Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

[groovedaddy]

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — 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 a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?th&emc=th

[qb]

1. More borrower fees are just around the corner.

Privatizing libraries is foolish.

[grasswire]

2. ugh ugh ugh

Can't they just raise the property taxes a tiny bit? Or add a small city tax?

This is miserable and affects the poor disproportionately.

[TygrBright]

3. A quote from the article:

>>“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.” <<

Well a hearty FUCK YOU to you, Mr. Pezzanite, and the equine quadruped that conveyed you here.

See here for elaboration: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=561844&mesg_id=561844

It's assholes like you that make a non-violence-professing Quaker like me look sideways with longing at the tumbril heading to the guillotine in 1790.

angrily,
Bright

[LiberalFighter]

5. Librarians go to work and don't do anything?

Who the hell is the scumbag making those claims?

[kenfrequed]

6. Too true...

Don't worry, the hard working rat-fuck managers and the Owners of this private little corporation won't work too hard to draw a profit. They will gut the staff, pocket the profit, and then, every year they will gradually cut services and demand more money. Whichever civil servants or elected officials that suggested or pushed for this private contract need to be scrutinized with a microscope. I garauntee corruption will be found.

[XanaDUer]

13. Thank you Tygre...

Librarians are some of the worst-paid white collar people around.

[Historic NY]

4. 4 million? Not a lot of money...just what are they providing? A computer.

My local one building library costs the district 4 million and its serves around 63k population.

[Peregrine Took]

7. WIth all gov employees under scrutiny now some public libraries do need to

vastly improve their customer relations, especially at the front desk/reception areas - that's what most of the public sees.

If there's a line there move it along even if "Sally" is only supposed to be shelving books this afternoon and not working the desk. Get the librarian's down there to help - make the public go away happy - not writing Yelp criticisms as to how they hate the staff.

At my friend's suburban library the public is king and there is little that any employee there won't do for them. While in the big city public libraries often the staff has a FU attitude.

[Recursion]

9. The meme of public sector employees viewing their job as an entitlement is overplayed

Though it would help a lot if there weren't actually employees like that, which there are. And they are the ones that get noticed.

[katty]

8. this is another sad comment on our education/culture starved

24/7 War and Wall St economy.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

10. Having total control of the major news sources, they go after the libraries

Who do they hire? True believers. (Think of a library run by fundamentalists and you get the idea.) What are the first books to be pulled from the shelves? Anything that doesn't conform with neo-conservatism orthodoxy. Which books are the shelves filled with? Those written by Colter and Beck and Gingrich and every other conservative nutcase. Which magazines will there be in the reading section? Well, you can be sure the subscriptions to any scientific periodical will be cancelled.

Lending fee = poll tax. 'Nuff said.

And this isn't the only the only public service at risk these days. A number of communities are turning their water systems over to private corporations to run.

One of the many ironies of Glenn Beck is how proud he is that he didn't learn what he "knows" in (socialist) public schools. "I learned it for free at the library!"

[Politicub]

11. Reading this in the NYT today made me angry

but also depressed because this is a train that we can seemingly do nothing to stop.

I love libraries, and it's sad to see the Wal-Martization of this institution.

[XanaDUer]

14. I'm happy to see most of the comments are disgusted about

this and say that teachers, librarians, et al are not overpaid - CEOs are overpaid.

[XanaDUer]

12. This special librarian, former public librarian

if she could go back and re-do the last 20 years, would NOT be a librarian. You're expected to know way too much for too little.

Man, this fucker really needs to get out and see all the work underpaid public librarians do - they work their butts off, as do they even less-paid paras, for low, low salaries and lot of guff from the public.

What a joke.

[oceanman]

15. Privately owned libraries

Oh, this will end well - let's ditch this whole history/politics section because it doesn't 'conform' to our corporate identity. Hey, it worked for Hollywood.

[DonCoquixote]

16. Once Libraries go

You can rest assured American democracy is dead, as you will have to pay to read. And how much you want to bet the libraries will be whiter than milk?

[XanaDUer]

17. Kick

nt