McClure Dead at 57
Posted October 26, 2005
East Point Councilman and former AFPL trustee chair William McClure died October 25th after a long
illness.
Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution
news story mentions McClure’s role in the race discrimination
lawsuit filed by seven AFPL librarians in 2000 and settled four years later by Fulton County for $18
million.
AFPL Fares Badly (Again)
in Annual Ratings of Public Libraries
Posted October 20, 2005
This year’s Hennen ratings for U.S. public library systems have been
posted to Hennen’s web site.
The 2005 scores for Georgia’s largest public library systems (those
serving over 500,000 citizens):
- Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library 399
- Clayton County Public Library 399
- Cobb County Public Library 405
- DeKalb County PL 451
- Gwinnett County Public Library 639
This year's low score for AFPL was even lower than
last year's.
A
summary of the 2005 Hennen rankings appears in the October issue of
American Libraries.
Editorial
Library Service in Fulton County:
Perpetual Hostage
to Race Tensions on County Commission
Posted October 17, 2005
A long-time reader alerted AFPLWATCH to a recently-published news article
and editorial written by Hatcher Hurd, who has for several years
covered the deliberations of the Fulton County Commission as they affect
county services, including library services, to citizens living in the
northern end of the county.
- Read Hurd's
news article, "Ocee Library Funds Withheld."
- Read Hurd's
editorial, "Fulton Commission Hits Lowest Point Yet."
Hurd's report on last week's Commission vote to postpone the full funding
of the Ocee Regional Library and Hurd's commentary on that racially-polarized
vote make it clear why so many county residents are fed up with the way
Commissioners try to portray virtually every issue facing the Commission
as a struggle for racial dominance.
As additonal sections of unincorporated Fulton County rush to free
themselves at least partly from the clutches of Fulton County Commissioners
by incorporating themselves as cities, the Commission seems
incapable of understanding that its members' provincial attitudes are
fueling those anti-county government impulses.
Meanwhile, long-needed improvements in library services are repeatedly
postponed as library funding proposals become instant footballs in the
relentless bickering between Commissioners - some of whom seem unable to
comprehend that, due to the daily loaning of materials among branches,
increased funding for library materials shelved in any county
library means access to those materials by patrons of all county
libraries.
One day, perhaps the dismal, counterproductive cycles of resentment and
retribution that are being played out through the Commissioners' votes
will play less of a role in commissioners' efforts to control how, when,
and where the county will deploy its financial resources. With friends of
libraries - and library-using citizens - like Boxhill and Darnell on the
Commission, one wonders how long that will take.
How Long, O Lord, How Long?
The Holds Embargo on East Atlanta Branch Materials
Posted October 12, 2005
Why has no one in the library administration announced an end to the
embargo on placing Holds on items owned only by the East Atlanta Branch
Library?
The East Atlanta Branch reopened in its new building - and with
its partly-new collection - on July 9th. Ever since then, patrons living
in other parts of Fulton County have been unable to place Holds on items
that only East Atlanta owns - including high-demand, recently-published
items that only East Atlanta owns. (That's because East Atlanta's materials
budget was exempt from the far-less-than-twelve-months-long ordering "year"
all other AFPL branches are restricted by).
On top of the resulting frustration endured by library patrons as a result
of the administratively-imposed Holds embargo on items shelved at East
Atlanta, AFPL staff in every other branch have been forced to explain to
patrons, day in and day out, on the phone and in person, why patron
attempts at placing such Holds won't work. Why? Because there's nothing in
the public access catalog that explains the embargo. (Thanks, SIRSI; thanks,
Mr. non-existent AFPL webmaster; thanks, library administrators, for not
making sure that at least one copy of every item ordered for East Atlanta
was also deposited somewhere else so patrons could obtain that item via the
systemwide Holds mechanism while the East Atlanta copy remained embargoed.)
Holds embargoes are wrong-headed to begin with. They're based on the
notion that patrons of a new library building ought to at least temporarily
enjoy their brand-spanking-new (or partly new) collection without immediate
"interference" from other citizens using the county's library "system" who
might want to borrow those items before the locals even get to see them on
the shelves (instead of merely seeing them listed in the library catalog).
In other words, a Holds embargo is a management device to artificially prolong
the illusion that the library system is well-funded enough to adequately
meet the demands of its patrons without temporarily privileging certain
patrons (the ones lucky enough to be using a new facility) and
disadvantaging all the patrons of the much-more-numerous non-new facilities.
More to the point, a Holds embargo on materials at a new library facility
is a self-serving administrative device to artificially prolong that
oh-so-brief but oh-so-supposedly-important period of self-congratulation
following the ordeal of opening a new library facility that board members
and county commissioners are so anxious to receive credit for. ("Gosh,
just look at all those new-looking books at the new library that y'all have me
to thank for!" vs. "Hey, Mr. Library Director, where are all the new books
y'all ordered for this new library? What do you mean, they're being
borrowed by folks from the other end of the county?!")
Bottom line: If the library director could convince the county's
powers-that-be that the library system must have authority to purchase
its materials throughout the year, no confusing, frustrating, and unfair
Holds embargos for items in new branches would be necessary.
Aside from the fact that any Holds embargo on items in any AFPL facility
makes a mockery of the otherwise-much-ballihooed "one library system" slogan,
in the case of East Atlanta materials, patrons have been waiting
for over three months now for library administrators to lift the
embargo. How much longer are they going to be forced to wait?
Update: On October 19th, AFPL administrators
ended the three-month-long exemption of East Atlanta materials from
systemwide Holds.
Usual Suspects Bearing Brunt of Library's Workload
Posted October 5, 2005
The circulation statistics for September 2005, released earlier this week,
show the same patterns they've shown for some years now: a few branches
handling most of the lending out of materials, and many branches doing very
little lending.
Wildly disproportionate lending in different areas of the county wouldn't
be troublesome if library system resources (particularly staffing allocations
and budgets for purchasing materials) that support facility lending activity
were geared to the busiest facilities, but that is not the case - and
hasn't been for many years now.
Along with the usual breakdown of total
circulation by AFPL facility, two additional statistical reports were
distributed this month:
- A report showing registration
of new borrowers gives library administrators a snapshot of
where current demand for library (lending) services is growing the fastest.
Trends emerging from monthly snapshots of new registrations could, along
with circ totals, help predict the need for increased - or decreased -
staffing and/or materials budgets for selected branches.
The routine collection of empirical workload data, including new cardholder
registration data, presupposes that library administrators are interested
in basing resource allocations for library facilities at least partly on
that data. So far, there is little evidence for assuming this is the case at AFPL, as resource
allocations for library facilities haven't been even slightly tweaked in
light of workload data since the end of the McClure/Hooker era. It isn't
even clear who, if anyone, in the library's administration is responsible
for examining and analyzing the reports spewed out every month by the
AFPL's automated circulation software.
- A report showing branch weeding activity.
This report is interesting from the perspective of collection
development (or the lack thereof), and as a reminder that weeding is a
labor-intensive task that should be taken into account in allocating
a sufficient number of professional staff to the busiest library facilities.
By far the most weeding was done at Central. Although the report does not
break down Central's weeding by department, selectors weeding older
bestsellers from the Library Express Department (located at Central)
probably did most of Central's weeding. Apart from weeding at Central,
however, one might expect that AFPL's smallest branches would be forced
to do the heaviest weeding, but the weeding report for September does not
show that. In fact, the report doesn't show any obvious patterns in terms
of facility types - or, more disturbingly, within facility types. (Probably
the oddest weeding total we noted in this report was the one for AFPL's
bookmobile collection, which has been out of commission for several years
now.)
Since it's been years since AFPL selectors were formally trained in the
philosophical and technical aspects of weeding materials, the relatively
small amount of weeding done this past month (especially at some branches)
is not surprising. And at some branches, staff shortages rather than lack
of training may contribute to low weeding activity. Whatever the reasons
for it, the longrange consequences for AFPL patrons of selectors
chronically neglecting this particular aspect of their collection
maintenance responsibilities are worrisome.
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