Jason Gibbs public comment May 21, 2026 meeting

Grok / AI has this to say about Mayor Daniel Lurie’s vision of the library:

Lurie’s approach appears to be supportive stewardship rather than a transformative overhaul: he appoints capable leaders, funds and promotes popular literacy programs, and publicly values the institution as part of San Francisco’s civic fabric.

The Mayor’s vision is of 2026, not 2030, and is backed up by overwhelming support for the library and its staff in surveys and at the ballot box. People like the library they have.

In 2019 I was interviewed on the public radio 99 Percent Invisible episode entitled "Weeding Is Fundamental." I worked at SFPL in 1996 during the scandal when famed author Nicholson Baker wrote an article for the New Yorker calling out the library for hurriedly dumping hundreds of thousands of books.

On the broadcast I presented a different perspective than Baker’s. I am certain that the book dumping happened, but not within my department. I saw no evidence that City Librarian Ken Dowlin, who was fired from his job a short time later, ordered the dumping.

I also noted that there was a real need to continually review the collection and withdraw books. The issue in 1996 is that this happened in a hurried, thoughtless manner. I told a story of redemption - how I and others on the Library’s Collections Committee, since disbanded by the City Librarian, worked on creating guidance and training to assist librarians in managing their collections. I felt sure that our days of book dumping were over.

You may recall a January 2024 Commission Meeting when you were introduced to and had a lively debate about the new strategic plan. Memorably, commissioner Susan Mall, before she was metaphorically thrown off the dais, noted that the plan did not match up with the facts on the ground, specifically meaning the physical space of the Main Library. Surprisingly, in the next and final iteration of the strategic plan a Latin X Affinity Center for the Main quietly appeared.

You all never uttered a word about that Center - however it is at the heart of SFPL’s new era of book dumping. The City Librarian aims to destroy 13 ranges of open shelving and nearly 20,000 books must go to create this new space. This is valuable open browseable shelf space in a building with vast numbers of books kept in unbrowsable closed stack shelving.

You should review the Appendix accompanying the final strategic plan. It included interviews with Spanish speakers in the community about their service needs. They “suggested that demographic data be used to place libraries where there are underserved communities. They said there are many services at the Main, but most other libraries do not have the same offerings.”

 This center is evidently being created as a step to “right size” the collection. At the national level under our current president the Forest Service is cutting 57 of 77 region offices resulting in the layoffs of thousands. They call this "right-sizing." Great minds think alike.

Public Comment by an Anonymous Citizen - August 20, 2026

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT

Thank you very much, Commissioners. 

Speaking as an anonymous citizen: Stop the hate. Stop the ignorance. Don't give money to the Friends of the Library. Don't accept money from the Friends of the Library. 

I hope to make two points today and I will present them in reverse from the  natural order simply because the second part provides some context. It is a justly famous poem, a sonnet from Percy Bysshe Shelley from 1818. It is considered one of Shelley's masterworks because it is so successful on so many different levels. It progresses from the quotidian to the most profound perspective on the human condition. And it does this with a quotation inside a quotation. 

When you recite it for children, you change your voice because it dramatizes the progression and the change in perspective that is crucial to the appreciation of the poem. Beginning: 

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The other point, the preliminary point really is a couple of principles that we used to call kindergarten wisdom. We are fortunate if we learned them from our mother as I did, but we certainly learned them in kindergarten because that is what kindergarten is for. It is sometimes possible to forget them. But in fact, they are the enduring wisdom that we associate from kindergarten and continue to conserve within us. 

The first is if you are nice to others, they will be nice to you. The second is you only win when everyone wins. Now, aren't those nice basic principles that we all learned in kindergarten? Thank you very much. 

PUBLIC COMMENT ON APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Yes. Good afternoon, Commissioners. 

Stop the hate. Stop the ignorance. Don't give money to the Friends of the Library. Don't accept money from the Friends of the Library. 

Completely omitted from these minutes is an introduction where your affairs analyst told you it is illegal for you to respond to public comment. History should preserve that you allowed yourself to be told that. 

Under general public comment, Mr. Warfield spoke for three minutes and these minutes represent a distorted view of his first minute 10 seconds and stops. Dr. Gibbs also spoke for three minutes and these minutes present a distorted view of his first 1 minute and 10 seconds and stops. Particularly significant in his case because he had some important things to say about those who maintain the standard of service. 

Artificial Intelligence has scrambled the Commissioners' comments for several meetings and it is appropriate that we have a characteristic example here. I direct your attention to page four where the Commissioners themselves discuss the social services presentation. What Mr. Bolander was said is completely omitted. What is ascribed to Commissioner Bolander was from Commissioner Menon. What was ascribed to Commissioner Menon was from Kenniston. And what was ascribed to Kennistn was actually from Lopez. 

This means that no human being even looked at these minutes. Even more significantly, after the end of these minutes, there is a separate document entitled addendum with these speaker summaries that I submitted. 

When did you decide this? After having no such document for three months, did you decide addendum means include? Did you decide this is illegal? Should we assume that you have illegal secret meetings where you decide all these things? Or should we assume that you are mute automatons, zombies who passively accept anything put in front of you? You receive no public input on your decisions because you have no opinions and you exercise no judgment.

We know why. It is because you feel the need to do blatantly illegal things and you don't want to admit you're aware of them. Do you think the city fathers told themselves that they needed seven citizens to form a Library Commission that will receive no information, have no diverse opinions because they exercised no judgment? And no, they thought there would be democratically informed opinions, public decisions, and public access. The question is answered. Not only do you have no opinions and no public access, you have no competence or professionalism because you pay no attention to anything you're doing. None at all.