Mesa’s interim library director has inherited a loss of 42 staff positions over the past year and a $500,000 budget cut. Wolf has all but delved into books about legendary magician Harry Houdini to keep up with an annual circulation of more than 3.1 million publications, attend to the needs of 1.2 million walk-in customers and prevent the apparent inevitability of closing two busy branch libraries.
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“The leadership team and I are coping with keeping three libraries open with almost the same staffing level we had 10 years ago while the workload keeps going up,” she said. “We can’t ask the staff to work any harder.
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AHH PAY YER SALERY!
“The leadership team and I are coping with keeping three libraries open with almost the same staffing level we had 10 years ago while the workload keeps going up,” she said. “We can’t ask the staff to work any harder.”
Yes, you can! It’s the New Reality! People here want everything, they want it now, and they don’t want to pay more for it? Why should they, they give enough of their hard earned money to the gummint.
Close a facility, cut hours, etc…
Close a facility, cut hours, stop buying materials do the classic steps to share the pain. What lesson does this teach? Wow cut the library and they are dumb enough to soldier on. Make it painful for the patrons and they will scream loud enough to bring attention to the problems. Why as a profession do we compete to out martyr each other?