Editorial: The Atlanta Lessons

There are no easy lessons to extract from the tragic events that have brought chaos to the Atlanta Fulton County Public Library (AFPL). Still, Norman Oder's troubling "Can Atlanta Fulton PL Emerge from Turmoil?" (pp. 54–57) demands that we try to understand what went wrong, and what ought to be done about it. The people of Atlanta and Fulton County, GA, pay $36 per capita for AFPL. They deserve better.

The situation has deteriorated since 1983 when voters who thought they were voting to strengthen the library turned its governance over to Fulton County. The election brought a new, appointed, unaccountable board of 17 members. It brought the chaos of racially tinged personnel decisions and a micromanaged cacophony of political agendas that just culminated in a $23.4 million damage award to eight white librarians who filed a reverse discrimination suit.

A parade of distinguished American librarians has directed AFPL (Ron Dubberly, Marilyn Mason, Carlton Rochelle, Ella Gaines Yates, Julie Hunter, and others). They left a strong record of library progress. The comment from current director Mary Lee Hooker—that AFPL was moribund for decades—is grandiose and wrong.

Actions of former Board Chair William McClure, who was apparently hell-bent to change the racial mix of AFPL's central library management, and to reallocate the AFPL budget according to his view of equity, may have caused much of the current chaos. The board still decides every major management question, decisions made by library directors in nearly every other large library in America.

An obvious lesson from Atlanta is that micromanagement by the board doesn't work. When micromanagement is faulty, and personnel decisions are made arbitrarily, it works even less. When resources are allocated with insufficient planning, micromanagement not only fails, it brings chaos. Add race-based decisions, actions that may be racist no matter which race is involved, and things get worse.

Finally, add to the AFPL mix the troubles that can afflict large systems created by merging smaller jurisdictions. Fulton County's large and small suburbs and Atlanta's urban neighborhoods contain huge economic, ethnic, and tax base disparities.

The board has never been able to resolve issues of equity between the more affluent, mostly white northern Fulton County and the poorer, mostly black southern half. The library board, appointed by a complex formula, has no constituency of its own. Loyalties too often seem to be to the community from which each member is appointed.

While library jurisdictions like AFPL's often work well, when board politicians see library resources as a prize to deliver to the communities they represent, allocation decisions become political. Such arbitrary resource allocation fans the flames of disparity and perceived inequity and brings out community rivalries that can tear the library system apart. In the process it undermines staff morale and the unity at the library.

It will take careful, sensitive work and involvement in the local politics of each community AFPL serves to restore confidence. It will take competent, careful management by professionals to restore confidence in AFPL decision making. Professional library managers should manage, with the board providing solid policy guidance. Both librarians and board, forcing each to get out to those constituent communities and their voters, must do the political work. This kind of grass-roots work for the entire library system has been neglected.

At the beginning of the U.S. public library movement, librarians and trustees went to great lengths to "protect" and insulate libraries from local politics. The lesson from Atlanta is the opposite. It will take very deep, sensitive, ongoing attention to neighborhood and community politics by staff and board together to make AFPL work right again. That work is too important to be left only to politicians, even when they are on the board.

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