Election Section

COMMENTARY: Library User Blames Director for Problems By ROSEMARY VIMONT

Tuesday April 26, 2005

As a Berkeley homeowner for over 30 years and a life-long Berkeley Public Library user, I have been following the recent controversies surrounding the library and its director very closely. I’ve also been doing some thorough investigation in the matter. 

Never in all my years have I witnessed such a debacle of community trust as is happening to our most cherished institution, the Public Library. From what I can assess, all blame must be brought to the feet of the director, Jackie Griffin. Furthermore, it is beyond me, considering the overwhelming PR disaster which the library faces, why the library’s board of trustees has not asked for Ms. Griffin’s resignation. 

Here’s what we know of Ms. Griffin’s most egregious acts: 

• Failed to actively campaign and persuade the voters to accept a library tax that would restore staff and operating hours. 

• Managed to anger and alienate the majority of her employees. 

• Allowed staff’s morale to “sink to an all-time low,” as one beleaguered employee was quoted. 

• Has accepted some 20+ resignations or early retirements in the past three years. 

• When faced with a budget crisis, her immediate proposal was to lay off 14 of the lowest paid and least benefited positions and where most of the library’s youth and diversity are found. 

• At the same time, the director is retaining a $150,000-a-year salaried employee whose contract, (to oversee the move into the newly remodeled Central Building) expired a couple of years ago. 

• The director pushed through a $650,000 radio frequency identification (RFID) self-checkout technology with very little if any public awareness or input. 

• Dismissed and rejected employees’ budget saving suggestions as alternatives to layoffs. 

• Has created an atmosphere of fear among the employees who may wish to speak out, while she is free to propagandize and have the last word in television and newspaper reports. 

• Has contradicted herself several times with budget figures and presented conflicting accounts before the library’s board of trustees. 

• Despite workers efforts to reduce repetitive stress injuries to zero in 2004, Ms. Griffin continues to use workers comp and repetitive stress injury dollars to justify the purchase of RFID. 

• Has encouraged an aggressive book weeding with the dumping of some 20,000-plus volumes, while the shelves remain less than half full. 

• Has made it clear that she wants more “popular materials” (ala Barnes & Noble) and that academic and/or esoteric titles can be gotten at the university libraries. Ms. Griffin seems indifferent to the intellectual capacity of the community, and to how difficult it is to get access to UC Berkeley’s book collection. 

• Has allowed constant computer malfunctions since mid-February, and at one stretch tens of thousands of checkout transactions were lost. 

• Has insisted on pushing through her layoff and reorganization plan (with many changes in job descriptions) without going through the process of Meet and Confer with the local union. 

• She finally backed off the layoff plan when she magically found $300,000, and then announces it to the public as if she performed a benevolent miracle. 

• Has allowed the library users’ morale to sink to all all-time low as well. In talking to dozens of library users, it’s evident that there is a frustration with too much unreliable technology (particularly voiced among seniors) in what should be the simple steps to searching, reserving and renewing books. 

• Closed the Central Library on Sundays without polling the public as to which day would be the best to close, leaving many users angry, particularly families and the elderly. 

• Finally, Ms. Griffin ignores the public by not responding to letters and phone calls as has been expressed in this paper and at Library Board of Trustees meetings. 

I call upon every book-loving person in this town to attend the next Library Trustees meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center Wed. April 27th at 6:45 p.m. (to put your name in for a chance to speak) and to demand the resignation of Jackie Griffin and call the Trustees to account for their complicity in the erosion of service and welfare of the library. It is OUR library. It should reflect OUR needs and values. And its director should conduct operations in a fair and transparent manner. 

 

Rosemary Vimont is a Berkeley resident. ª