dailypennsylvanian.com - Guest Column: Wisdom, shortchanged
Obviously, I have been thinking about these issues a lot, and for some time. If you have been watching closely, a recent post was deleted after reflection. Blogging about the job has been covered recently by Rochelle (twice) and Meredith.
I do like the voice I have found here, and I don't want to lose my "moxie" as Meredith says. It is a difficult line to draw. I have always felt the strictures placed on librarians at the Free Library of Philadelphia impact my free speech. I do understand that we are a government agency, and must always represent the City government to the public. Some of the requirements, about politics, are in place due to abuse in the past by other divisions of City government. You need to look at many of the civil service rules in light of history.
The injunction about not speaking to the press has been in place for ten years at least. It applies to all staff, not just librarians. I think people get confused because union shop stewards do speak to the press. But they are "protected" from demotion, forced transfer, and the like. In any case, that's about as much commenting as I am going to do on this article.
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4 comments:
As a federal civil servant, I am under much the same strictures as you. As a representative of the government, I could be fired for in any way damaging the reputation of my agency or government, or (especially) misrepresenting my own views as the views of the government. So more often than not, I find that I choose not to even mention on my blog that I work for the government. I suppose it's a pretty badly kept secret! But nonetheless, I leave my job out of my blogging, as much as possible. Even when I write about politics in a general way, I worry that I may cross the line. It's not a good position to be in, to be an opinionated person restrained from expressing opinions!
I guess I c/should add "all views are mine own" or something to my profile. I do use this space to talk about librarianship, librarianliness, libraries, books, newspapers, microforms...they are so important to me. I throw in little bits of other stuff just to leaven the dough. Just what we need: mixed baking metaphors! But otherwise, my navel-gazing would reach undreamt heights; scary thought.
Libraries are at such a disadvantage in the elbowing for funding when compared to other interests. They don’t have the lobbying presence and the serve a constituent base that is often disenfranchised – not having the ability to voice their concerns on a regular basis or be taking very seriously by legislators when they do.
The Governor recently cut Medicaid in such a way that it caused the large health care corporations to start lobbying for restoration of the cuts – which meant it wasn’t just people on public assistance with few professional lobbyists and little ability to actually spend the time travelling to make their case pushing this issue. Even Republican legislators voted to reinstate the cuts – and the Guv said – oh – I’d love to – as long as you can find the money. His dance of the seven veils.
Libraries – especially those with huge expansions planned for their physical plants – need to get these business groups getting library contracts on-board in their efforts to restore funding. It would make a huge difference.
I’ve always thought that the whole wi-fi’ing the city project was a natural for the library to be a leader in – they have the network connections in every branch in the city and locations to locate equipment – they have the information resources that need to be brought to peoples homes. It could grow into providing all sorts of online trainings like the Learn-a-Test for government agencies. And get some of the resources to do those things. Seems like a missed opportunity to me. Especially given people here who know networks, online instruction, and electronic resources and have a good knowledge of social services.
Here in San Diego, there is also a rule against speaking to the press. However, it is rarely enforced, as few librarians are ever foolish enough to say anything but warm fuzzies about their local library. And what, from an administrators point of view, is the harm in that? At my library in Ocean Beach, San Diego, there is always the option of influencing vocal friends of the library to speak their minds. This is usually the wisest course in influencing policy, as a member of the general public always carries more weight with library administrators than any public service employee.
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