to ignore the
Holds on Harry Potter so that people browsing branch collections on or
after the book’s July 16th release date could find them on branch shelves.
This news was confusing and infuriating for a number of reasons:
- Who gave Ms. Jackson the authority to instruct staff that they
could ignore a systemwide circulation policy?
Is there some heretofore unknown clause in Jackson’s job description that allows her to suspend circulation policies? Did Jackson pay for the library system's copies of Harry Potter out of some special fund she administers? Did we miss the memo extending library administrators' prerogatives into managing the library system's collections?
If exempting Harry Potter from the library system’s systemwide Holds procedures is something Jackson’s boss, the library's director, authorized, why didn’t Jackson or Szabo announce - and explain - this deviation from policy to all staff well in advance?
The absence of an all-staff memo or all-staff email accompanying this decree is especially annoying as the decree comes
a mere two days before the Potter book is to be made available - which, in this case, will occur during a
weekend, when neither Doris Jackson nor any other library administrator will be on duty to handle any complaints
about this ill-considered decision.
The sudden and unexpected Holds-exemption decree has also created unneeded and still unresolved confusion among branch staffs. Branch employees who are responsible for properly processing new materials are being given different and contradictory
signals about what to do with the Holds on Harry. Do Jackson’s decrees supercede instructions from branch
managers and colleagues who are expected - every other day of the year and for every other title except,
apparently, this one - to enforce, rather than ignore, the systemwide Holds procedure?
And, yes, we know that some branches are notorious for routinely ignoring the systemwide Holds policy, and have been stubbornly doing that for years - and suffering zero consequences from their Branch Group Administrator about those deliberate violations of library procedures.
But the covert practice at some branches of ignoring Holds on popular items doesn’t make it fair to library users who "follow the rules" and put their names on Holds lists. The sad fact that branch managers who deliberately pursue or knowingly allow this practice aren’t fired on the spot doesn’t make it right either.
What’s different about the Potter business is that Jackson is a library system administrator, and she is attempting to overtly and deliberately aid and abet violations of the library’s policies by staff she doesn’t even supervise.
- Has Ms. Jackson volunteered to be on hand to personally explain to the soon-to-be enraged patrons in the soon-to-be-ignored Holds queues for the new Harry why others are getting the new book before they are?
Isn’t Jackson aware that these patrons' resentment will be justified, and that staff will be unable to explain to patrons
why they must wait even longer than they expected to before they can get hold of Harry?
Putting staff in an untenable position is not only unfair to library staff, but staff attempts to explain the decree to each other and to their customers will be a waste of valuable staff and patron time.
If Jackson had issued her ill-conceived instructions in writing and distributed them to everyone well before July 14th, staff who angry patrons will be blaming for this poor decision could have waved Jackson’s memo in front of those angry patrons’ faces instead of being expected, amid their other harried tasks, to dream up lame excuses that are going to be as inconsistent as they will be unpersuasive.
- Has Jackson forgotten that many of the shortly-to-be-enraged patrons who want to read the latest Harry are neither children nor teenagers, but adults? Does Jackson’s policy-ignoring jurisdiction extend to those patrons too, or just to children and teenagers in those queues?
- For how long does Jackson intend for branches to ignore Patron
Holds for Harry?
For one day? Two weeks? One month? Forever?
- Logic, ethics, and logistics aside, doesn’t Jackson - and the library managers who routinely sabotage the systemwide Holds procedure - realize that privileging browsers over Holds-queuers doesn’t accomplish what they think it does?
Think about it for two seconds. Exactly how many browsers will be made happy by finding Harry Potter on the "new books" shelf at their favorite branch? Maybe the lucky two or three individuals who storm each branch when the branches open on (or after) July 16th or, worse, wander into the branch that day and pull Harry off the shelf, blithely unaware that they are cutting in front of a long line of other Fulton County residents.
To give those few people the thrill of unexpectedly finding the newest Harry on the shelf at their local branch, the library system is willing to alienate dozens of other patrons waiting - and, remember, waiting longer than is already necessary - in Holds queues for Harry? This makes sense? This is customer-friendly?
- In light of Jackson’s decree, can library staff now expect other library administrators to be anointing other bestsellers to be exempt from Holds?
If so, who on Szabo’s staff will be stepping forward to announce the Holds-exempt status of Dan Brown’s next blockbuster? If Jackson’s pronouncement is allowed to stand, there’s no logical reason for that not to happen. But would it be too much to ask this browsing-patron-championing administrator, whoever he or she may be, to please do their library-credibility-wrecking deed well in advance, and distribute their decree in writing, to everyone, including patrons, and attempt to provide some sort of justification for it? (The library's web site might be a convenient, effective place to post such an explanation, along with a warning notice that flashes on the screen whenever a patron tries to place a Hold on any Holds-exempt item.)
But we think any attempt, by anyone, under any circumstances, to exempt any title in the library's collection from the Holds procedure constitutes deliberate patron abuse.
Just as the county’s merit system was invented to prevent favoritism in county employment, the library system invented the systemwide Holds policy to prevent favoritism among library patrons. Privileging browsing patrons over the library users who go to the trouble to get in line for it (especially after library staff have warned them to do that) is favoritism.
A library administrator’s encouraging library staff to ignore a policy isn’t any fairer or wiser than administrators ignoring merit system procedures when they hire employees. McClure’s, Hooker’s, and Garnes’ routinely ignoring county merit system rules got the library into deep and expensive legal doo-doo, was terrible publicity for the library system, and created customer relations and staff morale problems that will take years to recover from. The last thing AFPL needs, now or ever, is a library administrator encouraging staff to ignore the institution’s own policies and procedures and frustrating its customers more than it already does.
The systemwide Holds policy was created precisely to deal with high-demand titles in scarce supply. The newest Harry book is a perfect example of why we have the policy, not why we should depart from it.
Exempting titles from Holds was a bad idea when ex-library director Mary Kaye Hooker allowed the Central Library's Library Express Department to do that; it isn’t fair when certain branches routinely ignore Holds on "their" copies of The Da Vinci Code, and it’s not a good idea when Doris Jackson authorizes ignoring Holds for Harry Potter.
More Data, Same Conclusion:
Some Branches Far Busier Than Others,
But Staffing Patterns Don't Reflect It
Posted July 3, 2005
Last month's circulation statistics
show the same thing they've shown for many, many months: branch staffing
patterns - set by the micromanaging trustees several years ago - have not
been adjusted to reflect the disparate workloads handled by AFPL's various
facilities. Ditto the library administration's allocation of money to
purchase books and other materials, or allocations of computer equipment.
Result: some branches are overstaffed, overbudgeted, and over-equipped
while others are understaffed, underbudgeted, and under-equipped.
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