New York Public Library "Restructuring" Eliminates 65 Jobs, Total Number Leaving Unclear

Goal of meeting budget challenges and increasing productivity also cuts into institutional memory

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 07/17/2009

• 65 positions lost, 120 created
• Affected staff members can apply
• Loss of institutional memory

This week, the New York Public Library (NYPL) eliminated 65 positions as part of what they describe as a restructuring aimed "to better serve shifting user needs, meet budget challenges, achieve efficiencies and increase productivity," according to spokesman Herb Scher, who was unable to predict how many people ultimately would have to leave the library.
 
Earlier this year, NYPL offered staffers "voluntary separation incentives," which a number accepted, thus allowing for the creation of new positions and opportunities, Scher said. One NYPL insider told LJ that age-level specialists in the boroughs were being eliminated and that the severance package meant several veteran librarians with institutional memory were leaving.

Apply or die
Scher said, "[W]hen the Library this week eliminated 65 positions that were no longer aligned with its strategies, we were able to offer affected staff members a choice from among more than 120 positions now available." He noted that, "All affected employees are meeting with staff services over the coming weeks for help identifying multiple new roles to apply for. Those who choose not to apply for a new position will receive severance pay."
 
He said that NYPL hopes that "every impacted individual will find a new position." However, the library was not yet able to provide a full list of the positions being cut and those being added.

New positions
"The vast majority of new positions opened up by the restructuring are for librarians or information assistants in the Library’s branches and digital spaces, helping to maintain six-day service and increase hours in the busiest branches by moving staff to areas where the demand is highest," Scher told LJ.

He added that other positions support The Catalog, which merges branch and research library holdings, "and expanded digital spaces such as the new wireless reading room" in the library's flagship 42nd Street library, now the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.