Some 200 demonstrators had gathered in the street outside the downtown library July 9 to protest the threatened layoffs of reference librarians and other staff. Library officials had announced May 24 that cuts in staff positions and library hours would have to be made, citing level funding by the city and state for several years in a row, high health-care costs, and changing usage patterns.
“They think we will be able to answer the same amount of questions with half the staff,” Audiovisual Department Head Cynthia Reed told the Journal. “It’s unrealistic.”
The decision prompted two Providence councilors, Miguel Luna and David Segal, to call on PPL July 23 to reinstate its staff, saying that the library’s approach has “alienated employees, patrons, and potential donors” and “created a hostile work environment.”
In making the announcement, Library Director Dale Thompson said all seven of the departing librarians worked in the Statewide Reference Resource Center, while the 14 support-staff positions were in a systemwide clerical pool.
PPL is a nonprofit corporation that operates on both private and public funding, Thompson told American Libraries. “With the recognition that public funding wasn’t going to increase anytime soon,” she explained, “the trustees decided to restructure by providing only $880,110 worth of services—the amount Rhode Island provides to maintain the reference center at the downtown library—and no longer supplement it with private funds,” which would then be redirected to literacy programs for the branches. She added that there would be no reduction in funding for the library’s collections.
Posted July 23, 2004.