Support Your Local Library

From the Daily Journal of San Mateo, the city/town I am currently blogging from; in a letter to the editor, concerned citizen Joseph Vause had this to say:

City needs to properly manage its funds

Editor,

San Mateo City Librarian Ben Ocon and his staff need to rethink their plan to implement budget reductions in response to expected budget shortfalls. Topping their list of recommendations is to reduce library hours by 28 percent system wide over the next year, and in particular a 46 percent reduction in hours for the Hillsdale and Marina branches. Keeping our library doors open must be a top priority.

Mr. Ocon and his staff (57 full-time positions) don’t seem to agree. It is interesting to note that staff savings is less than 3 percent of the current total operating budget. How can they suggest reducing library hours so drastically without a corresponding reduction in staff expense? What will library staff be doing while library doors are shut?

In a meeting held on a recent Saturday at the library, Mr. Ocon expressed that avoiding staff reductions was of great importance to the city of San Mateo — apparently more important than keeping library doors open.

If this is how the city library manages our tax dollars, I will not vote for any new proposed tax increases to avoid further budget reductions — since they are proving they can’t properly manage the funding they already have.


Well, its a bit more complicated than all that. As a volunteer for the library, I have seen the inner workings of the place. I can personally attest to the back up of unshelved books, the mountain of work needing to be done to make sure lost books and holds are found, the asinine things that get sent through the book drop, and all those wonderful little inanities that bog up the works. Many of these problems are only made worse by the fact that there is so much to do and few enough people to do it. So, in answer to one of Mr. Vause's questions, library staff will be shelving books while the doors are closed, as they always do. That is why Mr. Ocon wants to avoid staff reductions.

Of course, one may always allow for the motivating factor of greed. Many of those 57 full-time positions who don't want to cut staff merely don't want to be the ones who are cut. We may also allow for those insipid employees who simply want to keep doing nothing and getting paid. But I think having a little faith in humanity might be a good thing here. For whatever selfish reasons people may have, they still want their library to work and it cannot work without employees.

One solution may be for concerned people like Mr. Vause to volunteer at the library. Volunteers do much valuable work throughout the day. School aged kids over the age of sixteen can gain community service hours as well as a valuable glimpse at the inner workings and job conditions of their library. As a high schooler interested in library science, I can personally attest to the quality of my hours spent volunteering at the library. Adults can facilitate the life of their library. If they want to keep it open, they can help run it. Older adults, especially those of retirement age, are invaluable to the library. They are part of the backbone that keeps libraries working. One cannot praise them enough for their service, not only to the library itself, but to humanity in general.

Libraries are a great part of cultured life in any society. The availability of books to the masses is key to education, lifestyle, and culture. Books are what hold our history, our past, much of our present and nearly all of future. Furthermore, libraries offer literacy programs that help children and adults. These are so important that it cannot be overstated. Reducing the number of staff in a library will only hamper these public services. Reducing hours will ensure that they do not suffer as much and that the libraries will still be salvageable machines after this budget crisis has ended. In fact, the case can be made that reducing hours and not staff will be a good thing in the long run. Staff will be able to get a lot of behind the scenes work done. Maybe, just perhaps, the back up of unshelved books can be eliminated.

While Mr. Vause's concern is well-meaning and well-voiced, the fact that perhaps not very many people are as concerned as he is about the issue is worth looking at. From the same Daily Journal: "Less than 10 people visited the San Mateo Main Library Saturday morning to hear exactly how budget cuts will reduce library assistants, hours and some services." This shows no great interest and it certainly doesn't indicate any great outcry over the issue.

But what can be done about it? Certainly not very much if all we’re doing is complaining. One letter to the editor and one itty-bitty blog post aren’t enough to affect a radical change in this arena. Maybe Mr. Vause communication talents would be better used if he wrote to his government representative instead of whining to the Daily Journal. As for me, well, I have a lot of shelving to do.