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.

Thoughtful Navigator - only a euphemism?

Jason Gibbs - comment at the March 19, 2026 Mid-Year Progress Report

I long had trouble conceptualizing the euphemism "Thoughtful Navigator." So I turned to AI and got a very inspiring answer from Grok. Here's a long quote. 

It's someone who treats navigation as an ethical and intellectual practice rather than a mechanical task. They plan rigorously but remain flexible. The map is not the territory. Anticipate ripple effects. What happens two steps or two decades downstream. 

Listen to the environment and to other people instead of imposing a preconceived route. 

Find beauty and meeting in the process itself, not just in arrival. 

You see this quality in the quiet sailor who double-checks the log at 3:00 a.m., the leader who asks, "What are we missing?" before committing a team, the parent who guides a child without controlling them, or the researcher who follows curiosity wherever it leads while still keeping the bigger question in view. 

In short, to be a thoughtful navigator is to steer, not by force or fear, but by attentive presence. It is the art of moving wisely when no one else can see the full picture yet. 

Vision 2030 purports to apply this to a library service, but it should apply even more toward leadership culture of the San Francisco Public Library where everything is top down. Everything is very siloed. They wallow in numbers. Big numbers good, small numbers bad. And in fact, they only know staff and their contributions through numbers. And of course, nobody ever considers the possibility of the future harm their visions may cause. 

Moving to one of the specifics in the Vision 2030 report, there was a mention of training. The staff training and development committee Stadcom [The Staff Development Committee] has been in hibernation for a while. It consists of a chair and nobody else. There's apparently no funding for staff to attend workshops or sessions at conferences. The library cannot provide coverage to staff to attend the trainings they want within the library and city or even provide adequate time to take online or pre-recorded training. 

So staff asks, they continue to ask, "How can the library support us in attending professional conferences and taking professional level workshops so we can stay informed and relevant?" They also don't understand what it means when you report says of staff development projects that "two are in flight and two are completed." 

It's actually rather kind of traumatizing to some of us to hear in the building-in-flight because during our service as Disaster Service Workers, we were constantly being told that we were building the airplane as we were flying it. And what that meant is we were in the middle of a huge, confusing anxiety producing mess. 

But the library is not in a disaster emergency. It has had established systems that worked and these have been replaced only by a vision.