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Tacoma Public Library Realigns Staff, Adopts Virtual ReferenceHampered by a tight budget and staffing limitations, the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library is implementing a plan to keep its nine branches open as many hours and days as possible. In December 2005, the city council allocated an extra $222,700 that allowed the library to hire five additional library assistants. By this spring, TPL Director Susan Odencrantz plans to shift employees around the system to avoid the series of “rolling closures”—branches forced to close for a few hours or a few days because staff were ill or needed to fill in at the main library—that have plagued the system over the past few years.Odencrantz told American Libraries that she is consolidating her reference staff at the main library and two regional branches and releasing the children’s staff from desk duty so they can do more storytimes, programming, and school visits. “The central telephone reference center will answer reference questions from the neighborhood branches through text messaging and videoconferencing,” Odencrantz said. “I’ve talked to many other directors who are also looking at changes in the way we provide reference services. We need to embrace change rather than go back to an old model.” Some library staff are concerned that virtual reference in the branches, based on a model successfully employed in the Timberland Regional Library system in Olympia, could lead to unserved and underserved users. “Handing them the phone can be perceived as dismissive,” he said in the February 8 Tacoma News-Tribune. Odencrantz admits the solution is not ideal. “But we’ve got to be lean and mean,” she told the newspaper. “And we’ve got to use technology to be fast and accurate and to stay open.” Posted February 10, 2006. |
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