Some won't "shhh" as librarians shifted

Tom Petersen and Michelle Hillyer are no less passionate about the people who run their community library than Seahawks fans are about their team.

So when the Richmond Beach couple learned about a reorganization plan that would trade the managing librarian to other branches, they campaigned to bring her back.

Anina Coder-Sill, a local girl of 16 when she started working at the library, has stayed for 32 years and is viewed by patrons as the heart and soul of the Richmond Beach Library. And, as someone who read stories to Petersen and Hillyer's three children when they were little, sometimes holding one in her lap, she's practically part of the family.

Bowing to a petition, phone calls and meetings with patrons, the King County Library System has agreed to return Coder-Sill to her home community as assistant manager of the Shoreline and Richmond Beach libraries.

But that hasn't placated patrons angry about an administrative change that has managers and other workers splitting their time between libraries.

It may sound like a modest tweak in the nation's second-busiest library system, but many book lovers say it is destroying long-established relationships and the sense of community that libraries provide. Patrons from libraries in Issaquah, Vashon Island, Mercer Island and Black Diamond are among those who have spoken out against the reorganization that has occurred in some, but not all, libraries.

On a recent visit to the Richmond Beach Library, Petersen said, he didn't see a single staffer he knew. "Now we have people who don't greet us by name, who don't know what we read. That's a decline in service, isn't it?"

The organization is putting 42 of the system's 43 libraries into "clusters" of two to four branches each. The Bellevue Regional Library will continue to stand alone.

System director Bill Ptacek said the change is making library administration more efficient and flexible — and is helping workers teach or learn new skills. For instance, he said, a Lake Hills librarian who has written books about working with preschoolers also will work at Mercer Island and Newport Way, strengthening those libraries' children's programs.

"This will let our staff really flourish," Ptacek said.

The library system must become more efficient in the face of growing demand, a major construction program and voter-imposed limits on property-tax collections, he said.

In the Shoreline-Richmond Beach cluster, workers started going back and forth between libraries Jan. 1. Richmond Beach workers head to Shoreline one day a week, and Shoreline staffers go to the smaller branch once every week or two.

"There are still a lot of the same faces," said Judy Weathers, managing librarian of the new cluster.

The system reorganization began in 2001, and workers in two groups of South and Southeast King County libraries started splitting their time between branches in 2003. Ptacek said about half of the county's libraries already were grouped into clusters last September, when he announced a plan to group nearly all the remaining branches.

Union opposition

Along with some patrons, the union representing library workers, Washington State Council of County and City Employees Local 1857, is battling reorganization, which it says is disrupting workers' lives and compromising service.

Patrons of libraries in the oldest cluster — Maple Valley, Black Diamond and Covington — have had mixed reactions.

Pat Boogaerts, president of Friends of the Maple Valley Library, said librarians from other branches bring strengths that the more familiar staffers may not have.

"I think diversity is always a good thing, personally," Boogaerts said. "It helps when you share and you get different perspectives from different people. ... I think they need to give it a chance to work."

Black Diamond Friends of the Library President Cory Olson disagrees. "Now I'm a stranger," he said. "That sense of connection isn't there that was there before. It's missed. Once you disperse those people, you can never put it back together."

"What clustering does is turn everyone into a substitute," said Richmond Beach patron Hillyer.

Coder-Sill, who was transferred from Richmond Beach to the new Bothell-Kenmore-Lake Forest Park cluster, said she's grateful that Ptacek honored her request to return to the library where patrons are her neighbors.

She doesn't understand how clustering will benefit patrons. During her three decades at one library, she said, "You gradually know people's families. I've watched children grow up, I've watched them have babies. I've watched grandchildren. They know my children and my parents because my parents lived in Richmond Beach."

Last week, an employee who worked with Coder-Sill for 16 years resigned because she was upset about the way reorganization was carried out, the librarian said.

Backlash coming?

The controversy may represent the biggest problem Ptacek has faced since he took over the library system in 1989.

By making a major policy change without buy-in from the two major constituencies — patrons and employees — critics wonder if future bond and levy issues might be jeopardized.

"He's lost his perspective about what's important," said Mercer Island Library patron Gary Robinson. "What's important are not management systems. What's important are the people in the neighborhoods."

But there is a bright side to the controversy, Ptacek said: that patrons have such strong attachment to their libraries and librarians.

A survey last summer showed that people "absolutely adore their library," Ptacek said. The consultants who did the survey "couldn't find anything better — Nordstrom, Starbucks, Costco — we did even better than Costco, if you can believe it."

And although the consultant's published report didn't show responses for individual libraries, Ptacek said libraries already in clusters were just as popular as those that weren't.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com