Dallas Libraries Forced to Find a New Working Model Amidst Staff Layoffs, Budget Cutbacks

• All the previous comments have some relevance for this situation. The City is stuck with the results of a 40 yr old expansion policy--"brick and mortar" if you will; the Library is not revenue producing; the Library has over the years marketed itself to downtown businesses, patrons, etc.--you cannot force people to come in the doors; the Library is a customer-service business, however it doesn't fight crime or fires day to day; the Library doesn't produce vast amounts of revenue to give back to the City; the digital age has changed the delivery and perception of what is relevant, significant and how it should be delivered, and at every-quickening speed--govt. funded libraries cannot keep up; the Library staff works very hard, and it is a thankless task to constantly have to hawk your services to "bottom-liners" and dare I say it, City staffers and Council Members who barely use the facilities, if at all.

• @Librarian in S Texas: I don't get up every morning and go to work and pay taxes so Ms Hill or any other city official paid with my taxes does "the best they can." She's paid to make it happen. I resent paying taxes for LESS library services while bureaucrats like Ms Hill do whatever it is they think they do. I'll bet Ms Hill's hours/salary haven't been cut. If my branch has to be closed more hours due to budget cuts, Ms Hill needs to get herself over there and open up the library and staff it herself. I pay taxes for a library, not a paper-pusher. She needs to do double duty or I bet we can find someone who will for less than what we pay her.

• Thank you, @Bureaucrats Ruin Everything, @angryoldwhitewoman, and @Blue Pencil. You guys get it. Please express your views to your councilperson at one of the town meetings. Clearly they don't understand that "same number of hours open" does not equal "excellent service level our citizens deserve." It doesn't even equal "marginal service," for that matter. Along with the librry bureaucrats, council members are part of the problem: every one of them MUST have a branch library (or two) whether the city can support that many or not. They want the buildings to point to, but don't want to pay for the staff and materials for the buildings to actually be of service to the citizens. As for the "Macy's model?" Next thing you know, Ms. Hill will be lining us up every morning before opening and making us practice saying, "Would you like fries with that?"

• A few things I keep thinking as I read through the article and comments... Ms. Hill is doing the best she can. I wish individuals were more aware of the fact that during times of economic hardship, library's become busier and important toward getting people back to work. The library is not just about books. Mostly nowadays it is about computers, and bridging the digital divide. It is also about providing a social setting for the community and serves as the city's information resource and repository. Champion libraries you all, if not for yourselves but for the children whose lives they truly touch.

• And how many hours a week will Ms. Hill be "working the floor" like a Macy's salesclerk? At which branch will she be stationed so that patrons get this better service for less? I'd bet ZERO, because I'd bet she's a needless cog in the wheel. As long as librarians aren't instructed to approach people and ask them if they need help, and as long as Ms. Hill (please tell me she doesn't have a secretary, too) logs in some hours on the floor, I could be swayed to rethink my beliefs about library bureaucrats. And where is Ms. Hill's office? Surely it's at the downtown branch so she will easily be able to work the floor at least an hour a day. If at some point in her day she doesn't shelve books or man the check-out counter or drive books from branch to branch, she's just a bureaucrat. Don't cut services, cut bureaucrats who shop at the mall. Let the bureaucrats multi-task like the librarians.

• Bureaucrats ruin everything: Ms. Hill did not come up with this new service model b/c it will help with the budget or funding...the reason the librarians will be out on the floor to help customers is because there will not be enough staff to have someone sitting behind a desk, waiting for someone to ask for help. Reference and customer service staff will be in the stacks, trying to get materials shelved; they may not see you if you go up to a desk to ask for help. You may have to ring a bell for service, or wait until someone spots you and runs up to the desk to assist you...or they may run into while you're in the stacks. She's not trying to shake things up...just trying to develop a service model that will work given the cuts to staff.

• Enrique: obviously this is really hard for you to wrap your brain around, but a LOT of people cannot afford to pay H&R Block or a CPA. Nor do they own a computer. You might try reading or listening to the national news. There is a huge unemployment crisis that is getting worse every day. There are a lot of people that were already living on the margins and now don't have a job, and the prospects for a new one are dismal. Libraries offer many services for free. But I'm sure that since you are so smart and rich and handsome you never darken the door of any library. Keep on reading your tea party blogs and get angry about how the rest of the world just isn't as smart or hard working as you are.

• "The use of computers has actually upped the need for librarians -- because, surprise, Google and bling can't find everything and the internet doesn't know everything." While that could be true, that does not mean we have the need for more than 20 branches in Dallas. "Libraries provide tax advice, resume advice, retraining for the unemployed, English-as-a-second-language classes, meeting rooms, polling centers and cheap child care (they shouldn't have to but many people who can't afford it, use them that way)." So library is dedicating resources to other things that associate with the library. H&R Block and CPAs provide tax advice. Retraining and resume advice is provided at workforce boards. A library can be easily replaced for a polling center. Cheap child care? You said it. It should not be used that way.

• Sorry, Enrique, but the decline of the Dallas library system has everything to do with taxes and city government and next to nothing to do with our computerized future or the thin profit margins of bookstores. Fact is, many library systems are now heavily computerized, and the demand on them and what they provide has drastically increased the past decade. Libraries are often the only place many people have access to computers and the internet. Libraries provide tax advice, resume advice, retraining for the unemployed, English-as-a-second-language classes, meeting rooms, polling centers and cheap child care (they shouldn't have to but many people who can't afford it, use them that way). The use of computers has actually upped the need for librarians -- because, surprise, Google and bling can't find everything and the internet doesn't know everything. PeterK: Doing more with less as a business? You sound as if libraries are fat and happy and over-staffed. In contrast, every corporation I've ever worked for had at least 17 vice-presidents who were completely useless. Self-serving business management makes the public sector look positively noble, working for little pay and for an abusive public -- and getting demands like yours that they should somehow, given their low staff numbers, still work harder at the business manager's favorite solutions: marketing studies and time management, followed by further staff cutbacks.

• Ms. Hill's do more with less and in a new fun way strategy just sounds like "The Power of Positive Thinking" crap to me; but good God, did everyone declaring libraries dead because of Dallas' mismanagement throw away their radios when KZEW went off the air?

• Obviously, she's never been to Macys.

• Good grief, leave the librarians alone. The traditional library paradigm (passive, quiet librarian) has worked for decades. If you need help, you go to their desk and they help you. Sliced bread, btw, has worked for decades, too. So have shoelaces. And buttons. We don't need to "update" every last little thing. I can't think of anything more annoying and dreamed-up-by-a-useless-bureaucrat than the stupid Macy's approach. I thought the problem was funding--not how libraries are operate. Tell me, Ms. Hill, how is the Macy's Service Model going to fix the funding/budget problem? Salaried positions like Ms. Hill's are the problem. Nothing else to do to justify their existence than dream up unnecessary make-work projects for librarians. Too many chefs and not enough dishwashers. Instead of a Ms. Hill, how about a committee of librarians from the different branches meeting and making decisions that will set policy for the whole system? Jobs like Hill's are redundant and expensive.

• @Corporate Librarian Perhaps you read books, but not the papers. I also mentioned Barnes and Nobles which is putting itself up for sale because its "brick and mortar" cannot keep up with the rapid growth of digital book sales. Amazon is looking into buying B&N. The City of Dallas cannot afford to keep throwing money at more than 20-some odd libraries, especially as people move towards digital books. Even public ed and higher ed textbooks are going digital. I get it, you put a lot of time and money into your MLS, and would like to get a job in a library.

• @Jen welcome to the real world where folks in the private sector do more with less. The Library is a service industry. Librarians should be walking the floors assisting customers and not sitting behind a desk. the library needs to become more entrepreneurial, learn how to market and sell what they have. For too long libraries around the country just assumed people would show up, they need to start acting like a business. I've worked in a variety of service industries (grocery store, restaurants, archive, bookstore) and in everyone I looked for ways to improve what we were doing. didn't wait for approval. The same attitude needs to take hold. Has the Central Library ever marketed what they can do to the businesses downtown? I doubt it. "some people who USE libraries would like to browse in peace" which fine just tell the librarian "no thank you" it is just like when you go shopping and a salesperson asks if you need help, you just say "no thank you" and unions will only exasperate the problem not solve it, just ask Chrysler and Government Motors has the Library ever done a professional market study and analysis? What do citizens of Dallas want from their library? Do they want the Central facility to serve as an ad hoc homeless shelter?

• This is all good stuff, actually, and I just got an MLS in May of 2009. Odd that I would champion cutting library services, but I understand the many factors that go into a decision like this. I applaud DPL and Hill for re-evaluating the way that library service is practiced. Enrique is absurdly wrong, public library systems and bookstores are not dead just because some in N. Texas are having trouble. But just like all forms of service and businesses, a new model needs to be put into place so that librarianship can move into the 21st century, finally.

• It isn't mentioned in the article that many of the people laid off had worked for the library for over 20 years, and many were near retirement. Experience and loyalty were shown out the door without a thank you. Those left are doing the work of several people, in a haphazard manner with no direction from those in charge. Patrons will certainly find it more difficult to get their books when there is no staff to check in and process items. Once again, our city is throwing culture down the drain.

• Seriously, the City probably should get out of the library business. Look at what has happened recently: Legacy Books is shutting down, and giant bookseller Barnes and Nobles is putting itself up for sale as more folks get digital books. The traditional public library system and bookstore is dead. Sure, we need a place of archive historical documents, and there will be some places that will cater to a small, but loyal group of bookstores.

• "So people who work at libraries shouldn't have to anything they don't want to do?" No, some people who USE libraries would like to browse in peace.

• "I wish all of the remaining librarians would get in Ms. Hill's face and say, "I don't f****** work at Macy's, b****." So people who work at libraries shouldn't have to anything they don't want to do? Oh government librarian! The real world has a horrible wake up call in store for you!

• I wish all of the remaining librarians would get in Ms. Hill's face and say, "I don't f****** work at Macy's, b****." It's way past time the library staff had a union, or was part of the City civil service.

• Ms Hill must be a descendant of the purser on the Titanic. You know, the guy who kept rearranging all the deck chairs while it sank.

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