LSSI Gets Its First Florida Library Contract, Eyes Simi Valley
PrintDespite the opposition of library boosters in Osceola County, Florida, to the proposed outsourcing of county library operations there, the county commission has approved a five-year contract with Library Systems and Services, Inc. (LSSI) to run the library. The 3–2 vote to approve the nearly $25-million contract, which LSSI has assured officials will save the county $6 million over five years, came after reservations were reiterated at a December 12 commission meeting about the long-term impact on the quality of library service and the fate of library workers.
“I don’t see why you have to outsource money to Maryland,” said Kississimee resident John Cortes, according to the December 13 Osceola News-Gazette. “Think about the employees, think about the people, think about your community,” he added, calling into question what would happen to library staff members after the end of a six-month-employment agreement for everyone who reapplies to LSSI for their jobs. Details were made available on the library website.
“We haven’t worked hard enough to get the community’s input into this,” said Osceola County Commission member Michael Harford, who voted against privatization while voicing agreement that the county needed to save money. “We don’t have standards set that we can readily review other than the number of hours of operation.”
LSSI won the contract nearly two years after losing its challenge in 2010 to a state rule change that makes a library’s eligibility for state aid (PDF file, p. 22–23) dependent on the library’s governing body employing a full-time librarian with an ALA-accredited MLS and two years’ prior experience.
Across the country, LSSI may have moved a step closer to adding the Simi Valley (Calif.) Library to its client list of outsourced libraries. The Simi Valley City Council voted December 12 to withdraw the city library from the Ventura County Library System, acting just two weeks before the January 1 enactment of a California law that will mandate cities to document publicly how such a move, made in order to contract out library services, would save money. “We have an opportunity to take action in advance of that law going into effect,” Council member Glen Becerra said.
Although no contract with LSSI has been announced, Simi Valley Mayor Bob Huber emphasized that final decisions about the library would remain in municipal hands even if operations were to be outsourced. “Just like any other vendor that we hire, they do it by our rules,” he said, according to the December 13 Ventura County Star. “So people that keep yelling ‘privatization, privatization, privatization,’ that’s not happening here. Our free library will remain free.”
The events in Simi Valley come almost six months after LSSI began managing the three-branch Santa Clarita Public Library. Operating 17 library systems nationwide (including Osceola County Library), LSSI was described in the September 26, 2010, New York Times as the fifth-largest library system in the country when measured by number of library branches, ranking at that time just behind Los Angeles Public Library.
American Libraries, Wed, 12/21/2011 - 13:24
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Comments
I worked in a public library
I worked in a public library that LSSI managed and I can tell you it isn’t pretty. Since LSSI is a for-profit company it’s all about the bottom line. Libraries are not revenue generating so where does the savings come from? You get rid of all of the full time librarians and have the library staffed by part time workers with absolutely no library experience at all. That way you don’t have to pay benefits (which are absurdly impossible to get with LSSI) and you pay minimum wage.
I strongly urge any community thinking of bringing in LSSI to manage their library to vote against it.
Get used to it
Folks, this is the future of library service. This is what we’re competing against. Every time we negotiate better pay and benefits, every time we go to the mat for an incompetent employee, every time we fight outsourcing a process, we’re putting another nail in our coffins. You really think total compensation for a shelver should be $50,000 a year? Do you think total compensation for a clerk should be twice or more what they would get in a retail operation? And yes, compensation at the top is out of whack in some places too, but not by the margin it is at the other end. Go and look up management salaries in private companies. Then go see what a stocker or retail clerk makes in total compensation and see which are closer.
Oh, and when the budget gets tight, go ahead and cut hours instead of people and see how willing your community is to hand the system over to LSSI. They will do anything to get their hours back. The public thinks shelvers should be volunteers (they should be - or minimum wage students). They think you don’t need that many degreed librarians to run a library (you don’t). The truth is, many communities are perfectly happy with LSSI.
Outsourcing
‘Anonymous’ bravely wrote ~ ” every time we fight outsourcing a process, we’re putting another nail in our coffins”.
This sounds like the logic of an incompetent and self-centered library director - the only only person who left after outsourcing everything that their staff used to do, yet still complaining that ‘management’ is not making enough.
So wrong
Wow. Actually, no, I’m represented. But see I’ve worked in the real world where you don’t get $23 per hour for data entry and taping labels on boxes. I notice you didn’t refute anything I said, just insulted my competence. Nice! Well, keep clinging to those jobs instead of putting our resources to work where the public can see and appreciate them. Keep spending absurd amounts of public money preparing packaging and playing with stickers and doing simple data entry instead of spending that money on materials and staff to work with the public. Keep paying stupid amounts of money just to put books on the shelf. Then, when money gets tight, cut your hours rather than lay off staff to “show” the public how you’re hurting. Then, when LSSI rolls into town and says we’ll do more for less, just try to argue that you’ve been a good steward of the public’s money and trust.
Dear ‘Anonymous’, No, you
Dear ‘Anonymous’,
No, you really don’t make an argument. You simply say that everyone else who manages libraries is stupid and that because you have worked in the ‘real world’ - most likely at some crap job where you saw how it was ok to step on other people - that you understand everything that the corporate psychosis would have you believe.
It is amusing how you use the idea that $23 an hour represents a high salary. That shows how well the profiteers have pitted the lower middle class against the even lower economic class.
The ‘real world’ strategy and the low wage vs low wage strategies are prime examples of the psychosis. So is ranting under the name ‘Anonymous’.
"Saving Money' employing Corporate Psychopathy
The public librarian system is unique. It represents sharing without regard to who can pay - a concept completely foreign to the Corporate Psychopathy ( see: Ulman, Montague : http://bit.ly/CQReq ) . Public Libraries are the ONLY buildings where loitering is encouraged and the goal is to have people take things with them without paying, to share, and bring things back.
I think that many community ‘leaders’ lacking experience outside of corporate, would view spending money (on libraries) without apparent profit as weak, bad business practices. It is natural for them to assert values rooted in corporate psychopathy in the library funding formula. They know not what they do and think the answer to underfunding is to employ what they do know and create an apparent ‘savings’.
But, the reality remains that libraries represent the best economic value for taxpayers because they share without regard to who can pay. Savings, real or imagined, will simply be spent or budgeted to be spent on services that have more powerful lobbies and less return on investment.
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