May 06, 2003

The new director of the

The new director of the Minneapolis Public Library system refused to take more pay than the police chief. That's cool, but she sure has her work cut out for her in that system/state. As a non-librarian it will be interesting to see what she does to make that system improve. There are some phenomenal Librarians working in Minnesota and the Minneapolis area though so at least she has some staffing issues already solved. If only Chad and Susan ran things around there, then we'd see good things happen!

Posted by libraryman at May 6, 2003 06:32 PM
Comments

Here's something ironical: the library board that hired the new director of MPL unanimously voted not to hire an applicant who was the former President of ALA. You KNOW the job market's tight when a former ALA Pres is out in the street rattlin' his tin cup.

Posted by: Mitch Finklebaum at May 7, 2003 10:25 AM

I don't know her so can't really say, still her lack of library world credentials is slightly disconcerting. Especially given the paces so many poor MN library folks have been put through lately.

The applicant wasn't this guy, was it? Not me, the other guy. :)
http://www.libraryman.com/images/IN%20John%20Berry%20and%20MP%20small.jpg

Posted by: MP at May 7, 2003 11:14 AM

It might have been Berry. This MPL director has some gall, though. In the midst of a national library initiative to increase salaries for librarians, she's refusing to step up and do us all credit by insisting on proper compensation for directorship of this nationally ranked research library. I think she is unintentionally (since she knows nothing of the profession) undercutting the rest of us by refusing the adjusted salary. The MPL board lost a chance to hire some pretty big names in their first round of interviews because of the pittance of a salary they were offering. Like Saul Amdursky who's now pulling in 200K / year in New York.

Posted by: MitchmasterF@aol.com at May 8, 2003 10:47 AM

From the article:
"I believe we can be a great institution with a lower operating budget."
then:
"Libraries are a crucible for a lot of very interesting, important questions right now: Do we believe in public institutions? And to what extent are we willing to pay for them?"

As with the salary decrease I too wonder if these are the situations where more PL experience would make a huge difference.

Her quotes above are very savvy political statements with fairly open-ended interpretation options. I wish I could talk with her and others from that system to see what they think. More than that I just hope things get better and not worse for MPL and MN libraries in general. At any rate it's enjoyable and informative to read you take on things, Mitch.

Posted by: MP at May 8, 2003 11:55 PM