Providence PL Cuts Jobs

The Providence Public Library (PPL) announced July 16 that it was losing 21 staff, including seven librarians and 14 support personnel. Of that number, 16 accepted a voluntary severance buyout, but five—two librarians and three part-time support staff—were laid off.

In addition to serving as the city's library, PPL, which was established in 1875 as a private, nonprofit corporation, also is the Statewide Reference Resource Center (SRRC), and Director Dale Thompson asserts that the $880,110 provided by the state to run the service is inadequate.

Therefore, all the personnel cuts are from the Resource Center staff. The Central Library, which has trimmed hours from 61 to 48, closed between July 17–July 23 "to reorganize library materials and provide staff training." Branches remained open.

Thompson told LJ that state and city funding are both deficient. PPL inventoried its funding sources to determine how it could maintain service levels and discovered it had spent increasing amounts of its private funds to support the SRRC, which is supposed to be funded by the state.

"The trustees decided to align PPL's services with the funding source," Thompson said, "so we're providing $880,000 worth of service to the Resource Center and taking the private money we were using to subsidize it and putting it into our branches." Rhode Island claims it doesn't have the resources to provide additional assistance.

The initial June announcement of the pending cuts generated a severe backlash among staff and patrons, who organized a group called Providence Public Library Defense (www.provlibdefense.org). The group held a July 9 protest that drew 200 staffers, patrons, and supporters; a petition requesting PPL administrators to reconsider the plan gained 2000 signatures. The staff's rancor is based in part on Thompson's decision to cut staff while she and other top administrators continue to draw hefty salaries. Thompson's $136,957 salary in 2002 was more than the state governor's $105,194 annual wages.

Thomson said that PPL is "committed to seeing that all of the staff is adequately compensated," adding that PPL's reference librarians are the second-highest-paid in the state. Salaries for administrators were determined by consultants, who looked at comparable pay at nonprofit organizations as well as libraries.

Staffers say they were not included in the planning. A staffer contended to LJ that administrators "really have no plan except to wrench things around. When the professional MLS staff asks, 'How well is this going to work,' we are told, 'We haven't figured that out yet.'" Critics feel that the Central Library "is being dumbed-down."