Public Comment - July 17, 2025; skeptical comment Commissioner Connie Wolf

General Public Comment 

Jason Gibbs, retired librarian

I wanted to circle back to the previous meeting.

There was an agenda item about programming performance metrics. And um, in that the city librarian expressed a vision that was a prioritization of the experiential over the transactional. I wanted to speak on behalf of the transactional for a moment, which I which we call a public service.

I wanted to tell you about a service called Libhat where people can through the computer chat with librarians anytime that the Main Library is open. I was a very active participant of of that as a librarian and my observation of it was that about 80 to 90% were people asking to renew their library cards, which if you think about it makes sense because the people doing that are people using our eResources who are not coming to the library.

And they are so grateful for those resources and exceptionally grateful for this service of being able to renew their library card without coming into the library.

One thing I noticed about many of these patrons when we open up a patron's record, we can see how many physical books they have checked out and in the vast majority of cases it was zero. They just love the electronic resources which we are glad to provide.

But what I also wanted to get across like you were very proud of the ratings that you were getting for the programming -- this program you can get up to four stars rating of the transaction. It's it's totally voluntary if you do it. And my tendency is to only rate when I'm pissed off and give a bad rating. But we have 93% four stars of people with that service. So, I just wanted to let you know how important public service is and how great San Francisco Public Library staff is at providing it and that it is more than just a transactional institution. Thank you.

AGENDA ITEM NO.3 STRATEGIC PLAN INITIATVE IMPLEMENTATION

Public Comment - Ruben Juarez, Circulation manager Oceanview Branch, SEIU representative

One of the things that I was -- I heard was going to be looking at workforce culture. Commissioners, can you, um, speak to this at some point or ask about this? Looking at the staff handbook, what exactly does that mean? And just playing that out, teasing that out so we understand what that entails.

Additionally, whenever I hear about data-driven decision-making, get a little anxious because I'm not sure what that exactly means as well. I know Randall has done a lot of good work, but I think drilling down to that as well is to see what that means for our members.

I know we just had a wonderful celebration. I know some of the commissioners went to it where we celebrated our workforce. So I think out of respect for our workforce just getting more feedback I think what would go a long way as well is a survey of the workers who do the work. I don't ever really see that part of it so what do we think about these things a survey that addresses to us -- about what are your thoughts. Anonymous is also helpful so that we don't feel anything but clarity and share our viewpoints Thank you. 

 

Peter Warfield, Library Users Association -

The old slogan of the library or mission statement was uh to provide free and equal access to and a list of things including the joys of reading, independent learning, and a number of other things. 

You've completely gotten rid of the old slogan for this project's mission, for the library's mission statement. And it says basically connecting communities with other communities and learning not independent learning and not individuals and nothing about reading or about books or other materials that the library has in many cases in very good abundance and variety and depth. 

I'm concerned that there is very little here specific about what you're doing with respect to what I use the library for. What about the collections? What about the tremendous value of periodicals and newspapers? What about guides for people to understand how to access those and what they are and what the value of those is? What about when there's a long waiting list? Providing access as in some colleges having reference copies so speople will always at least be able to have a good chance of seeing a recent book or a popular book or a newly popular book and at least have a look at it because the current system with long waits for the limited uh number of materials. You might not see a brand new book that you might be very interested in for a long time. 

And collections management, collection optimization, what does that mean? To me, that's hiding getting rid of books and printed materials. What does it mean? Specifics needed. [Applause] 

Jason Gibbs -

I'd like to applaud the projects as they were presented. I think they're all good. Um, but I wanted to focus on employee engagement. And when that was spoken of, it was talking about acknowledging accomplishments, it's actually an accomplishment to open and close a library every day. 

And I feel like the day-to-day work is not acknowledged. It it doesn't it's not flashy. It's not it doesn't seem you know that doesn't attract a lot of attention but being there to serve the public to provide a safe space a welcoming space a space where people have put thought into the organization of the collection.

That is not acknowledged and I have to say that um most of the staff feel like their work is not known. I think it would go a long way if that were to change. The morale, in fact, I mean you go in and everybody seems very happy because they're happy to serve the public but the morale is very low and I feel like that's maybe the most important thing to address is staff morale. and you the workplace culture. 

I agree with Ruben that yeah need to really focus on what does the change to the staff handbook mean? And I also agree with him that a staff survey would be very important. Because I feel like it's not that we've put the cart before the horse, it's that the cart and the horse are not connected and and a lot more work needs to be done along those lines. Thank you.

Commissioner Connie Wolf:

When I hear that we have projects you want to do and you're going to do -- twentys seven new ones this year -- and we're not adding an enormous number of staff. We we're almost setting ourselves up for failure. Because what is the baseline of what we do? I'm kind of touching on what everybody said here so I just I'm looking at you at different points but you know how do we identify what is core to who we are and you know there are going to be staff who are just so like this is my project and I'm going to keep doing it but there has to be a a shared sense of how we can do things better and that certain things may need to sunset or completely be completely rethought and those criteria have to be in place because as new projects come online, they need to be subjected to criteria for analysis. And also so many of us have started programs and you have a vision of what you think it's going to be and it never is that and you have to be nimble to move and adjust. So I just want to really emphasize the need to learn from mistakes but also the sunsetting focus. 

A couple other sort of um summary comments. I did get a sense from the different comments and questions today. I think there's a little concern about the number of programs we're trying to accomplish and I think sometimes less is more and even twenty seven feels just huge in one fiscal year. So um and especially if you're not sunsetting, you don't have plans to sunset. You're just going to create the criteria to sunset. So I think we need to be incredibly cautious and realistic and honest. I think you use the word honest. I mean having that sense of intellectual honesty about what we're really doing and not trying to just shove it in and saying we'veaccomplished this because we can move it from a yellow to a green to a red or whatever to beige. Beige. Who wants beige? Um, so I really encourage that. I do want to then just say that I I think we're just really really excited about the partnership with what you're doing,