Vailey Oehlke
Oehlke is director of libraries for Multnomah County.
Since our library’s founding in 1864, our community has loved it as an institution that helps shape and improve people’s lives. I certainly do. I’ve been proud to be a part of it since 1997.
Over that time, the Multnomah County Library and the community it serves have had to weather many storms. Right now,we are in the middle of one of those storms: like every person, family and organization, COVID-19 has reshaped our reality. It has upended the way our library has traditionally served its patrons, with inviting (if small) spaces and friendly staff there to help explore reading, research, or troubleshoot problems from less than an arm’s length away.
Since we closed all our buildings March 14, all 580 staff members have received full pay and benefits, even as the new pandemic reality has meant that some have no job to go to. We’re currently checking out only a fraction of the typical number of books, DVDs and other items.
To meet the community’s current needs, we’ve started curbside book pick-up in all 19 branches, launched new on-demand library cards, called seniors in retirement communities, delivered books by mail, created new online children’s storytimes, turned school IDs into library cards, begun online GED tutoring and tutoring for adult learners and much more. Even these new online and remote services — and we are actively expanding services — do not require the same peak staffing.
As the library’s leadership, we must balance our affection and loyalty to our library employees with our responsibility to match our workforce to the work and prepare for serving the community in an uncertain future. This is an agonizing balance to strike.
In an Aug. 16opinion piece, (“Library layoffs don’t serve the community,”) three library staff members assert that we are getting that balance wrong, and that no jobs should be cut. I understand their distress. But their critique left out a number of facts.
One is that we are already making efforts to preserve as many jobs as possible with new initiatives and deployments. Physical distancing requirements and limitations on in-person services (like youth storytimes) in the foreseeable future directly affect 128 positions. But since our original announcement in July, we have worked with represented staff and their union, AFSCME Local 88 to reduce the number of layoffs to about half that number so far. We will shift an undetermined number of people to support Multnomah County's pandemic response and are working with other departments to fill other critical vacant county jobs.
The authors also decried disproportionate impacts on library staff members who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, their union contract, negotiated with the county, holds seniority as a fundamental value over other factors. While some positions have protections around language or culture, many BIPOC library staff are more recent hires in positions without those protections.
Finally, the authors of the opinion piece say that the current budget is projected to have enough money to keep all staff, and no layoffs should take place, regardless of whether the current reality supports that number of jobs. Budgets are best-made plans based on projections and we simply live in a different world than we did in February when that budget was formulated. If we are to serve the public, we must look at using those dollars differently, such as investing in new technology like wi-fi hotspots and computers to loan, more online services, or making changes to building configurations to accommodate more people. Sticking to our pre-pandemic budget’s staffing denies us the flexibility to invest in the tools the public needs.
The library is not alone in this – institutions, businesses and families across our community are grappling with the same struggle. As much as we would like to be immune, we are not.
I should and will continue to hear and act on staff input, and the input from families who cherish youth librarians and care about our staff. I’ve heard the anguish and I share it. But I must also do my job as the library’s director to responsibly lead the organization through this unprecedented moment, leave it in better shape for future generations, and be accountable for how this public library uses hard-earned tax dollars.
Our job is also to look ahead to when the library is able to re-open. During these unstable economic times, the public expects and will receive our support, services and programs to help put the pieces of our community back together. That is when our resources will be needed the most.
Share your opinion
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"Opinion" - Google News
August 23, 2020 at 08:00PM
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Opinion: Multnomah County Library’s path through a pandemic - oregonlive.com
"Opinion" - Google News
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