Library Staff Raise Concerns at Panel Discussion

By Dan Dou and Samuel Y. Weinstock, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Jennifer S Shi

Janet Katz, a senior research librarian at the Harvard Law School Library, speaks about the recent cost-cutting measures at Harvard libraries. She was one of the speakers at the Harvard Forum on the Future of Libraries on Tuesday.

At a panel discussion on the reorganization of Harvard’s library system, faculty members and library staff members voiced many of the concerns pertaining to librarians’ job security, the future quality of the library system, and communication and commitment from Mass. Hall that have all plagued the reorganization effort since the January announcement that the restructuring would involve staffing cuts.

During the discussion on Tuesday, University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 said that there had been “a series of catastrophic misunderstandings” during the reorganization process but assured the crowd that “those of us in the library take this [dialogue] very seriously.”
He said that “the impression [among staff] that there would be sudden, brutal, [and] massive layoffs” was not true. At this point, he said, administrators “don’t have any idea of what the size of the staff will be.”

More than four weeks after announcing that the library would shrink its workforce without revealing how many workers it would cut nor how it would select them, the University offered long-time employees a voluntary retirement package in February.

History professor Lisa M. McGirr called upon the University to think beyond financial cares when making decisions about the size of the staff.

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“Harvard is, and should continue to be, more than that,” McGirr said. “Efficiency can be a good thing and doesn’t require layoffs—we should proceed with great care and caution.”

But the discussion on Tuesday covered topics beside the looming threat of involuntary layoffs which has sparked numerous protests on campus throughout the semester.

Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers Director Bill Jaeger, who was unable to attend the forum, said that he perceives the University’s message to have moved away from the subject of layoffs since the “stark announcement of January 19.”

“I think the ongoing conversation among the library staff is changing and is less concerned about avoiding layoffs and more concerned about other parts of the library organizational design that are also really important,” Jaeger said.

The conversation on Tuesday followed that tack.

Darnton acknowledged that stakeholders are concerned about service quality from the library and said he shared those worries.

“I was upset to see that services had declined in many ways,” he said.

But he said that the University’s support for the libraries has not decreased; if it had, he said, he would have resigned.

Janet Katz, a librarian on the panel, said she was specifically anxious about the cataloging of volumes in the near future.

“I know how excellent HOLLIS is,” Katz said about the library’s online catalog system, “and I just hate to think it would become any less.”

Panelist and classics professor Richard F. Thomas said he had been disappointed by the level of faculty and librarian involvement in the decision-making process thus far. “We need more than just conversations between the people who are putting [in] the system and librarians,” he said. “We need actual input from librarians who are willing to give it and have the expertise to give it. I think librarians and faculty embrace change, but that change has to be change that doesn’t diminish the quality of the libraries in all media.”

—Staff writer Dan Dou can be reached at ddou@college,harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.

Labor Notes Article on Harvard Libraries

Harvard Layoffs Threaten the University’s Backbone: Libraries

by Joshua Koritz | Fri, 03/30/2012 - 3:17pm

Harvard has 73 libraries that comprise the largest private library collection in the world. The library system attracts researchers from around the world, a major draw for attracting the best faculty in all fields. From ancient maps to personal effects to photography collections, not to mention millions of books and journals in multiple languages, the materials of Harvard’s libraries are the keystone supporting billions of dollars in research grants awarded to the Harvard community each year.


Such a large collection is unusable without librarians and library staff to catalog materials and help researchers sift through the mountains of information. Most research using the Harvard library would be impossible without the aid of library workers.


Yet the Harvard administration feels its libraries are a drag on finances, as they do not directly create revenue. Library closings and staff reductions have been part of a continued corporatization of the university, begun under former President Larry Summers (who later was appointed to head President Obama’s National Economic Council). The focus on revenue and serving corporate ends has accelerated under current President Drew Faust’s recession-bound tenure.


In January, Harvard called a “library town hall” to announce that “the library workforce will be smaller than it is now”—by July. The news fell like a bombshell on close to 900 employees, both union members and managers, who still do not know how many people will lose their jobs.

Jeff Booth, a library assistant for over 25 years, said, “It affects you physically. You think that the prospect of losing a job is just a mental thing, but it makes me physically sick when I think that in six months I may not know how I’ll be able to help my children.”


Harvard libraries have already seen layoffs. In 2009, the administration laid off more than 275 workers. In every department, workers were asked to take on more tasks. Harvard claimed poverty as the recession caused its endowment to fall from $36 billion to a mere $25 billion. But in fiscal year 2011 the endowment grew 21.4 percent to $32 billion.

Library for the 21st Century

Harvard set the goal in 2009 of “creating a library for the 21st century.” Many assume this means removing books because “everything is online now.” However, more books are published in print now than ever before and often electronic resources require just as much labor to provide as physical resources.


The role of a library is constantly changing, but it continues to require substantial human labor.

Harvard’s present library system grew as schools and departments created their own libraries in order to focus service on a specific community.


The transition emphasizes centralization of “shared and technical services” such as interlibrary loan, cataloguing, and preservation. But in the past “shared services” has meant fewer jobs and bigger workloads.


The 2009 layoffs hit libraries particularly hard; 21 percent of library staff either took early retirement or were laid off. Workloads increased for those left.


Ed Dupree, 57, an assistant librarian for 19 years, describes the changes: “My workload has doubled since the layoffs of ’09, and gotten more complex. I do my old duties plus those of my former supervisor, who took the forced retirement. My department is backed up and service has inevitably declined.”


The service problems mean longer waits for materials, frustrating searches undertaken without aid or appropriate resources, and in some cases materials being mis-categorized and effectively lost forever.


Another longtime worker complained of the dumbing down of his job since 2009: “Many of the meaningful tasks of my work have been outsourced.”

How to Respond?

At the next meeting of the library transition team, the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, a rank-and-file group of members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers/AFSCME 3650 (HUCTW), met the downsizers with a picket of 20.


The No Layoffs campaign reached out to local media and the Cambridge City Council. The Student Labor Action Movement and Occupy Harvard took up the cause and formed close working relations with the campaign.


Even without official union endorsement, more than 200 workers, students, faculty, and community members demonstrated against layoffs on February 9. SEIU and UNITE HERE (the second and third biggest unions on campus) were invited and sent unofficial messages of support.


Three days later, Occupy Harvard began a week-long occupation of the main undergraduate library. Students camped out in the café area and used the space to host discussions with library staff and the No Layoffs Campaign.


The HUCTW leadership, which champions a policy of jointness with management, never reached out to any of these groups. Instead, it met with library transition leaders “to get more information and express our serious concerns. …In our union’s experience, it is nearly always possible to meet the same ends without any involuntary layoffs.”


The HUCTW contract is set to expire June 30, yet HUCTW officials insist that layoffs are not a primary concern for upcoming negotiations. HUCTW members have no way of challenging this outlook except through outside channels, as twice-yearly membership meetings rarely turn out more than 1 percent of the membership.

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Joshua Koritz is a member of HUCTW who has worked in the Harvard library system for six years. You can show your support for Harvard library workers by sending a letter of protest to president@harvard.edu with a copy to huctw.info@huctw.org and harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com.

The Profit Margin of a Library: Harvard’s Corporatization

The Profit Margin of a Library: Harvard’s Corporatization

By Sandra Y.L. Korn

Two weeks ago, Harvard University Library administrators held a town hall meeting to announce major, imminent changes to the structure of the Harvard University Library. Helen Shenton, executive director of the Library, announced to a bewildered and shocked audience of library employees that the restructuring would involve “voluntary and involuntary layoffs,” and that the workforce “would be smaller.”

In the next week, both Harvard University President Drew Faust and University Provost Alan Garber sent out emails to the entire Harvard student body explaining the planned changes to the library system. Faust described the importance of making “strategic decisions about the digital future” and reforming the libraries to move into the technological age. Garber discussed the ways in which the restructuring would allow innovations to benefit library users.

Read more »

Open Letter to HUCTW Leadership from the No Layoffs Campaign

The following is a letter sent to the HUCTW leadership (Bill Jaeger, Tasha Williams, Donene Williams, Carrie Barbash, info@huctw.org, Laura Ebenstein, Pam Mullaney, Lynnwang Delacey) on Friday, March 9, 2012.  As of today, we have not received a reply.  Any response to this we plan on publishing in its entirety here as well.

Dear HUCTW members, elected leaders, and organizers,

We, the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, consisting of many HUCTW activists and rank and file members are sending this letter to urge action and cooperation in fighting library layoffs.

On January 19^th, 2012 Harvard announced that they intended to reduce the Library workforce. While you began your discussions with Harvard about the downsizing, the No Layoffs campaign started a public campaign to draw attention to Harvard’s plan to lay workers off.  We:

·         Rallied against a Harvard “Community Conversation” with Occupy Harvard students and concerned community members (Jan. 25)
·         Rallied/protested with 100+ union members, students, faculty and community members Feb. 9^th in Harvard Square
·         Picketed on Feb. 16^th in support of Occupy Harvard site in Lamont (see OCCUPY BOSTON link below)http://www.occupyboston.org/2012/02/15/layoffs-campaign-picket-harvard/
·         Reached out to the Cambridge City Council for support opposing Harvard layoffs/bad business practice
·         Engaged with Harvard’s SLAM movement (Student Labor Action Movement) and OCCUPY Harvard movement
·         Reached out to media
·         Initiated petitions to support Research Librarians and to oppose Layoffs
·     Picketed with scores of supporters on March 1, during a snow shower.

Union members want coordinated, united action against these layoffs.  We all want to see HUCTW mobilizing its membership and working with the No Layoffs Campaign, SLAM, Occupy Harvard, UNITE-HERE and SEIU.

We welcome the recent open letter and that you have just announced some outreach but we seek clarification on how exactly you see the plan unfolding. The open letter described the problems with Harvard's plan, but did not describe what our response will be. We call on you (as leaders of HUCTW) to initiate and support visible actions and aggressively establish coalitions with other unions on campus.  We hope that you will expand on your written communications with members by calling an emergency membership meeting with quorum so that we can plan a campaign.

Our publicity and all this exposure has had an impact on Harvard. Bill Murphy has admitted as much. This is evidenced in the administration's attacks on OCCUPY Harvard’s free speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmdtfKAtdfY  and by their refusal to even meet with staff (canceling an open meeting and making it an online chat).

We ask you to:

·         Call an emergency, campus-wide membership meeting (with quorum) to plan out how HUCTW will fight this round of layoffs
·         Organize visibility actions and encourage HUCTW members to attend
·         Support No Layoffs events and initiatives
·         Reach out to work with OCCUPY Harvard and SLAM students on campus
·         Build active coalitions with other unions on campus
·     Immediately set a date for the largest possible rally of HUCTW members against management's threats to cut the jobs of library workers.

We all agree that a Library Reorganization must not result in job loss.  You already know that another round of support staff layoffs (after the 21% reduction in 2009) will result in ruined lives, will have a horrible impact on the Harvard community and result in a significant loss in union dues and power.  We can save jobs if we work together to mobilize the members.

In Solidarity,

-The No Layoffs Campaign

Boston Occupier article on 3/1 No Layoffs Picket

Harvard Community Protests Library Cuts

By Julie Walsh on 3/12/12 • Categorized as Local News

photo credit: Matthew Shochat

Across the country, March 1st protest actions tended to concentrate on the debt-ridden plight of students. On the snowy Thursday evening at Harvard University, the focus was somewhat different.
Fifty protesters gathered in front of Holyoke Center in Cambridge to rally against the university’s secretive, top-down handling of the restructuring of Harvard’s libraries, including plans to cut a substantial number of its 930 full-time employees. Rank-and-file members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) were joined by students, faculty, alumni, and participants in Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard.

Read more »

HUCTW Leadership Open Letter on Library Layoffs

Library System in Jeopardy

By Carrie Barbash, Alex Chisholm, and Bill Jaeger

Published: Monday, March 05, 2012

Since 2009, Harvard has been reorganizing its 73 libraries into a consolidated entity, the Harvard Library. Library staff members are deeply concerned that some of the proposed changes, including workforce reductions, will result in serious threats to the integrity of the Library. We worry that if the voices of staff are not heard and the reorganization continues on its present course, thousands of books and materials could be lost, service standards could drop to unacceptable levels, and human relationships that are key to research, curriculum, and collection development could be severed.

In recent communications, Harvard Library leaders have implied that staffing levels need to be reduced to put us in line with our peers, asserting that Harvard spends more on its library than other universities. But HL leaders have not provided the community with any data to support the assumption that this discrepancy is caused by “overstaffing.” We would expect Harvard Library to be more expensive to operate than its peers—it is larger, with a spectacularly broad and unique collection that requires sophisticated maintenance. It has significant offsite holdings, and offers deluxe services such as HD Transfer and “Scan-and-Deliver.”

Additionally, since 2009 (which is when the data comparing Harvard to other schools were gathered), Harvard Library staffing levels have dropped by more than 20 percent. More recently, the University offered eligible library workers an early-retirement package. With the threat of possible layoffs heavy in the air, many long-time staff members will likely take the package and leave. Harvard Library cannot afford to lose any more skilled workers. Across the campus, librarians and library assistants report serious quality problems resulting from understaffing and overreliance on poorly-considered cost-cutting measures.

In order to reduce labor costs, HL increasingly sends books and materials to external vendors for outsourced cataloging. The results are alarming: outsourced materials are frequently cataloged with mistakes in title, author, subject, or call number. Since staff members often do not have time or permission to make corrections, the errors have led to thousands of materials becoming undiscoverable. The materials reside physically on shelves or in the Depository, but patrons are unable to locate or retrieve them. Precious books, films, journals, documents, and other treasured resources are being lost.

In all library departments, students and temps provide valuable assistance to overworked permanent staff, but dependency on short-term staff actually creates more work. Although temporary workers seem low-cost, the amount of time permanent staff spend training them on sophisticated tasks, and checking and correcting their work, cancels out most or all of the savings. When a short-term worker leaves and is replaced, this process begins all over again.

Staffing shortages are also affecting circulation, with some departments reporting 30 percent staffing reductions since 2009. For smaller libraries, this often means that there is only one person on duty, and tasks like searching for missing items and preparing materials for transfer necessarily get set aside to help patrons. Staff regularly skip lunch and breaks, or work when they are sick, because there is no one else to cover for them.

Conservation technicians talk about how a deep understanding of their particular library’s collections allows them to know which of the rare, fragile materials need attention. Their unique expertise and cross-departmental relationships often enable them to repair items on the same day the work is requested. But as this skilled group becomes scarce, technicians struggle to maintain high levels of quality.

Librarians and assistants regularly work on projects that span departments and require advanced skills. Often these projects fall outside of official job descriptions, but they are vital to patrons’ efforts to carry out research, develop curricula, teach courses, and diagnose patients. If staffing levels are cut further or jobs are over-simplified, these critical functions will suffer.

No one person can claim to have the authoritative model for the great Library of the 21st century. But there is only one effective approach to such a major reorganizational effort: the process needs to be transparent and participatory. If the cautionary cries of library staff about severe understaffing and quality concerns are not heard and heeded, the Harvard Library Transition will not be successful.

One staff member sums up the urgency of the moment beautifully: “There is such a breadth and depth of knowledge within the library support staff that could easily be used to make the new Harvard Library a reality and a rousing success without cutting a single job. We are already at bare-bones staffing level in my library, and I hear the same thing from everyone I talk to. Don't fire us. You need us. Put us to work, give us new tasks, new ideas, new technology—we are knowledge junkies, we love drowning ourselves in books, media, anything containing the written or spoken word, and we can do anything you throw at us… I enjoy learning. For its own sake. That's what makes a librarian (or in my case, a library paraprofessional) tick. That's what I love. And I'm not alone, not by a long shot. Everyone I work with shares the same passion.”

Carrie Barbash, Alex Chisholm, and Bill Jaeger are organizers with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, which represents close to half the Library workforce at Harvard. This piece was written with the assistance of unionized library staff and non-unionized librarians from across Harvard.

Library, HUCTW to Negotiate Through “Joint Councils”

By DAN DOU and SAMUEL Y. WEINSTOCK, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Friday, February 24, 2012

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers will form three “joint councils” with Harvard Library management to negotiate the library system’s reorganization, according to a University spokesperson.

HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger said that union leadership proposed the formation of the councils late last week in an effort to improve communication between HUCTW and the University.

“We’ve been frustrated that there wasn’t more serious discussion going on about some of the crucial transition details and that there wasn’t better opportunity for our members to participate in thinking about how to build a greater library,” Jaeger said.

The reorganization has been a point of contention between the University and library workers since Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton announced on Jan. 19 that the library workforce would be trimmed down as the University moves forward with restructuring its library system.

A University spokesperson said that the three councils will be formed in accordance with the union’s contract with the University and will meet regularly starting in early March and through June 2012.

Joint councils will be formed to represent the Access Services, Technical Services, and Preservation and Digital Services departments, Jaeger said. The councils will be comprised of eight to ten people with equal numbers of union and Harvard Library representatives.

In addition, Jaeger said that HUCTW is currently working on an “open letter” that will be circulated through the Harvard community next week to garner sympathy for the union.

“We think that if faculty and students can see as our members see...they’re going to be concerned about deteriorating quality in the current library,” Jaeger said.

The letter will discuss the union’s concerns that the libraries are already understaffed and that outsourcing of services such as cataloguing might weaken the library system, Jaeger said.

“We want to pay particular attention to the question of what are the minimum staffing levels needed to have a great library,” Jaeger said. “We think that our community is very much in danger of not really having a world-class library.”

On Wednesday, HUCTW leadership sent an email to inform its members of the formation of the joint councils. Library assistant Karen L. O’Brien, a HUCTW representative, expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the councils, saying that the University has provided the union few details thus far.

O’Brien said that despite numerous attempts from workers to give input to the reorganization, the University has been nonresponsive and “close-mouthed.”

Jeffrey W. Booth, also a library assistant and HUCTW member, said the councils would do nothing to mitigate the threat of layoffs, calling it a “regressive step.”

“They’re extremely ineffectual and often only take up minor issues,” Booth said. “I’m sure Harvard management is so happy.”

Booth, dissatisfied with the formation of councils, said that his union needs to respond more visibly to the University’s recent announcement. He suggested that the union conduct inclusive, membership-wide meetings that could lead to a strike vote, a large rally, or a sit-in of Massachusetts Hall.

“It feels like David and Goliath...but if David didn’t have a slingshot,” Booth said. “The union leadership is not arming the membership.”

Jaeger said that while HUCTW’s ultimate goal is to build a great library, the union is also striving to improve relations between workers and library management.

“We’d like to rebuild some trust and build some better relationships between union members and the key management leaders of the transition,” Jaeger said. “I think a lot of our members are quite deeply frustrated, and union leaders are as well. The state of the library workplace at this point, as far as we can tell, is basically chaos and demoralized disarray.”

—Staff writer Dan Dou can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

Boston Globe Gets Early Retirement Details Before Harvard Employees

In a letter sent Monday, February 13 (see below), Marilynn Haussman introduced the early retirement packages and said "details will be available on Wednesday."  Today, Tuesday, February 14, the Boston Globe published an article (also below) that has details already.  Why this discrepancy?  Why does the media learn about this before those workers who are affected?

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Dear Colleagues,

I write today to let you know that beginning on Wednesday, February 15, Harvard will offer a Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program (VERIP) for eligible staff members in the Harvard University libraries (Harvard Library).  Generally, library staff members who are age 55 and over, have 10 or more years of participation service, and are participants in a Defined Benefit or the Defined Contribution Retirement Plan are eligible for this program.  Local Human Resources offices will distribute personalized information packets to eligible staff members beginning on Wednesday.  Eligible staff members will have 46 days to consider this offer.  During this time, a range of support services will be provided to help each person decide whether retiring makes sense.

The Library leadership has been working since 2009, beginning with the Library Task Force and then the Library Implementation Working Group, to create a strategy and structure to support the future of Harvard’s libraries given the profound changes occurring in research libraries and scholarship in the digital age.  At every step of the way, we have been aware of the needs of our staff whose work supports the University’s mission every day.  We are sensitive to the effect of these decisions on those who steward one of the most important collections in the world, support our faculty, researchers, and students, and who rely on the University for their livelihoods. 

With these thoughts in mind, the 2012 VERIP is designed to be a totally voluntary option that will offer choice and financial support to qualifying employees who may wish to retire.  Eligible staff members will receive individualized retirement benefit statements, and will be assisted in their decision-making through group information sessions and individualized retirement counseling.  Full details will be available on HARVie (http://harvie.harvard.edu) beginning on Wednesday.

We are grateful for the service, dedication, and contributions of our library staff, and wish those who will retire all good things in the next chapter of their lives.  

Sincerely,

Marilyn Hausammann
Vice President for Human Resources

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Harvard to offer voluntary buyouts to 275 as part of push to modernize library

E-mail| Print | Comments (22) 02/13/2012 4:36 PM

By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff

Some 275 Harvard University employees will be offered voluntary buyouts in the school’s first concrete move toward modernizing its decentralized library system, university officials said today.
Workers there have worried about involuntary layoffs, which they were told to expect during a contentious set of internal meetings in January that led to protests – most recently, the “occupation” of a library café on Sunday by students and labor activists.

But the packages offered today are “totally voluntary,” said a letter from Marilyn Hausammann, the university’s vice president for human resources.

The targeted employees are largely 55 and over, with 10 or more years’ experience at Harvard. The buyouts will be offered starting Wednesday, and employees are due to make their decisions by April 2. The packages will offer a payment equal to six month’s pay plus two weeks of pay for each year of service in excess of 10 years, up to the equivalent of one year’s base pay.

On Friday, Harvard announced a sweeping overhaul of its library system, including the consolidation of services and the shuffling of many of its 900-plus employees. The college said the changes were necessary to bring the system, the world’s largest academic collection, up to speed in the digital era.
“The new Harvard Library improves a fragmented system by promoting university-wide collaboration,’’ library officials said in a statement today. “It will enable Harvard to invest in innovation and collections, make decisions strategically, reduce duplication of effort and leverage the University’s buying power.

“As Harvard works to respond to the evolving expectations of the 21st century researcher, university leaders have been acutely aware of the needs of Library staff who support the University’s mission every day,’’ it continued. “With this in mind, the University is implementing a generous, voluntary early retirement program that will both offer incentives to qualifying employees who wish to retire and help the Library meet the needs of its new organization.’’


Mary Carm ichael can be reached at mary.carmichael@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mary_carmichael.

Students Occupy Lamont Library Café

By Eliza M. Nguyen, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Sunday, February 12, 2012

Parul Agarwal

Harvard University Police officers monitor the outside of Lamont Café while occupiers sit inside.

UPDATED: February 12, 2012, at 3:04 p.m.

Members of the Occupy Harvard movement parked themselves in Lamont Library Café on Sunday night, pledging to stay in the café until 10 p.m. on Friday in order to protest planned staff reductions in Harvard libraries.

More than 23 supporters of the movement gathered in the café to inaugurate the next phase of their protest, the first to involve a physical occupation since Harvard administrators removed the Occupy Harvard dome from the Yard on Jan. 13.

An undergraduate café employee called the Harvard University Police Department to report the protest, according to an email to café workers obtained by The Crimson.

Police officers arrived on the scene and asked the protesters to remove the banners and signs that they had hung in the café’s windows, according to protester Andrew J. Pope, a doctoral student in history

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“Harvard’s free speech policy protects students’ rights to express themselves on campus,” Pope said.
Pope said that a night supervisor employed by the library told HUPD that the staff supports Occupy Lamont and that the protesters’ actions did not break any library rules.

HUPD could not be reached for comment on Sunday night.

“I hope it makes people aware that the Occupy movement is ongoing, and it’s building toward the future,” said Rudi Batzell, a doctoral student in history. “I think that the location [of the occupation] here is important, especially with ongoing library restructuring. It’s a show of solidarity with the library staff.”

On Sunday, Occupy Harvard also hosted an Occupy Boston Student Summit in Emerson Hall, which was attended by over 80 students from 18 campuses in the Boston area. In Lamont, occupiers chatted with summit attendees by Skype.

Protesters say that the purpose of the new occupation, which they call the “New Harvard Library Occupation,” aligns with the goals of the national Occupy movement that began in September.
“It’s a different movement, but a continuation of the same ideals,” Pope said.

Batzell added, “I hope that it will raise awareness that the Occupy movement is alive and growing. I hope it will connect the local struggle of library layoffs to larger issues of inequality and workers rights globally.”

Protesters said they will give out candy, offer tutoring services, and host twice-daily think tanks to include other Harvard students in their activism efforts.

“The hope is to build relationships with the broader Harvard community, including undergrads and workers, and engage with them in different ways,” Pope said.

Students plan to continue the occupation until Lamont Library, which is open 24 hours a day on weekdays, closes at 10 p.m. at the end of the week.

—Jane Seo and David Song contributed to the reporting of this article.
—Staff writer Eliza M. Nguyen can be reached at enguyen@college.harvard.edu

Globe article on Layoffs

Harvard plans to consolidate library, reshuffle employees

By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff

Harvard University revealed its long-awaited plan for restructuring its library system this morning, calling for “changes that affect staff at every level” that are likely to include consolidating many services, reshuffling some employees, and offering buyouts to others.

Details will be finalized over the next few weeks, according to a statement from Provost Alan Garber, but the plan will surely include “adjustments in how and where many staff members perform the work that has made the library one of the university’s greatest treasures.”
With dozens of semi-autonomous branches, the library is the world’s largest academic collection, a point of pride at the school. But its size and structure have resulted in redundancy and held back efforts to adapt in an age of digital technology and increasingly expensive academic journals.

The plan calls for consolidating services across the branches -- from access to digital preservation -- and developing systemwide policies on what materials are acquired and how students and scholars can retrieve them. It also suggests that the branch libraries’ information technology staffers and resources be combined with those of the university as a whole.

“It replaces a fragmented system of 73 libraries spread across the schools with one that promotes university-wide collaboration,” Garber said in the statement.

Many of Harvard’s suggested changes have already been implemented at other universities, such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which overhauled its library system a decade ago amid budget cuts, eliminating many print journal subscriptions and shrinking its staff by 20 percent through an early retirement plan.

On Wednesday, Harvard President Drew Faust released a lengthy statement expressing both her love as a scholar for the university’s library and her concern that it is falling behind.

Its decentralized organizational scheme “has left us unable to make integrated strategic decisions about the digital future, so that we have not kept pace with essential new technologies,” she wrote in a letter to the Harvard community “It has led to duplications in services and acquisitions; it has caused us to miss economies of scale; and has produced overhead costs that are significantly higher than those of our peers.”

The new plan, based on two years of internal study, is designed to bring the library up to speed.
But many Harvard librarians said they felt left out of the loop, and some said staff cuts could hurt the library.

Rumors that the plan might call for massive layoffs have provoked a fearful outcry among the librarians -- especially after a series of contentious meetings in January, during which employees said they were told to fill out skills profiles and expect both voluntary buyouts and layoffs.

After those meetings, the surprised librarians took to Twitter, with one complaining that “all of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired,” a statement that circulated widely on the Internet that turned out to be untrue.

Some 70 protesters -- including librarians, but also Occupy Boston participants and student labor activists -- held a rally in Harvard Square Thursday, chanting, “Hey, Harvard, you’ve got cash. Why do you treat your workers like trash?”

Librarians outside Harvard were also awaiting the changes with concern.
Steven Bell, a librarian at Temple University, wrote that the fury over change at Harvard might stem from the university’s stature and cultural resonance.

“The restructuring may not diminish the strength of the collections or services, but there is a strong emotional connection to what these academic libraries mean,” he wrote in the magazine Library Journal. “At your institution or mine, eliminating branch libraries may cause some departmental ill will, but ultimately it is seen as sensible and necessary. At Harvard, it is perceived as an ill-conceived tearing of the cultural fabric.”

A blogger named Chris Bourg, an assistant university librarian at Stanford University,” wrote that as Harvard goes, so might other universities: “If massive layoffs can happen at Harvard [with its huge endowments], then no academic library is safe.”
 

Mary Carmichael can be reached at mary.carmichael@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mary_carmichael.

Rally Against Library Layoffs - Crimson Reports

Protesters March Against Potential Library Layoffs

By Samuel Y. Weinstock, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Friday, February 10, 2012

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Jessica C. Salley

Protestors join together in a rendition of “Solidarity Forever” in front of the Holyoke Center Thursday evening before marching through Harvard Yard in opposition to proposed reductions in numbers of Harvard’s library workers.

A crowd of more than 100 protesters gathered outside the Holyoke Center Thursday night in response to plans to reorganize Harvard University Library that could include involuntary staff reductions.

The protestors chanted and marched in a circle, after which several workers, students, and other supporters spoke to the crowd. They then walked into the Yard and circled Massachusetts Hall several times.

The rally sought to increase awareness in the Harvard community about the library workers’ concerns as well as to display opposition to the administration’s intentions, said William P. Whitham ’14, a member of the Student Labor Action Movement.

“I hope this lets the student leaders, lets the faculty know that this ‘glorious’ reorganization has a human cost,” Whitham said.

Library assistant Jeffrey Booth, who has worked at Harvard libraries for nearly 26 years, said that the threat of staff reductions makes him worried about his family.

“Our futures are at stake,” Booth said. “We’ve already had to make tough personal decisions because of the threat of being laid off.”

Library employee and elected Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers representative Emeka F. Onyeagoro, who spoke at the rally, said that he was opposed to the layoffs, which he said threatened an estimated 800 to 1,000 workers.

Onyeagoro said the layoffs have no financial basis, but are an unjustified attempt at greater efficiency.

Layoffs would also negatively affect workers who kept their jobs, since they would be faced with a greater workload, Onyeagoro said.

Ricardo R. S. Rey, a teaching fellow in the history department, said that he opposed the layoffs for practical, as well as philosophical reasons. He recalled an instance where he wasted time searching for documents with HOLLIS before a librarian helped him find a wealth of materials for his class.

“How are we going to find this [without librarians]?” Salazar said.

“There are people [here] that don’t normally go to rallies,” Booth, who is also a HUCTW member, said. “It’s hard to get up out of your seat and do something.”

Last Friday, HUCTW leaders met with library officials for a conversation that HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger described as “honest,” “difficult,” and “inconclusive.”

“So far we haven’t seen a change of heart, but we’re going to keep pressing, and press harder,” Jaeger said.

Jaeger said that the union still had two major concerns that the library board had not addressed sufficiently, if at all.

“We’re baffled by the unnecessary cloak of secrecy,” Jaeger said. “We don’t understand why such a committed and intelligent group would not have more access [to the community].”

HUCTW’s second concern, according to Jaeger, was that some library functions are already understaffed.

“We’re going to fight for great libraries and great jobs,” Jaeger said.

Yet Desiree A. Goodwin, a library assistant who spoke at the protest, said that HUCTW, of which she is a member, has not offered much information either.

“They’re not really telling us anything,” Goodwin said. “Not unlike the library board.”

Jaeger said that the email Faust sent on Wednesday to the Harvard community was encouraging to HUCTW members, since it referenced staff engagement.

Jaeger added, however, that so far, the administrations’s words and actions have not been consistent.

“There’s a worrisome disconnect between that quotation and the practical accessibility that our members have,” Jaeger said.

Booth said that he and his fellow workers found the content of the email to be misleading.

“They expect us to believe her assertions because she’s Drew Faust,” Booth said. “And that is insulting.”

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Crimson 2009 Archives - Faculty Calls For Library Funding

Faculty Calls For Library Funding 
Over 100 Professors support letter to University administration 

By Noah S. Rayman and Elyssa A. L. Spitzer, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Monday, December 07, 2009

With budget cuts looming over Harvard’s numerous libraries, more than a hundred faculty members signed off on an impassioned letter calling on top University administrators to increase funding for library acquisitions.

The letter, sent on Friday to University President Drew G. Faust, Provost Steven E. Hyman, and Faculty of Arts and Science Dean Michael D. Smith, follows a report released last month by a University Task Force suggesting that Harvard could no longer “harbor delusions of being a completely comprehensive collection.” The University will need to drastically restructure its “labyrinthine” library system in the face of budgetary pressure, the report said.

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Feb 9 - Rally Against Layoffs!

NO LAYOFFS! -


5 PM, THURS, FEB 9, Holyoke Ctr.
1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 (next to Au Bon Pain). Redline to Harvard Square.

Who do they think they are?! Even in this bleak economy, Harvard University, a taxfree
‘non-profit’, has managed to retain $32 billion (in addition to other income), yet
it is putting people out of work and plans to lay off more. Layoffs are a burden to our
local economy where people are already struggling and where Harvard has not been
a good neighbor. Harvard is in a privileged financial position where laying off staff
is not necessity but greed. Stand with Harvard workers and community members
against these destructive plans which will devastate many families and hurt the entire
community. Rally to oppose layoffs!

5 PM, THURS, FEB 9, Holyoke Ctr.
1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 (next to Au Bon Pain). Redline to Harvard Square.
Contact harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com for more information.

If you oppose layoffs at Harvard University, please send an email protest.

--------------------------------------Email Harvard Labor Relations------------------------------------
Tell them that when Harvard doesn’t pay taxes and then puts people out of work they are hurting the local economy of your community! Tell them that you support everyone doing their fair share during difficult economic times. Harvard workers greatly appreciate this support. Thank you for sending emails to oppose the University’s plans!

Address emails to: bill_murphy@harvard.edu, (he is the Director of Labor Relations for Harvard University).
cc: harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com

Sample text: I oppose Layoffs in the Harvard Libraries. A University should be protecting these services, and especially one with the enormous resources of Harvard should not be turning people out on the street. Laying off workers when there is still so much money available (in part because of a special tax-free status) is damaging my local economy for no other reason than greed. Please do not do this. The community does not support it.

Proposed Staff Cuts Anger Library Workers

Proposed Staff Cuts Anger Library Workers

By Samuel Y. Weinstock and Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The University’s plans to reduce the size of the Harvard University Library workforce drew criticism Tuesday from library workers and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. Library officials informed employees of the University's exploration of a range of both voluntary and involuntary options in a series of town hall meetings last Thursday.

“The announcement that the library workforce ‘will be smaller than it is now’ and that some of these potential reductions will be involuntary, combined with the lack of answers to critical questions was alarming and ill-conceived,” read an email to members of HUCTW, which represents many library employees. “For many, the overall effect was panic-inducing.”

The union plans to address the issue by discussing the potential cuts in greater detail with library leaders and meeting with members to assess their reactions, according to the email.

HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger said that his union is concerned primarily with the lack of information provided by the University about the size and nature of the potential layoffs. The presentation of the plans, he said, was “extraordinarily clumsy” and left many major questions unanswered.

Library employees also expressed confusion over the details of the plan. The uncertainty has led many employees to begin speculating on the size of the cuts, according to Karen L. O’Brien, a library assistant.

“All of Harvard Library staff have just effectively been fired,” read one tweet that circulated on Thursday after the first town hall had begun.

Others suggested that the restructuring would require that all library employees reapply to keep their current positions.

The University strongly refuted this statement but recommended that all employees file an Employee Profile “to state job preferences, to articulate skills, and to provide a resume.”

Although he said that the University is currently only providing “vague” explanations, Jaeger is confident that HUCTW will be able to speak with transition leaders. As a part of the union’s contract, Harvard must consult with HUCTW and seriously consider alternative options before laying off a single member, he said.

But HUCTW’s response was insufficient for some union members who gathered on Tuesday afternoon to take a more aggressive stance against the plan for a smaller workforce.

The meeting, which included representatives from the Student Labor Action Movement and Occupy Harvard, concluded with a plan to picket University forums on library reform beginning Wednesday.
For this small, committed group of activists, preparing for a larger campaign would start with reaching out to other employees. Eventually, workers could resort to large demonstrations or another occupation of the campus, said Geoffrey “Geoff” Carens, an assistant librarian and HUCTW member.

“It’s going to get as big as it needs to be,” Carens said. “This is the seed, and we’re hoping for a mighty tree.”

Library employees who attended Tuesday’s meeting expressed frustration with both the plan to cut the workforce and how the University informed employees. At Thursday’s meeting, library officials were unable to answer many of the audience’s questions and did not provide details about the scale of the staff reductions. That information, employees were told, would come in February.

O’Brien said she believes that the University is purposefully stoking fear among the library employees in hopes that they will hurriedly accept unattractive retirement packages.

Regardless of their thoughts about the University’s intentions, many other employees expressed a fear of the upcoming changes.

“I can’t believe I feel as insecure in my job as I did before we had the union,” said Jeffrey Booth, a library assistant who said he has worked at Harvard for 25 years. “We’re already short-staffed. When my friends and coworkers get laid off, I get physically sick. That’s how it affects you.”

The Harvard Library Board, which is responsible for planning the library’s restructuring, met Tuesday to discuss the plan. If approved, it will be considered by University President Drew G. Faust.
The University did not return repeated requests for comment on this article. Harvard Library

Executive Director Helen Shenton did not respond through a spokesperson.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

Library System Seeks to Reduce Staff

Library System Seeks to Reduce Staff


By Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Monday, January 23, 2012 

The Harvard University Library system will seek to reduce the size of its approximately 930 person workforce as part of the ongoing restructuring of the world’s largest academic library, according to a transcript of remarks made by Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton at one of three town hall meetings held Thursday.

“The new organizational design has not yet been approved, but it is certain that it will be different from the current one,” said Shenton at one of the town hall meetings. “A key change: the Library workforce will be smaller than it is now.”

The University is considering both voluntary and involuntary options to reduce staff, but prefers voluntary methods, Shenton said. While Harvard has laid off employees in the past, the University has at times also offered some staff voluntary early retirement packages or waited for attrition to reduce staff.

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Crimson Op-Ed: No Layoffs for Harvard Libraries

No Layoffs for Harvard Libraries
By Geoff Carens
Published: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

On January 19, Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton told stunned Harvard Library staff that their numbers were to shrink. She announced that the cuts would be accomplished by July, through voluntary and involuntary means. Officials would rewrite some job descriptions and eliminate other jobs completely, and staffers would have to apply for a smaller number of reconfigured positions.

In the wake of media attention to widely shared tweets about Shenton’s disclosures, a University spokesperson tried to downplay the anxieties of employees. Despite such efforts, Shenton’s remarks are sparking a new wave of worker-led protests on the Harvard campus.

When the University’s clerical staffers last faced mass layoffs in 2008, their Harvard No Layoffs Campaign drew the attention of national and international press. In collaboration with Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement, rank-and-filers in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers joined forces with concerned local residents, faculty, non-union workers and members of other campus unions also hit hard by job losses. The coalition organized a sustained wave of demonstrations, which featured picketers blocking traffic in Harvard Square, as well as multiple actions during the University’s lavish Commencement exercises. Today, activists will meet to plan a revival of the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign.

During its last wave of mass layoffs, Harvard maintained, unpersuasively, that a drop in its huge endowment made job losses inevitable. After a 21.4 percent jump in the endowment during the last fiscal year, to $32 billion, Harvard cannot possibly make any such claims today. Union activists believe the University’s plans to cut costs come at the expense of local communities. In a particularly ominous development, 15 out of 22 employees at Harvard Health Publications learned on January 11 that they would lose their jobs in March. The devastated staffers of HHP must wonder how they will find new positions in the current bleak economy. As of last week, library workers must wonder the same thing.

However, since 2008, the ground has shifted. The Occupy Wall Street movement has pointed a glaring spotlight at social inequalities, the concentration of wealth, and widespread unemployment. Harvard’s workers have actively participated in Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard. Important links have been built, and potentially powerful networks have risen up. Employees who stayed on the sidelines of past years’ pickets now boldly advocate direct action to fight the planned cuts. No Layoffs campaigners know they will have many more allies this time around.

They will also have student support. SLAM has supported Harvard’s workers for years. The pro-labor students in SLAM went on a hunger strike in 2007 to press for a fair contract for security officers. Its precursor, the Progressive Student Labor Movement, occupied Massachusetts Hall in 2001, demanding a living wage for all who worked at the University. SLAM’s current incarnation, as vibrant as ever, plays a vital auxiliary role in campus labor struggles.  As recently as December, scores of workers and SLAM members picketed for over an hour in the cold for Marvin Byrd. Byrd, a 61 year old, partially-disabled employee in Harvard University Mail Services, had his weekly hours cut and was compelled to work a mandatory six-day week, alone of all his co-workers. SLAM’s participation on Byrd’s behalf helped make the action one of the largest worker-led pickets for an individual Harvard employee in recent memory. If hundreds of library workers face the total loss of their livelihoods, they can expect a proportionate response from the students who have stood with them for so many years in their struggle for better working conditions.

Meanwhile, library workers continue to perform their duties, knowing that another year of job losses would certainly hurt scholarship on campus. More automation, increased outsourcing to non-Harvard vendors, and further erosion of institutional memory will throw countless roadblocks in the way of the students, faculty and researchers who use Harvard’s libraries. Harvard’s brand will suffer along with workplace morale.  The precious scholarly resources amassed by Harvard, including online databases, will grow less accessible. These unnecessary consequences are a source of great frustration to dedicated employees. If Shenton’s destructive plans go forward, campus workers will soon have myriad opportunities to vent that frustration in public.

Geoff Carens is a Union Representative in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and a member of the No Layoffs Campaign. He is a Library Assistant at Lamont Library.

Harvard Libraries Announce Unspecified Number of Layoffs

Libraries May Reduce Staff


By Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITER


Harvard University Library employees were informed Thursday at three town hall meetings that the ongoing restructuring of the world’s largest academic library system may result in a reduction in staff, according to people briefed on the meetings.

Prior to Thursday’s meetings, rumors abounded about the implications of the library restructuring on the size of the library staff.

Twitter was abuzz with speculation leading up to Thursday’s meetings and even during them. “All of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired,” read one tweet.

The University announced in the fall that it would reorganize the libraries into affinity groups to bring together library units with similar missions.

“We are consolidating the libraries in a way that will save money, and that money saved will be plowed back into acquisitions and expanded services,” University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 told The Crimson at the time. “It will make the library much stronger.”

Library leaders said that they were seeking a “smaller library” in Thursday’s meetings but left many questions unanswered, according to Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

“There were vague references made to reductions in the size of the staff,” Jaeger said. “Despite persistent questions from the audience, the [library] leaders were not able or willing to provide anything more specific than that.”

Afterward, the University sought to dispel the rumor that all library personnel would be affected by the likely downsizing.

“It is inaccurate to say that all Library staff will need to reapply for their positions,” a statement from the University said.

“Our contract with the University requires union-management consultation when a department is considering [such changes],” Jaeger said. “We’re pretty confident that as this goes forward we’ll continue to hear from them.”

According to a University statement, staff meetings in February will be held to explain the organizational changes in more detail.

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.