Commissioners Add $2.7 to Library System's Budget
Posted January 24, 2007; updated January 25, 2007; updated again January 26, 2007
According to a county
press release, county commissioners at a meeting on January 17th
approved "more than $2,700,000 for additional materials to stock the County’s libraries as well
as to make remedial repairs and improvements to [library] facilities."
We've also heard unsubstantiated rumors that the commissioners approved a
2% salary increase for county employees retroactive to January 1st, with
an additional 2% increase effective in July.
January 25th Update: The rumor about the cost-of-living
increase turned out to be correct, but not the "retroactive to January 1st"
part. County employees received a January 25th email that states:
Effective January 24, 2007, eligible employees will receive a 2% pay
increase, which will be reflected in the February 16 paycheck. An
additional 2% pay increase will take place for eligible employees
effective July 11, 2007, which will be reflected in the August 3 paycheck.
Library staff received another email later that day explaining that
the increase applies only to full-time employees.
January 26th Update: On January 24th, library
staff received a further email explaining that the county's part-time employees
would (along with full-time employees) receive the cost-of-living increase.
Retiring a Metaphor
Posted January 16, 2007
We lost a member of our staff last week. Almost five years with the
library - just a few weeks shy of being 100% vested, in fact. A short
career, some might say, but a prominent one, becoming almost a fixture in
our professional lives.
Yes, the Central Library Crater is no more. The fencing around it has been
rolled up to reveal that our own private entrance to the Underworld has
been closed. Everything appears once more as it was in the spring of 2002,
when, at the very apotheosis of the Hooker regime, the ground beneath the
Central Library plaza belched forth not just a crater, but a metaphor for
the bizarre hell in which we were living.
It seems odd to once more be able to see the front of the Central Library.
Even odder is the feeling of freedom that comes from being able to walk
across the plaza rather than risking one’s life by venturing into the
street to get to the front door of the library system’s flagship building.
Maybe the healing of the crater can serve as a new metaphor, for the slow
but positive changes happening inside that building and throughout the
library system.
Webmaster's Note: The "Crater Watch" section of the website is also
being retired. It's been relocated to
the "History Lessons" part of the site, although it's unclear what this
episode taught us:
- Did the Crater teach us that there's a major flaw in the county
government's "lowest bidder" practices in awarding county contracts?
(We long ago lost track of how many different contractors and
subcontractors were hired, paid many thousands of dollars, and then fired
because they never finished their work.)
- Did we learn that a library director needs good communication skills
(especially with his/her colleagues at county headquarters), the
willingness to follow-up on other people's promises, and an eye for detail?
(Qualities that former library director Mary Kaye Hooker, to put it mildly,
did not possess.)
- Did we learn that any person appointed Interim Central Library
Administrator needs to "take ownership," as they say, of whatever building
infrastructure issues he/she inherits? (Neither of the two predecessors of
the current Interim Administrator made any headway overseeing the closing
up of the Crater.)
Whatever else the Saga of the Crater taught us, we hope that we've learned
that Some Library Problems Don't Just Fade Away. No, some problems just
gets worse until somebody takes responsibility for confronting those
problems.
Circ Totals for 2006, 2005
Justify Branch Staffing Changes
Posted January 8, 2006
Although staff sizes for branches were last overhauled in 1999(!), there
have been marked changes since that time in terms of which branch libraries
consistently handle the bulk of the library's lending (and reshelving)
activity.
The 2006 circulation totals released
last week, when ranked, show a remarkable stability - especially
for the library system's busiest branches - compared to the 2005 rankings.
Even if you ignore total circulation rankings, a consistent pattern emerges
if you look at which branches have handled the largest percentages of the
library system's workload for the past two years.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the library system's public service employees
are not currently working in the busiest branches, because the size of branch
staffs are determined primarily by the 1999 staffing formulas.
These obsolete staffing allocations have resulted in more than a few cases
of certain branches handling far more circulation than other branches with
an equal (or even larger) number of employees. For example, four "Area
Libraries" consistently handle more circulation than two "Regional Libraries,"
and yet are forced to do that, month after month after month, with fewer
staff than those two Regionals.
We cannot imagine why branch staff allocations were not systematically and
comprehensively re-evaluated long ago, as the demographic changes responsible
for library use in Fulton County are hardly recent ones. Although efficient
staffing allocations must take into account factors other than circulation
figures, it still makes no sense for branches not to staffed partly
according to how much lending and reshelving they consistently handle,
relative to other facilities in the library system. (We've previously made
some specific suggestions about how
AFPL's facilities should be re-grouped into high-, medium-, and low-circulation
facilities so they could be staffed more efficiently and humanely.)
But at AFPL, branch staffing is one of three fundamental resource-management
activities that seem impervious to radically different workload realities.
(The other two chronically un-managed resources at AFPL are the relative
amounts of money doled out each year to the branches to buy their materials,
and the number of computers allocated for public use at the various libraries.)
Decisions in all three of these scarce-resource areas continue to be based
not on how much work a branch handles relative to other branches, but by
the branch's "facility type." Even when a branch substantially
increases or loses circulation from one year to the next, there is zero
adjustment to the number of staff assigned to that branch.
Why is that? How can seemingly-sacrosanct staffing allocations motivate or
reward branches that increase circulation? Why should branch managers or
branch staff give a damn whether or not they lose circulation from one year
to the next - even if that loss is dramatic?
If anyone has any theories about why circulation differentials shouldn't have
a greater bearing than they do at AFPL on the deployment of the library
system's work force (or, for that matter, its materials budget allocations), we'd love
for you to share those theories with AFPLWATCH's readers. The long-overworked
staff at the busiest branches would be especially interested to learn why
the 1999 staffing allocations go untampered with year after year after year.
Continue reading previously-posted AFPLWATCH stories
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