Local Library Woes

Last November, the Library where I have volunteered for two years hired a new branch librarian, hopefully to reduce the work related stress on the County Librarian who'd been doing both jobs. The new librarian is black, lesbian, and a declined to give me the internship I'd earned with 750 hours of volunteering there. She said she was too busy. It turns out she was right. She's cut the cut the budget, cut hours and staff, and is probably going to reduce open hours and days for the library branches, if not close some of them. She's also removed 20% of the library's books, admittedly old books, but some were parts of popular series. Others were merely purchased and hadn't been borrowed in five years. A library is a collection of books, kept in order by staff. That's what a library is.

One of the staffers quit within a week of the new librarian taking over. A man was hired to replace her, the first that had worked in the branch in 10 years. The library mostly hires women. Most of the women are married, but there is such a thing as a Beard, a spouse to hide your proclivities. That goes for Lesbians just like Gays. The man hired was fired a week or two ago after increasing frustration caused him to make a mistake at work. Summary termination is not standard in county operations. Everybody gets a hearing and he didn't. This is another sign of egomania in the new librarian, and supporting evidence for Lesbian. Only lesbians try that kind of hulk-shit. Its unprofessional.

Two other staff have also quit. One was the Children's Librarian. She tried, really tried, but she's scared of men, accused me of hitting on her when I was being friendly and helping with her books so I avoided her and her books piled up. I'm one of TWO volunteers that comes in on Saturday, a popular day for all the parents too busy to come in during the week. The Children's librarian is an MLIS, and thus at least $30/hr, probably more. Letting her go and then not replacing her means other librarians on staff will have to do her job. I checked the website and the county has not advertised replacements for any of the positions lost. They've had weeks. The jobs should have been posted. Nada. That means these are staff cuts.

The final employee who left came back the following week and signed up as a volunteer, which she used to do prior to being paid as a library assistant. I have worked with her in that year and she's very nice. It really says something when someone would rather work for free and completely avoid the hostile manager bitch, now forced to be polite to the 80 regular volunteers she'd lose her job if she offends. This must be hell for black lesbians. They're used to throwing their weight around and playing the race card. But Blacks number in the teens, total population, in this county. I think more have moved here so they might be 100 people now, but still they're 1%, and insisting the white man is keeping them down is not a safe card to play.

The lady who quit and came back is going to listen to audiobooks, like I do, and my boss has started too. It really does make things enjoyable when working rote dull jobs. I don't think this lesbian boss is going to last long. The staff was already cut to the bone. Closing hours in the library will piss off the public, who will complain to the supervisors, who obviously hired this harridan despite poor personal skills, and I've already seen three librarians come and go.

Some of what she's doing seems to work.
She works the front desk with the staff.
She is personally doing the weeding and shelf moving project rather than assigning it. That's good.
Removing help staff from the computer center is a good idea. I'd cut the time they're allowed to use them, or charge money for access is totally justified since they can't hang onto a staffer in that job. Its three jobs, is why. Manning the help desk is an IT job, not a library job. Teaching technology classes is a teaching job, which should have a teachers pay and apply through the teacher's union or send them to the community center classes at the college in Grass Valley. Duh! The library mission is not to teach classes. It is not in the Mission Statement. Neither is housing the homeless. There's a community center for that.

As for the other branches, that's more of the county librarian's job to figure out. If it were me, I'd close down the Grass Valley library's hours to just 2:30-5:00 PM after the local school closes for the day, so the drunks don't wander in, and post a guard with a taser and pepper spray to keep them out. Short of closing the bar across the street that's the best you can do. The local police are lazy and indifferent to preventing crime. Death threats don't get them to show up for two hours (true!) and property crime bores them, according to the peace officer I spoke to when a panicked neighbor dropped a tree on my house, missing me by 25 feet but the neighbor by 4 inches. If it had wrecked the garage his house would have burned down because the trunk was in line for the gas main and the electric junction box: fuel and spark and no shutoff valve. I won't call them Law Enforcement because he didn't care about laws, only peace which is entirely different. That's a problem. This is a critical community failure.

The better and cheaper alternative to paying a cop to keep out the drunks and hobos is to move the library itself. The catholic church might be a better choice, or at the local Junior High, and share with that school library. The existing library is very small and in a bad location with no real parking, at the end of the main street. It doesn't get enough legitimate non-drug visitors to justify existing. At this point its a homeless shelter for drug addicts and drunks. I would rather leave than risk injury working there.

Grass Valley could put a library branch in the major shopping center near the intersection of 20 and 49. That's better than downtown. Big parking lot too. And available retail space. If one of those banks closes that's a good location since banks have good A/C and the nooks and crannies work well for bookshelves. And the drive thru can be used for the overnight book drop. I doubt this will happen, unless someone in charge can get funding or is willing to make the more aggressive changes like abandoning the downtown library location to become a museum like it ought to be.

The Penn Valley branch is apparently a single room shop in a strip mall next to a supermarket outside a housing development called Lake Wildwood. It's tiny and everybody involved hates the place. They want to move it into the actual Town of Penn Valley, which is not incorporated so has no funding and no building. Its population is also small and spread out, with half its population being at Lake Wildwood and the other half in the various boonies and ranches in the area. A big parking lot is important because there's no "walk-ins". Wildwood might benefit from a kiosk in their own community center, and another kiosk in the business district in Penn Valley rather than its current location. I suspect they'll just close it entirely and the locals will all vote against further library funding since there won't be one anymore. Climbing 2000 feet of twisty roads to borrow and return books at the county library in Nevada City, 25 miles away, is probably irritating. Overdue fees will cause them to stop using the library entirely and vote against any funding requests. This is a failure.

You can't fix all the things wrong with this community. You can't fix the funding or the ignorance or the junkies and hobos who think the library is a great place to surf porn or use the bathroom to bathe in. It isn't nice. Its creepy. Its terrible for young mothers with young children trying to budget some kind of tolerable childhood for their kids in a community that keeps young families at the poverty line because most of the population thinks a Shiny New Nickel is enough wages, often literally. Dementia is a terrible thing. We're just a bit off of White Slavery here, and the Youth flee as fast as they can, right after graduating high school. The only ones who stay are the newest victims of the drug culture, and they DO practice white slavery and murder. The local hippies are either killers or victims or both, sometimes in short order. Its ugly and I'm close to fed up with this town and its horrible people.