No one likes the way SPL handles their employees or their branches but management could give a shit so why would management start giving a shit about what their patrons say? They have great access to what people want in their branch employees who work directly with patrons every day and they could care less what those branch employees are saying. The city librarian is worse than the last and management gets more and more disgusting every fucking day. They need to be fired. Clean house. Get them out. They're all worthless fucking hacks.

As a librarian, I wince slightly when I hear you refer to the "librarians" running the meeting. I know to everyone else we're all librarians when you walk in the door, but the people running that setup are no more librarians than you are, Paul. Less, in fact.

What #10 said. Librarians are COMPLETELY shut out of these conversations. They are led by consultants and the library's PR department.

What #14 said. The corporatization of libraries serves nobody except library CEO's, who write up their "successes" in library journals, and take part in library conference panels, and generally promote themselves. Their attitude toward the public is condescending, and toward library staff, open contempt.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Susan Hildreth couldn't be bothered to stay for the entire meeting given her general lack of interest in public input, but still I'm a little surprised. At least she is working to increase middle management and cut hours and services.

She worked under Arnold Schwarzenegger so there is no shame for her she's used to charging money for what used to be free service. Expect more charges to come....

Curious George

The library administration is the worst thing to happen to the library in years. Administrators are generally useless. They're always creating complicated and unnecessary work for themselves, they go out of their way to keep people down, and they change the rules whenever it suits their own agenda, because god forbid someone should find out what a big fat, overpaid fraud they really are. The only thing administrators are good at is protecting their own gravy train, and they will go to the ends of the earth to do so. I have no doubt that the libraries would be much better off if they were run by librarians and others who actually love libraries. Susan Hildreth doesn't give a shit about libraries. SPL is just a means to an end for her.

I think it would be a huge step forward if the public demanded a return to Friends of the Library groups for each local branch. That way, there would be a good deal more local community control over what goes on and staff on the ground at each location might be more empowered to implement all of the wonderful ideas they come up with that would be great at their branch but might not scale well to become city-wide plans. Our neighborhoods are unique. If we want the library to be OUR library, then we need US to be able to take local ownership and help direct things. Friends groups in other library systems are brilliant at that.

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. All who use and work in public libraries live in a glass house. To throw stones at an institution and its servants who are doing their best to provide free information with limited resources so that we may know how to insulate it; the history of its locale; know how to protect it and its inhabitants from destructive forces from without and within; and most important, to know the very best of what we can be and the worst of what we will become when civility is lost, is to shatter all hope for a democratic society. Most of these comments are a sad commentary on how we are devolving as citizens in a democracy because of an imperfect platform that facilitates the behavior, the internet. We are all imperfect beings living in an imperfect world under extraordinary circumstances. How about showing some compassion and courage? Show up, participate no matter how imperfect the platform, and see what happens? Great things happen to those with great expectations.

Seems to me if the library were really interested in the public's input and was going to set this up to be basically checkboxes and post-its, it would have been very easy to put this conversation/survey online. Though it might have been an "annoying online customer service survey," it could at least have reached tens of thousands, rather than hundreds. These really seem like window dressing.