Branch Staff Allocations Still Out of Whack
Posted May 17, 2006
The library system's circulation totals
for last month show the same lopsided patterns they have for several
years now.
Some branches are consistently handling disproportionately heavier
lending actvity than other branches with exactly or roughly the same number
of staff - and some branches are handling more work than other branches
with more employees.
Branch staff allocations were determined seven years ago by the library's
trustees, and haven't been substantially revised by library administrators
since then to account for current library use patterns. This failure to
adjust staffing levels has led to various anomalies such as employees at
some Area Libraries shouldering more of the library system's work than at
some better-staffed Regional Libraries, and some Neighborhood Libraries
handling more work than some better-staffed Community Libraries. There are
also marked differences in the level of work handled by the various branches
within each of the four staffing allocation levels as determined by
the widely-acknowledged-as-obsolete "facility types."
AFPL's current administrators seem to be investing a lot of energy in
preparing the library system's "Master Facility Plan," but the inevitably
protracted wrangling over which new facilities should be proposed (or which
existing libraries should be expanded) shouldn't interfere with the
responsibility for making - much sooner than the final adoption of the
latest "blueprint for the future" - empirically-based staff adjustments at
the facilities the library currently operates.
There is abundant,
consistent circulation data to support such adjustments, and library
employees at AFPL's busiest branches are being unfairly treated with every
additional month that passes without careful scrutiny of the current,
longstanding staffing inequities between the branches doing most of the
library system's lending (and reshelving!) work, and the branches doing
less - sometimes far, far less - of that work.
Garnes Loses ALA Council Election Bid
Posted May 2, 2006; postscript added May 3, 2006
For the second year in a row, former AFPL Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes
has been unsuccessful in a run for a seat on the American Library Association's
Executive Council.
ALA posted the names of its new council members
yesterday.
Garnes had petitioned
for a three-year term as an At-Large Councilor.
May 3rd Update: According to the vote tallies
posted by various bloggers (such as
Michael Gorick), almost 3,000 ALA members voted for Garnes (from a
slate of 71 candidates). To have won a seat on the Council she would've
needed another 303 votes beyond the 2,914 she received. The candidates with
the most votes (the ones who were elected) received between 4,769 and 3,216
votes. Fifty-four of the candidates got more votes than Garnes; only 16
candidates got fewer votes than she did.
Continue reading previously-posted AFPLWATCH stories
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