Visual Art Jul 25, 2012 at 4:00 am

Loose Lips

Arts Gossip

Tess of the d’Urbervilles
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Comments

1
Even more important than librarians is a library that is actually open. Hours have been reduced over the years and no matter how much technology, new books, librarians, or fancy buildings you fund it's not very useful if you can't actually get into the damn library.
Frederick Halifax on July 25, 2012 at 6:54 PM Report this
2
I seem to remember that people were not happy with Susan Hildreth (former California State Librarian, current director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in DC) during her tenure in Seattle. Have things gotten better or worse under Mr. Turner? What would represent an improvement in the way SPL's leadership is chosen?
rob! on July 27, 2012 at 2:01 PM Report this
3
Board members are professional schmoozers; their experience & talent is in removing money from rich asswipes. So the Board President's stance is hardly surprising: rich asswipes don't care about trivial things like improving the lives of people, they're interested in "world-class cities" and other inane mind-candy.

Turner, the city librarian, has no such excuse. What a fucking idiot.
Some Old Nobodaddy Logged In on July 27, 2012 at 2:32 PM Report this
4
Twentyfirst century library administrators pride themselves on having no actual experience of working in a library. They're all about "business", which usually means having neither respect nor regard for employees. This is business as usual.
shambhaladawa on July 27, 2012 at 3:55 PM Report this
5
It's obvious how much value librarians are valued since every time the library has its "financial" closings such as the one that's going to happen for a week from August 27 to September 4 library staff are not paid during this hiatus. I guess they expect the staff will just take a cruise or fly to Paris for the week.
Weekilter on July 27, 2012 at 5:02 PM Report this
6
Agreed, Frederick! & Librarians = Open Hours.

You can't have a library open without public service staff there to keep it running, & the more that staff are able to actually do, the more value you get from those open hours for all the MANY different needs that people bring to their libraries.

Ask any child (or adult) learning to read or student struggling with homework, jobless person looking for employment or any of the thousands upon thousands of people who turn to their public library to get some clarity and non-partisan, non-commercial expertise and guidance amidst the ever increasing blur of suspect informational noise, and they'll tell you: there's not that much value in a 'sort of' library.
on July 28, 2012 at 1:31 PM Report this
7
@5 You entirely miss the point of the library closings. Staff are asked to forego a week of salary in order to avoid layoffs--not a bad compromise. Both the City and King County have used staff furloughs for the same reason. As a City employee at the time, I preferred to take a bit of unpaid leave in lieu of losing my job completely.
crone on July 28, 2012 at 3:25 PM Report this
8
Or, you know, maybe the Librarian and the Board and the Prop 1 authors figured out that voters will vote YES more often for infrastructure and the perception of efficiency through technology than they will for salaries and staff and what are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as cushy public-sector jobs in a shitty economy.

But petulant indignation's always effective and fun to read to boot!
capicola on July 28, 2012 at 11:02 PM Report this

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