JPL wins two Folio Weekly awards

Each year, Folio Weekly: Northeast Florida's News & Opinion Magazine, runs its Best of JAX Readers Poll.

We've just learned that Jacksonville Public Library won two Best of JAX 2013 awards:

• Best Use of Public Money: Public Libraries
• Best Library Branch: Downtown Main Library

More than 4.5 million customers checked out books, DVDs and other materials more than 8.4 million times last year from the Jacksonville Public Library System, making it one of the most popular city services. Readers in Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties also treasure their libraries, considering them a cultural and educational resource. 

“Families, job seekers, entrepreneurs and all those who love to learn value their public library,” said Library Director Barbara Gubbin. “We are so pleased that Folio Weekly readers believe libraries are a good investment.”

Mayor Alvin Brown proposed closing six branches and there were fears the Main Library would close on Saturday, but the final city budget spared them all. At more than 300,000 square feet, the Main Library is the largest public library building in the state. 

With more than 568,315 items and more than 863,160 visitors coming through its doors last year, the Main Library is a popular community hub, an escape in the midst of a bustling Downtown. — RW

Yay!

Countering ideology with information

In several recent posts (April 7, April 12, May 5, May 5 and June 2) I have written about the funding crisis faced by public libraries in Jacksonville, in the state of Florida, and across the country.

For my colleagues, and even more so for those citizens who don't have the inside story, the fragmentary, headline-oriented reportage of the story tends to stir up angers and fears without giving a complete picture. We are left with little sense that we can respond constructively, either to the real fiscal challenges, or to the reigning ideological antipathy toward funding public services which stands in the way of real solutions.

It is helpful to recognize, as Kim Stanley Robinson once paraphrased Louis Althusser, that

Ideology is an imaginary relationship to a real situation.

Last year, the Administration and Board of Trustees of Jacksonville Public Library (JPL) decided to counter ideology with real information. They hired Godfrey’s Associates, Inc., to do an extensive Capacity Plan investigation, analysis and report.

The first site visits were in July of 2010. In November, the consultants released their analysis of JPL's Information Technology Capacity. In February, they released an initial presentation of their findings. The final report, Past, Present, Future: A Library for the Future of Jacksonville, was released in May.

In their Introduction, the consulting team keyed in on this sentence from our RFP:

JPL continues to provide current level services and maintain hours at all twenty-one locations with fewer staff than five years ago, and in the face of reductions to overall funding including facilities and IT.

To this they added their own commentary on the role of public libraries:

Public library services have traditionally been provided without fees or user charges, because of the accepted notion that such services benefit the community more than they benefit the individual user. In other words, public library services are viewed as a public good, meaning the services are not always but “usually provided by government for consumption by the general public.” Public goods have two defining aspects:

• Public goods possess a “non-rival consumption” aspect, i.e., the availability of the good to all is not reduced by any one person’s consumption of the good


• Public goods have a “non-excludability” aspect in that there is no way to effectively restrict the benefits of public goods to those who directly pay for them.

The Report lists the following as Five Major Issues Facing Jacksonville Public Library:

• Information Technology: JPL does not have it's own dedicated IT staff. All IT needs are managed externally by the City. "Without a sound [internal] IT structure that is reliable, cost-effective, and kept current, there is little reason to believe that the JPL will be able to deliver future services in an expanding, increasingly diverse, and information hungry community."


• Staffing: All but 12 library positions are civil service rather than appointed, which means that JPL can only recruit for those 12 positions. "This hamstrings the Library from being in a position to fill middle and upper management positions with the most qualified applicants."


• Earned Income: "Aside from the Main Library Conference Center, there is no incentive for the JPL to become enterprising, because all monies received go directly to the City. The JPL should have more than one enterprise account, and should retain all of the income it earns via fines on overdue books, and other possible sources."


• Capital Budget: "The JPL has zero dollars for capital expenditures. All capital budgets are the responsibility of another City department. This situation leads to unnecessary delays in making needed changes."


• Building Mainenance: Centralized maintenance is not working for the JPL, in our opinion. Buildings are not adequately maintained. The Main Library is showing more than five years worth of wear and tear. The Library should have it own maintenance staff and budget."

The Report concludes with extensive documentation in support of Recommendations, Implementation and Sustainable Funding, .

We are now waiting for the Library Board to decide which portions of the recommendations it will pass along to the City's newly elected Mayor and City Council.

There are numerous controversial recommendations—problematic either for various staff or for the public or both.

Nonetheless, there is empowerment in having a thorough, competently done analysis of JPL's present resources, of the public's desires, and of "best practice" comparisons with other comparable multi-branch library systems.

The Library can now go to the public with facts and tell them:

Here is what you say you want and need. Think about it seriously, because here is want you must tell your City government that you are willing to pay for.

It comes down to that.

We shall see....

Draconian budget cuts

We have now watched a decade of ill-informed and resentful rebellion by voters against supposedly outrageous and ever-increasing taxes.

This is even though, in fact, tax rates and revenues have been decreasing throughout that same time.

Even though Americans are taxed less that citizens of other developed nations, and corporations and the wealthy pay far less of their income than workers on the street.

Even though Floridians don't pay state income tax, keep voting to reduce property tax further, and pay less of their income in tax than residents of almost any other state.

The result is that national and state and municipal governments can no longer provide essential services. (See further comment below.)

Jacksonville's Fiscal Year 2012 budget takes effect on October 1st. The City Administration required that all departments present proposals for 15% budget cuts by last week, as the first step in the budget process. (This follows 10% cuts in each of the last two fiscal years.)

The following is the proposal from Jacksonville Public Library's Board of Trustees:

Jacksonville Public Library
FY 2012 Budget Submission
Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the library budget being cut again?

• City Administration requested departments under the purview of the mayor reduce their budgets.
• The reduction target for JPL is $5,940,414.
• The reduction must come from salary, benefits and expendable accounts including library materials. This amount comes to $25,524,985.

How did the Board decide what to cut?
Reductions were based on clear messages from the community and City Council over the past two budget cycles:

• Keep libraries open
• Treat all neighborhoods the same way.

What was cut?
To keep as many libraries open as possible while trimming nearly $6 million, we had to reduce the following:

• Hours at all locations (30% reduction)
• 103 staff FTE positions cut (78 full-time + 25 FTE part-time) (23% reduction)
• Materials budget (24% reduction)
• The Maxville Branch Library would be closed (the location with lowest overall activity level)

What are the specifics behind the cuts?
Hours

• Main Library open 40 hours per week, Tuesday – Saturday (closed Sunday – Monday). Main Library is currently open 67 hours per week.
• 19 branch libraries open 40 hours per week, Tuesday – Saturday (closed Sunday – Monday). Hours per week currently range from 40-65.
• Schedule would be a mix of morning and evening hours at all libraries
• Total hours libraries are open would be reduced by 335 hours per week
• Service hours per week in FY 06 were 1177; service hours per week in FY 12 would be 800

Staff positions

• Management of libraries restructured to flatten the organization
  103 staff FTE positions (78 full-time + 25 FTE part-time) cut
• The reduction in positions from FY 11 to FY 12 represent a 23% cut
• The reduction in positions from FY 06 to FY 12 represent a 31% cut

Materials budget

• $879,500 cut from the materials budget (24% reduction)
• Materials budget in FY 05 was $5.3 million; materials budget in FY 12 would be $2.8 million (48% reduction)
• Library circulation has increased 14% since FY 06.

What are the impacts of this budget cut?

• Reduced access to libraries
• Reduced access to information, collections and technology
• Significantly fewer new materials
• Increased wait time for popular materials
• Reduction in services and programs
• Increase in use of electronic materials, resources and holds service
• We will lose some customers; other customers will adjust to the changes.

So here's my question.

In the depths of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, one which was caused by the combination of huge tax cuts and irresponsible financial market speculation on a mammoth scale, why are voters fantasizing that the way to fix things for ourselves, our children and our children's children is to slash education, libraries and healthcare?

Increasingly I am reminded of George Stewart's 1949 science fiction novel, Earth Abides.

In Stewart's dystopian vision, his protagonist is one of the few survivors of a global plague. He finds the local library and, even though there is no power, he recovers there the information which might allow those few people who are left to maintain some of their technology, healthcare and other life-sustaining resources.

However, as the decades continue, he cannot convince any of the surviving parents that they should still teach their children reading, math and science.

Am I being too pessimistic?

How libraries have changed

Jacksonville Public Library is spending a week celebrating the fifth anniversary of the opening of its new, downtown Main Library building.

As part of the week long promotion, customers are encouraged to tour all five stories of the building. If they get their “passports” stamped at each service desk, they are eligible for a prize drawing. This way, we hope they will be introduced to public services and collections they didn’t know we had.

One slight problem: the Circulation Desk…of the Main Library…couldn’t find ANY library stamps.

Hmmm……

Ask a Librarian...and beyond

[Yes, I know. I haven't posted anything here since December 17th. As Phyllis Diller used to say, joking about her supposedly unshapely body, "There's lots of reasons, but no excuse."]

One of the reasons is that I and my Remote Services colleagues have been busy with a major reorganization and expansion of our 21-branch library system's participation in Florida's Ask a Librarian (AaL) live chat reference service.

[You can learn more about AaL here.]

Until recently, many of us in librarianship have tended to think of customer service in silos. You know how it goes. These customers are Circ, these are Ref, these, Gov Docs. These are walk-ins, these are phone or email or chat. These are Main Library's, these are Branch X's.

We've tended to think of our staff in the same way. Even when the Main Library's geneology staff work the telephone Call Center, or when someone at Branch X works chat, we tend to think of them as people from those specific units, temporarily filling in on another department's tasks somewhere else.

However, in May of 2008, I attended the 8th Annual Conference of the Association of Government Contact Center Employees (AGCCE) here in Jacksonville.

There I discovered a whole profession of people who provide remote public information services. More importantly, I was introduced to the paradigm shift of organizing such services around customers, instead of around modes of communication.

Remote customers are not actually divided by where they are or how or when they get in touch with you. Nor are staff—at least, not when they have access to phone and email and chat and instant messaging and social software of all other sorts....

In remote information-sharing, perhaps the only division of practical significance is between real-time (phone, chat, IM) and asynchronous interaction (email, blogs). Even there, the body of information, the cohort of information professionals and the population of customers remain the same.

I learned at AGCCE that the real challenge is to devise seamless ways of letting the same staff get the same information to the same customer, regardless of the mode of communication. It's a matter of redesigning the integration of staffing, information access and technology.

Until recently, the Jacksonville Public Library (JPL) remote services model was the conventional one.

Staff from Main reference rotated handling email questions, other Main staff rotated covering hours in the Call Center, and staff from Main and a handful of branches made up the chat team, coordinated by me and my colleague Christa.

Individual chat team agents were responsible for specific hours on a biweekly schedule, and they had to find their own substitutes from the team.

However, inspired partly by my report from AGCCE, JPL's regional supervisors have decided to shift to a new model, one with several goals:

• for all branches and public service departments to share ownership of remote services, rather than seeing it as an extension of Main Reference;


• for each branch and department to develop its own team of chat agents who can cover for each other;


• for branches and departments, rather than individual agents, to be accountable for regular chat hours each week (and for providing or finding substitutes when needed);


• for expansion of the chat team to allow continued expansion of the number of days and hours when JPL can deliver Local Desk chat reference, rather than Collaborative Desk.
  
  [Local connects Ask a Librarian customers who log in through the JPL website with JPL agents. Collaborative connects customers with whichever Florida chat agents happen to be logged in at the moment.]

This last goal is significant as part of the paradigm shift I described above.

Once local customers are able to have real-time exchanges with local JPL staff, the boundaries between Circ and Ref and other public service points, and those between Main and the branches, effectively disappear.

Customers can use telephone or chat (with email follow-up, if needed) to get any sort of remote services, without needing to know which location or person to contact.

Staff can use any remotely assessible resource in the JPL system (plus anything online) to provide their customers with quick, locally relevant service.

Just one example:

Recently I was doing chat reference with a customer who needed in-depth statistical information about a federal government activity.

[ALARM BELLS: Government info is not my strong suit.]

I remembered that our system has a Government Documents department. I phoned that manager, learned from her which website the customer would need, typed the link into the chat...and sighed with relief.

The customer was happy, I was happy, the Gov Docs manager was happy...and it didn't matter at all where each of us was physically located.

Neat!

There's much more potential in this rethinking of remote services, about which I will write in later posts.

For now, I just want to celebrate that my library system is moving ahead.

And that even "old dogs" like me can learn new and arcane technological tricks.

:-)

Thanks,
Mike

Addendum, 2/12/09: Since February 20th is Ask a Librarian Day in Florida, we decided at work that I should promote the service internally to all of our staff. Today I published this post on the JPL STAFF news blog.