Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

[t0dd]

Source: NYT

A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.

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 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.

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?_r=1&hp

[AldebTX]

1. They Are Due To Take Over Our Library

Before the end of the year. They cut benefits. Keep most of the current staff and have local
Tea party support because they are private and of course more efficient.

The city supplies the materials and the building and the budget.

[southmost]

26. NOT efficient at all

costs are hidden and service becomes crap, until the company files bankruptcy, then the tax payer foots the bill,

the private sector has only demonstrated smoke and mirror finance schemes behind a veil of micromanagement b.s. that offers no value

[SugarShack]

30. They tried to do this in Florida, but were fought off by communities. This is not new.

The locals need to fight this....Florida did!

[GoldenOldie]

51. Librarians have never, ever worked for the security of the profession......

nor the pay, but only for the love of the written word.

We the People, are the US Government and as such, we should be the only ones who choose how to spend our money, not the for profit Corporations.

All of our sacred democratic institutions have and are being slowly and systematically being taken over by the Corporates simply for their own profit and power....ie., family farms bought out by Corporates and then outsourced to South America, technical industries and support to India/Asia, financial to India, medical technology to India. There is now a movement to outsource local government jobs to other countries. The big thing now is to privatize Public Education. By allowing all these small charter schools to slowly take over our democratic Public Education, with little or no response from We the People, it will allow For Profit Corporates to simply buy them up and take over.....if you think education is costly now, what do you think it will cost under a For Profit? No one will be able to educate their children and their will be no free Public Libraries to allow you or them to educate themselves. An un-educated population is easily controlled for those who want the power, we only have to look at the dictators, AlQuida (sp), the Taliban, etc., and yes even our very own citizens who are controlled by Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Bros., etc.

[AldebTX]

2. They Are Due To Take Over Our Library

Before the end of the year. They cut benefits. Keep most of the current staff and have local
Tea party support because they are private and of course more efficient.

The city supplies the materials and the building and the budget.

[Ineeda]

4. And of course, will select "appropriate" reading material, I predict. n/t

[cliffordu]

6. Absofucking lootely.

[SoapBox]

3. Wow...I've never heard of this...I would like to know more on the financial details...

like what they pay the employees and benefits (if any).

What is their corporate profit margin...who are the directors and officers...and HOW much are they getting paid
at the expense of the employees AND tax payers.

Shouldn't we, the tax payers (it's our money!) get to make these decisions instead of
some city hall looter?

[givemebackmycountry]

14. Here is ALL you need to know about the the financial details...

"We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Every day we get a little bit closer to the edge...

They want it ALL and they are going to get it.

[Moostache]

27. I am volunteering to be their "private" enforcer of outlawing abortions.

Of course, my job performance will be somewhere between Enron-esque and Lehman Brothers-like, and access to legal and safe abortions will actually increase in accordance with the amount of money I draw as a salary instead of decrease; but hey, that's the "free" market baby!

It will however give me ample opportunity to play Robin Hood - stealing money from the fundie right to fund abortion providers, at the same time I am supposed to be leading the charge to prevent them. I figure for guidance I will just use a few gay preachers and Republicans congress critters, ones with wide-stances and male prostitute luggage assistants, for instruction on how to be a completely duplicitous piece of shit...

I promise not to enrich myself too much, but you know, once I start tasting some of those sweet, sweet Jeebus-kissed dollars I just may find myself as addicted as Jimmy Swaggert, so please forgive me in advance for my sins.:sarcasm:

[iamthebandfanman]

5. scary. n/t

[Lucky Luciano]

7. looks like a slipper slope to hell. nt

[SugarShack]

9. Agree, our source for knowlege is about to become very controlled

[Scuba]

57. Between this and controlling the internet...

...in another generation or two the citizenry will be completely ignorant.

[billlll]

8. DOWNWARD pressure on ALL wages

Every private boss supports politicians who want dollar-a-day wages for ALL

[Downwinder]

10. What ever happened to the little old ladies in the Library Society? n/t

[glitch]

20. They objected to the Patriot Act intrusions on privacy, so they had to go. nt

[ibegurpard]

11. why? it's good enough for our public schools according to this administration

[Citizen Worker]

12. This doesn't come as a surprise, just sooner than I expected. Under the "free" trade agreements

there cannot be ANY publicly owned entities. Think about that for five minutes or so and compose a list. Think about what we call the commons and what makes up the commons because these "free" trade agreements mandate that ALL publicly owned and operated entities be sold off. Under the current economic conditions it just makes it a little easier because the takeover can be shielded by the dire economic conditions.

[harun]

42. I've been worried about this for some time. Happening sooner than

I expected as well. There are A LOT of powerful companies and political organizations with an interest in seeing public libraries go away or at least put under their control.

Some off the top of my head:
GOP
Barnes and Noble
Amazon.com
Borders
Simon & Schuster (CBS)
Random House
Penquin
Harper Collins
News Corp
All Defense Contractors
etc.

[jimmil]

13. I find this unbelievable...

Libraries were for information. One could go there to get information from all sides if one wanted. Now, what are we going to get? My gawd, what are we doing? Information filtered through what we are allowed to read. Just another sign that we are on the slippery slope to destroying ourselves.

[Pholus]

15. I, for one, welcome our new overlords and betters.

Gad. I just threw up a little bit on that one. The insanity continues and is amazing. How soon till this company partners with amazon?

[PSPS]

16. More selling off of the country

The way these schemes work, whether it's a public institution like a library or a private company like GE is this:

1. Obtain an entity with an existing cash flow (in this case, taxpayer funds.)
2. Slash the payroll cost through union busting or outsourcing or "consolidation" (patron calls go to India.)
3. Pay the amount saved (taken from workers' wallets) to the CEO who skims a bit off the top as a bribe ("campaign contribution") to the politicians to protect the racket.

What gets me is how people can think this saves money. All it really does is add a profit on top of already-existing expenses. The only way this could ever save money would be to reduce expenses which, of course, can only come out of workers' pay or wholesale dismissal of workers.

[Odin2005]

17. This is evil, immoral, and disgusting.

More bashing of public servants. Just fucking EVIL.

[depakid]

18. Another mark of a nation in decline...

[NoodleyAppendage]

19. Surprise, Surprise. Frank A. Pezzanite is a Repuke. See here:

http://www.city-data.com/elec2/02/elec-GERMANTOWN-MD-02.html

Typical.

J

[G_j]

29. of course

[RainDog]

21. I have a masters in library science

and Mr. Pezzanite is a fucking liar. I doubt the asshole even knows what librarians actually do.

[Downwinder]

23. Not a reqirement. He is a CEO.

[RainDog]

24. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm about ready to take it to the streets

I'm so fucking sick of this shit.

[activa8tr]

44. I'm sure he doesn't, and he won't have any MLS people... after he's

through. Why would one need a person with a Master's degree to check books in and out and re-stack them on the shelves, high school drop-outs can do that at minimum wage. (Sarcasm..from me here!)

That man is the Glenn Beck of libraries. Snake oil salesman is all he is.

SERIOUSLY
I bet that the company's plan is the eliminate all but one or two MLS level librarians in their entire company.
They will staff libraries with friendly support-staff type people, offer little or no reference librarian services, (replaced with "the Google") etc.

I can smell a corporate wholesale cheapening when I read about one.

I'd really love to see what staff in these corporate run libraries make, what their benefits are.

[Blue_Tires]

55. why even pay high school dropouts??

hell, get some bookworms (since they love it so much) to just volunteer to run the library for free!

Or better yet, why not let prison inmates do the work? They already do such a good job mowing the highway medians!

:sarcasm:

[RainDog]

56. Library Assistants do those jobs, not librarians

at least at the places I know.

Librarians manage budgets, develop collections for communities, do outreach to groups that need assistance, provide information technology training, create bibliographies to help teachers and researchers, do research into subjects and provide this research to others in various professions, create and implement user surveys to better provide for their service populations, make administrative decisions regarding deaccessioning of various collections and titles, provide archival information to make access possible to information held in storage, create digital repositories for information, do research into information technology and write papers to communicate with others in the profession about the best ways to respond to various topics that must be addressed... those are a few of the activities I've done. There are many other things that librarians do - there are a variety of librarians -some work in law offices and are also required to have a law degree. I was required to have reading knowledge of at least one other language, tho two or three was better. Many library positions require the librarians to also obtain a PhD in a subject. Other librarians create standard records for documents so that they are accessible around the world...

when I was a student I shelved books for minimum wage.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

49. I was going to start on my applications to grad school to get an MLS

In the next couple of weeks.

I'm a little concerned now; I've seen several articles in the past year or two about libraries being taken over by private interests or simply closed. I'm wondering now if it's even worth it... One less career option in the ole USA...

[madrchsod]

22. welcome to america...

home of the beaten and downtrodden....

[southmost]

25. what a f*cking giveaway

so now these private companies will offer inferior service (at the cost of public investment) so one person can skim a huge profile for a supposed savings (which will likely show up as a bankruptcy in the future for which the taxpayer would have to bail $$$$ money $$$) what a freaking mess, haven't we learned anything, private section IS NOT more efficient, the costs become hidden till bankruptcy...

[Ramulux]

28. This is not good

You put this together with the move to privatize schools, and to privatize social security and medicare, and it leaves you with only one conclusion - we are fucked. The legacy of FDR and his vision for America is being absolutely shit on, and sadly enough it is being done in certain cases with the approval of the party which he used to belong to. I'm genuinely scared for the future of this country because not only are liberal positions not being taken into consideration or being followed but they are being left out of the debate completely.

I like Obama and I appreciate some of the things he has done but he has flat out adopted the conservative position on certain issues and because people see him as a liberal no one with any beliefs to the left of Obama is even taken into consideration. For example, Obama and Arne Duncan support charter schools and the whole race to the top program which are basically conservative initiatives meant to reduce the federal governments role in education. Now because Obama is a "liberal" and he agrees with these policies, the media just assumes that support for these programs is a liberal position and no one with an opposing view from the left is paid any attention.

I am so fucking worried about this massive nationwide bipartisan trend towards privatization of all the things we used to expect to get for free for paying taxes.

[midsummer]

31. I live in Santa Clarita and trust me,

all they'll have is bibles on the library shelves.

And English only.

[Jkid]

43. You've got to be kidding me.

[catzies]

32. Santa Clarita is my backyard. I never even heard of this issue or this company

My first impression is that this is to public libraries what charter schools are to public schools.

Oh my heavens to betsy and good gracious. :wow:

[Daphne08]

33. Benjamin Franklin must be rolling over in his grave. n/t

[Kablooie]

34. Privatize the libraries! Yeah! And charge people up the kazoo to use it!

Well, at least we've all got the internet now.

Except for the poorer population that has to go to the libraries to use it.
And will soon be excluded because they won't be able to afford thel ibrary fees.

Drown that government in that bathtub! Yeah!
They are going to be successful in the long run, mark my words.

[snot]

35. Tragic.

[robcon]

36. Great idea.

I think more government services should be privatized.

[bluestateguy]

37. I wonder if that's the consequence of one time budget fixes

There's a budget hole, so you sell off the libraries to private companies, which is great for balancing the budget this one year, but now you have privately owned libraries for the duration.

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

38. what a prick

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Yeah work for slave wages. I work in a library in Florida and jobs have been cut which means we all have to do even more. How arrogant to imply that librarians don't work. I would like to see this asshole deal with some of the irate patrons that libraries have to put up with.

It so condescending, I feel that there is a little sexism involved as the majority of library workers are female. The attitude that unions are the problem and workers don't deserve pensions. Where is karma when you need it?

[Blue_Tires]

39. the sad part is it's not like the library system eats up a large chunk

of the municipal budget, either...


but profit trumps everything, i guess...

[activa8tr]

45. GREAT POINT!!!!!!!!!!!!

I never thought about it that way. My local budget for the town is about 99.4% NON library expenditures.

[fasttense]

40. They'll find a way to charge each patron of the libraries they take over.

They will become nothing more than book stores.

Just watch and wait. But if citizens actually opposed this then....

[Downwinder]

41. Around here, there are no book stores left. Not even for used books. n/t

[activa8tr]

46. First they will take the libraries, then all the good books will

disappear. Book selection will NOT include anti-corporate non-fiction, or books critical of capitalism, or books critical of Republicans.

You begin to get the picture!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

47. OK --

this is one of the scariest stories I have ever heard. The corporatization of the Community's free information. :scared: :cry:

I do not like the "New World" we are entering.

I think Mr. Pezzanite needs to hear from us about what we think about his belief that America's libraries are for corporate pillaging.



US Corporate Headquarters
Library Systems & Services, LLC
12850 Middlebrook Road
Suite 400
Germantown, MD 20874-5244

301.540.5100   phone
800.638.8725   toll-free
301.540.5522   fax

[e-mail]       general information
[e-mail]   sales & marketing
[e-mail]          public and media relations
[e-mail]          human resources

[Betty]

48. let's privatize the police and fire depts. too

I'm sure they can find people to do that for a lot less, too. We already have hired private contractors in Iraq to do the jobs of the soldiers, why not here at home too? Although I seem to remember the contractors in IRaq got paid a LOT MORE than the actual soldiers.

[newspeak]

52. yeah, the robber barons use to use those private contractors all of the time

like Pinkertons---but hey, now days, a corporation like Blackwater can hire thugs all over the world to maintain the plebes for their corporate masters. I'd say what is happening is our government, which is "we the people", it is our money that's going to be given to for-profit, anti-labor, shitty service corporations not to service us but make another buck while giving shitty service and being basically unanswerable to no one. Because just like some of those contractors in Iraq where money was unaccounted, where slave labor at gun point, where contaminated water was served to our soldiers, and substandard buildings were built---it's just more funneling of our money into the corporate trough. And, the completely ignorant will be shouting "yeah, free enterprise, isn't it wonderful." When do we start looking like the movie Brazil, where the corporation is the all to end all?

[sofa king]

50. Anyone out there have an EASY library job?

"You come to us, you're going to have to work." What kind of horse poo is that? What public library has had the luxury of carrying a no-load for the past 35 years?

I know that in my town, the public library is as busy as it has ever been, at the exact same time that the city has slapped them with a hiring freeze. They're relying on volunteers for re-shelving. Every public library worker I see is busting ass and, frankly, looking stressed and overworked.

[newspeak]

53. I use to volunteer at my public library in California

it was in a small town. If I was doing research on any subject, I could get books even from the SF library. This is just plain criminal--I suppose these corporate run libraries will be directing us to what we can or cannot read, and I'm sure they'd be glad to give any and all information to not only the government but any of their corporate friends.

[Blue_Tires]

54. that line stuck out to me as well...

makes me wonder if that jaggoff has done one honest day of work in his life...