Jason Gibbs public comment - Library Commission meeting January 15, 2026

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT

I'm Jason Gibbs, retired librarian.

During 2020 and 2021, I was assigned as a Disaster Service Worker, but towards the end I was allowed to come in one day a week to work with my staff. We had new staff that needed training. During that time there was an all-staff training where somebody from outside of the system who instructed us that libraries are at heart a racist institution. And I couldn't could not accept that because the the culture of sour system is not like that. It's contrary to our values of free and equal access and it's been a long time a part sof the culture.

Um there's a wonderful publication that you can view online called Pseudepigrapha which was the newsletter of staff from the 1970s and 1980s were you can see all the innovative things that library staff were doing to serve the community -- setting up foreign language collections for new immigrants trying to bring service to underserved neighborhoods. A lot of it comes from within the system.

So you place DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion as an important priority, but that made me wonder why when you appointed staff ambassadors for the Strategic Plan, there was nobody from our custodial department, which is probably the most my minority centered part of the library. These are people who are often English-language learners, immigrants. They see the library from a place very different from us. They're the ones who go from anywhere from cleaning up when a kid spills some juice to like cleaning up the the bathroom. People camp outside of branches and they leave a terrible mess. And we had suicides here. If somebody had to clean that up, the recent murder, the same thing. And it feels like if you're going to really understand the library, the custodial point of view is an important one to include. Thank you.

COMMENT ABOUT THE MINUTES

I'd like to continue with something that I mentioned at the previous meeting. In the past the minutes included the handout material that came with the meetings. I think of this previous meeting when Michelle Jeffers and Michael Lambert spoke about things that you guys are really enthusiastic about. 

The minutes are really your permanent record as commissioners of what happens. If you include the supplemental material in the minutes, then anybody in the future who wants to know the historical record and what the library is accomplishing and how the commission approaches it; you really should include that information. It it's part of the meeting and it should be connected with the me the minutes themselves. I'm thinking for your own historical legacy and for the convenience of future users. Thank you.

FACILITIES UPDATE

John Cunha, head of facilities

I wanted to say thank you to your comment earlier, sir. 

So our custodial unit here um I've always had a sentimental connection to uh custodians, both here at this department and my previous department. I've always really appreciated the, you know, I don't want to say the underdog but the unsung hero, right? Those people that show up to work every day and and get the job done. And that's to me embodied by our custodians um, more so than anyone. 

So, the custodial unit provides a clean, safe, and healthy environment that fosters productivity and well-being for all occupants through dedicated service and rigorous sanitization standards. 

FACILITIES UPDATE PUBLIC COMMENT 

I really enjoyed that presentation and that that staff was highlighted because they are often invisible to people. 

Going back to custodial, they are actually a forward-facing part of the library, too. They provide customer service. Often times they serve as Cantonese translators because they somebody recognizes of a face. But what I really appreciate is that they provide a public service to staff. They have at when I was working they were so reliable and often you ask them to do the most miserable things and not a complaint ever. So again, kudos to the custodial staff. 

I also want to applaud the security staff, but also wanted to note that their  numbers have grown incredibly large compared to what they used to be, having to do with conditions in the city. It was unheard of in the past when I started here that that you would find an officer, a building and grounds officer stationed at a branch. Now most branches have one. Unfortunately that's necessary and they're doing good work.

I've noticed that some of the calmer branches have I'm an active patron now have officers when branches that I know are sort of busier and more problematic haven't had one and when I've asked about it is because of vacations or something. So I think has to be they have to look at their incident tracker and see how they can be best deploying the staff that's going to the branches which I think everybody wants but is more needed at some locations than others. Thank you.

Jason Gibbs public comment - Library Commission meeting September 18, 2025

Jason Gibbs, retired librarian. One of the symptoms of retirement is losing track of days. And I'm really sorry I missed the previous library commission because it slipped my mind. I really would have been excited to hear about what was going on with collections, especially looking at the material and seeing that new non-fiction books are doing very well. And that's after the circulation of all of our physical books really being decimated by COVID and people being limited exclusively to use electronic resources. 

I co-chaired the New Non-Fiction Committee for many years. And for those who don't know what non-fiction is, it's everything except fiction. So it could be religion, philosophy, sociology, language learning, starting a business, recovery, learning an instrument, learning how to paint. 

It's a wonderful committee that people in the system just want to be on because it's just so great to be discussing books for a couple hours. But I want to relate a story. I have to give the city librarian credit that he frequently uses the staircase in the library. So he really sees what's going on. Many previous city librarians never did that. 

But one day I was walking up the stairs with him and I was telling him we're going to have a new Non-Fiction Committee. And I thought, well, he should be as excited as we are. But his remark was, "Well, we've got too much non-fiction space in the branch. We're gonna have to do something about that." And it just seemed like a downer to bring to bring this attitude to a meeting that we librarians view in a very positive. I would have liked to have reported to all reported that the City Librarian remarked how great your work is or something, But I could not do that. It really is a wonderful service and its a committee that people like to be on, and I'm glad to see the people of San Francisco using the collection in that way. 

AGENDA ITEM NO. 4 HUMAN RESOURCES UPDATE – TALENT ACQUISITION

Jason Gibbs, a former talent once acquired but no longer possessed. 

Talent Acquisition: Average Vacancy Rate

I wanted to note that your base number for fiscal year 22 on that chart was really abnormally high because we had just come through COVID. That was a time when over 500 employees were sent out as Disaster Service Workers and I don't know how many employees declined to be Disaster Service Workers. 

My first assignment was to be a site monitor in a shelter-in-place hotel for the vulnerable homeless. Many people did not want to do that and so they had to use up all their vacation, all their sick pay and then were separated from the library. So it was it was a very traumatic time for the workforce and so that high number is reflected by that.

But I would also say as a disaster service worker, I was put also put into the Department of Public Health and I can't say that I've ever been more appreciated for my work when I was working for the Department of Public Health. The library never showed that level of appreciation for the work that I did. I was even involved in interviewing people for the Department of Public Health, helping them with their talent acquisition. They recognized my abilities. 

But talking about talent acquisition, I think you have to also realize that you already have talent and that that talent needs to be built and appreciated. And I one of my regrets is that 35 years of experience I reached really the pinnacle of my abilities at the end of my career and I felt like there was no opportunity to spread that knowledge to to other people because there there is so much that I know about this institution not just about collections or reference but like who to go to if you need this problem solved, issues like space management and budget management. So I I would look really be interested more in talent appreciation and you using the talent you have. Thank you.

Collections Presentation - August 21, 2025 Library Commission meeting

City Librarian Michael Lambert

Thank you, President Wolf, and good evening, Library Commissioners, Library staff. 

Appreciate the opportunity to bring you an update on the latest collection utilization trends for our robust collections in both digital and physical formats. I'm pleased to report the fiscal year ending June 30th represents another banner year with a third consecutive year of setting an all-time new record for overall circulation. 

Shelley Cocking, our Chief of Collections and Technical Services [CTS], is joined by Alice Chan, our Collections and Technical Services Manager, Cataloging Manager. They are going to be presenting this presentation tonight. And I do want to emphasize that Shelley Cocking as the division chief, she really is the main architect in organizing our efforts to deliver customer focused collections that meet our residents needs for books and the content that they're seeking. Shelley, Alice, take it away...

Shellie Cocking

Thank you, Michael. Yes, I'm Shelley Cocking and this is Alice Chan, our collections and cataloging manager. We're going to talk about collection utilization trends and the library's role as a resource provider. 

This first slide shows you our seven-year circulation trend. And in CTS, we really want to take a look at how things have been changing since we closed for COVID. And you can see the orange part of the bar is for e-collections and the dark blue is for physical collections. During the closure, our e-collection circulation went up a lot. Our physical collection has continued to recover. But if you do look, even though we did have almost half a million increase in circulation, you will see that the increase has slowed a little bit this last year compared to the previous. So what that says to me is that we're now kind of in a new normal rather than in recovery. 

So, my staff has been taking a deep look at the statistics to see what that new normal is and where we should be applying our budget compared to where we did in the past, especially now that it's a slightly smaller budget. We taking a deeper dive. You can see here demand by format. 

Not surprisingly, the physical AV materials is down since 2019. That dark blue bar shows pre-COVID days and the dark orange bar is this last fiscal year. That's not a surprise to us because physical AV has really been going down even before COVID and in nowadays it's even hard sometimes to purchase it. We did see a little bit of a bump up in audio which I'll get to in a little bit. Digital resources are of course being used much heavier compared to fiscal year 2019 across the board. And I'm happy to let you know that books are still in a lot of demand and the usage has actually increased.