Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

[Cassandra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html

"A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”

The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house. "

This is so disgusting.

[marmar]

1. The marriage of corporation and state continues apace.....

:argh:

[YOY]

2. Beyond disgusting.

n.t.

[Cleita]

3. Controlling the message it seems.

Republicans at it again. I'm afraid that might happen here in my county too do to lack of funding. Again Republican elected officials are cutting spending except on their pet projects and salaries. They already have cut down on the days the library is open. Some retired teachers and others are volunteering at some of the libraries to keep them open on those days but it's an uphill battle.

[leveymg]

4. NYT Company is an enthusiastic investor in on-line ed and privatization of public services.

Stripping the last of the meat off the public carcass to feed what NYT sees as the coming boom in automated distance learning.

[RKP5637]

5. Fascist USA, Inc. at work. Oligarchies at your service (rather disservice). n/t

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. It's an article of faith --

-- everything private is better than anything public, and so long as one of us, somewhere, is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, none of us, anywhere, is truly free.

Here endeth the reading from the Gospel according to St. Ronald.

[MineralMan]

7. Libraries are the red-headed stepchild in many cities and

counties. Already under-funded, they are often one of the first services local government think of cutting during budget crises. These cuts often get wide support among citizens, since they are used by a very small percentage of the population, for the most part. Library services have also changed drastically in recent years, and we're not too far from the concept of bookless libraries in the very near future.

As an old-timer and a library volunteer with four-figures of hours spent helping in local branches in my old home in California, I've seen these changes occurring. Now that I live in a big city, the changes are even more visible. The branch that serves my neighborhood now operates with a far smaller staff, utilizing self checkout and other technology to reduce staff sizes. The book collection is not kept up-to-date with new releases, and computer services and media services have taken a far larger place in what is offered.

The advent of hand-held readers like the Kindle is also changing how libraries function and that will also increase over time. As much as I love the traditional library environment, I can see that maintaining that traditional environment is going to become more and more expensive and less and less utilized down the road. I'm more than a little sorry to see these changes, but they appear to reflect the changing public usage of libraries.

I don't like the idea of private companies running this public service. I don't like it at all. However, it's pretty clear that changing the administration of our public libraries is bound to happen. Individual cities, strapped for funds, are finding it harder and harder to maintain a complete library system with its own administrative staff and branch staff. Centralizing the administrative aspect of library management seems to be a possible solution. In some areas, libraries in cities are contracted out to county library administrations to accomplish that centralization and the resulting savings. That is often resisted in individual cities, though, due to the lack of local control. This privatization thing is aimed at accomplishing the same thing on an even wider scale, and will certainly meet with lots of resistance from many residents who want their libraries to be locally operated and run.

And yet, another group fails to see the benefits of libraries to the community and rejects the high total cost of a local library system. It's a very, very difficult dilemma. Many in this group do not utilize the library system at all, and they're quickly growing to be a majority in many areas. Once that occurs, libraries will be a high-risk, high-cost service that many won't support.

It may be that in some places, a privately operated library, run under contract by a private library service, may be the only acceptable solution
that can get approved by the local community. I don't know. In large cities like mine, that seems unlikely, but in smaller cities and towns, it may be the only way the library continues to exist. I guess we'll see. It's an ugly alternative. I don't like it. However, I'd like no libraries a lot less.

[zipplewrath]

9. They started out as private enterprises

"He left River City, the library building but he left all the books to her"

It's a line from the musical The Music Man. Libraries often got their start as private institutions serving a public good. Cities came to value them so much that they became public institutions. Franklin started one of the first libraries in the US. It was a completely private affair. I suspect we are headed BACK to that model. I am curious how the digitization of literature is going to affect the availability of books, and more imporantly their content, to the population. My house, with all the kids and two parents with graduate degrees, had ALOT of books. But none the less, my reading would have been severely limited if I didn't have access to the "book mobile" that came once a week.

[MineralMan]

19. I think we're going to have printed books for some time to come,

but that's eventually going to be buggy whip stuff. Right now, handheld digital readers are too pricey for everyone, but that won't always be the case. Imagine school kids not carrying a backpack and having the very latest editions of their textbooks downloaded to their reader, which might also be their note taker and writing device. Not to mention the capabilities for directed self-study and tutorials on almost any subject.

It's not that far off, frankly, and some schools are implementing such stuff right now. The physical library, as we know it, will probably be just about gone in a couple more decades. I probably won't see it, but that's the direction things are going. From the time I was six until sometime in my 50s, I pretty much read a book a day. I had the advantage of a very effective speed reading course at a young age. I was always an avid reader, and can't imagine myself without a book in my hand in my younger days. Today, I'm reading fewer physical books by far, but reading as much as I ever did. I just do it on a screen now.

Internally, I feel bad that this is going to disappear. Intellectually, I can see many advantages to the digital world for today's kids. I'm sure they'll adopt it without any painful transition at all. It'll be more painful for me, I'm sure, but I'm well on the way.

[zipplewrath]

20. The entire face of education probably will

Not necessarily all for the better, but I'm seeing small trends that imply a large change in the methods of education. High school students, for various social reasons, are taking "on line" courses to get their degrees early. Community colleges are running classes, basically remedial, to get children's education up to the college level. Colleges of all sorts are running extensive on-line courses. Home schooling, once predominately the tool of small religious groups, is becoming more common amongst parents discouraged by the offerings of their local public school, and unwilling to spend for a private institution. It is a trend which has various for profit organizations creating software, and various on line presences, to provide material and teaching to these children.

It may ultimately end up as a form of "white flight" that we saw in the '60s, but one can envision a world in which children with parents who highly value their kids education, don't send them to schools, but have them educated through on-line programs managed by individual "teachers" on various subjects. The down side could be that our public schools turn into warehouses for those children that don't have the parents or resources to manage such a program. In an ideal world, the schools would merely become conduits to these kinds of resources, with the teachers being "education managers" for the students that needed that service.

[AldebTX]

8. Our Council Is Looking to LSSI

to come in and run our library in the burbs of Dallas. The new meme for City Councils is to privitize everything, but Police and Fire.

There is a management book going around about some cities in the Atlanta area that are completely private and are saving millions. Most cities that are trying to go this route are finding this is not the case but councils at the urging of local tea baggers are jumping on board anyway.

The results seem to be the increase in profits for outside companies...and of course the jettison of all those lazy government employees (*sarcasm*). Oh...and a decrease in public service...but citizen's were asking too much from their local governments anyway...right? (Once again so there is no confusion..>SARCASM<)

[ensho]

10. No, no, and no

bad idea to go private

[EC]

11. How do they make profits?

Book sales? Gift shops? What?

[Cleita]

12. Like they do with prisons. They take the taxpayer

money, throw back just a little bit of money for administrative costs and keep the rest.

[EC]

13. So they aren't really privately owned

they still are financed by the government? Doesn't this end up costing more in the long run?

[Cleita]

16. Of course it does and it also amounts to

corporate welfare. The private sector does not run things that are in the public venue better than the government does. Sometimes local government and government agencies though get desperate because they are underfunded and these companies come along and say they can run things better on the same amount of money, but what they do is cut salaries and benefits and they don't take care of infrastructure except the bare minimum. However it absolves the government of responsibility. The Republicans like it too because they can get in companies that they like who kowtow to the Republican agenda and that trade on Wall Street. It's all a very incestuous relationship between government and the private sector. It's your tax dollars that are spent because the Republican rich fat cats hardly pay taxes.

[Cassandra]

18. Yes, of course.

A lot of repukes have made fortunes milking the public for goods and services.

[Jkid]

22. By reducing services and wages.

They're going to reduce operating hours, and then reduce wages by replacing experienced librarians with those who are little experienced with libraries basically turning it into a low-wage service job.

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. People want government services, but they don't want to pay the taxes to fund them

[Starry Messenger]

15. Nothing is sacred anymore.

They'll privatize air if they can.

[Cleita]

17. They are already trying to do that with water.

If they can figure out a way to do it with air, I'm sure they will try it.

[uncommon]

21. Libraries are free - why would any private company want to control a

resource people do not pay to use??

It sounds like government paying a corporation to do its dirty work.

[bergie321]

24. The same reason

They want to privatize prisons, schools, and everything else they can get their greedy little hands on.

[MineralMan]

23. I started volunteering at my local library branch decades ago.

I did it in response to cuts in staff that I noticed on my visits there. Now, I only worked one day a week in the library, but I was there all day. Since I have a degree in English and knew the library system there like the back of my hand, I was soon doing everything at that library, from reference questions and front desk clerking to shelving books and helping kids with homework.

There was at least one volunteer worker in that library at all times. We freed up time for the paid staff to do the back room stuff they didn't have time to do with the reduced staffing. I ended up with over 6,000 hours of volunteer time there in the many years I worked there.

Now, some might say that I was helping keep a paid librarian from a job, but that's not the case. There was no way they were going to add another paid staffer there. In fact, as budgetary concerns got worse, they actually cut another staffer during the time I volunteered. As with many things, reality trumped theory. In reality, the library's patrons got better service because I and the other volunteers were in the library. All of the volunteers were people with degrees, and all had no trouble assuming the tasks of a professional librarian in very short order. We didn't do the back office work, ever, and had no role in collection management or other jobs that required a Masters in Library Science. We were serving the public, though, just as the staff had always done.

The problem has gotten worse. At my local branch here in Saint Paul, there is no assistance for patrons any longer. The sparse staff spends almost all its time doing administrative work. There's not even anyone at the counter any longer, and all books are checked out using automated technology. Volunteers do shelving, but that's about it.

Something has to change, and I guarantee it's not going to be increased budgets and larger staffs. It is not happening. Just keeping the branches open is a struggle every year now, as reduced tax income hits home due to unemployment and lower pay, along with the lower property values in the area. Minneapolis has already closed several branches of its system. Hours have been cut in Saint Paul.

It's fine to say that the libraries must stay as they are. It's not going to happen. Something will change. I'd rather have a private company running the libraries if it means keeping those libraries open through cost savings. The proposals don't have anything to do with ownership of buildings or collections. They're only about staffing. It sucks. Lots of things suck. But no libraries at all sucks worst of all.