The Great Librarian Massacre (and Other Episodes in Harvard Cultural History)*

If you are a librarian and you have access to the Internet, then you've probably already heard that Harvard fired all of its library staff yesterday.

Well, sort of. By which I mean: not really. Which is to say that no one was fired at all, in fact.

Nevertheless I have to say that we Harvard library folk were by and large blindsided when we went to one of three "Town Hall Meetings" yesterday for an update about the Library Transition, as many of us had been cautioned not to expect any substantive news until at least next month. Imagine our surprise then when after a few brief introductory remarks our Senior Associate Provost and Executive Director began outlining some of key points of what's being called the "Implementation Phase" of what's now been a three-year reorganization.

I was in attendance and livetweeting at the first of the three meetings, but I can confirm through other colleagues who Tweeted from the second and third showings that even though we have not been fired or laid off, that the following things were announced:

1. Pending approval of the Implementation Plan by Harvard's President, an overall reduction in library staff is guaranteed- of the jobs that remain, "There will certainly be new roles, requiring new skills" (direct quote)

2. Next month library staff will be informed by local library directors or HR whether or not their jobs as considered to be "local" or part of "shared services"

3. The final disposition of local library staff is a matter for the deans and their respective school budgets

4. Library staff falling into the category of Shared Services will either be assigned to new positions or required to apply for them anew in some informal or formal capacity, with preference going to existing Harvard Library staff

5. The Harvard Library will be offering some kind of voluntary retirement staff reduction incentive,but has not ruled out as well as involuntary retirement staff reductions to meet its strategic goals (edited x2)

6. All library staff have been encouraged but not required to create and submit an Employee Profile, which is meant to highlight one's individual strengths and accomplishments and "inject oneself into the process" (direct quote)

Colleagues, please feel free to correct me if I misreported any of the above!

Anything else at this point is mere speculation. Seeing that President Faust has yet even to approve the Library Transition's plan, even what I've reported above is by no means carved in stone yet. So be careful what you read on the Internet...

That being said, I don't think I'm the only librarian at Harvard who feels that however well-intentioned yesterday's Town Hall Meetings were envisioned to be, the overall effect has been the exact opposite of whatever our Library Transition team was hoping to achieve. The most frustrating aspect by far of the meetings was the lack of concrete answers to any of the natural follow-up questions one would anticipate given the situation. While I understand that what's coming down the pike next month is potentially so big that they felt they needed this meeting to try and prepare us for it, but the manner in which they did it only served to ratchet up the level of anxiety among the attendees.

My primary concern right now, however, is not for my own neck but that of my support staff, who have worked in this office for an average of ten years or more each. After having endured the departure of two coworkers- one in 2010, the other last Fall- and taking on their workloads to ensure that our services to our patrons and other libraries remained unaffected, they are now frightened that even in a shop cut to the bone there is no guarantee that they'll be kept on in the new University-wide shared services. I have heard that the HUCTW has been working with the Library Transition team, and that the union has assured workers that changes such as the ones currently being proposed must be done through "union-management consultation," but that hasn't prevented a gallows-like pall from settling over my office nonetheless.

{EDIT: In a letter to its members, the HUCTW confirmed that it had not in fact been alerted about potential layoffs by Harvard Library administrators, nor had it been informed about the need for library staff to fill out Employee Profiles and possibly re-apply for changed positions within the new University Library structure. Needless to say, this is extremely disappointing news, and I hope that from this point forward the union is appropriately consulted in good faith about any changes on the table.)

So while a lot of what's been said on the Internet has bordered on hysteria, I hope you'll at least forgive those of us Twittering from the epicenter of yesterday's announcements for our gut reactions to the endgame of a very long and painful reorganization process. For a more objective take on the whole brouhaha, Chris Bourg- aka The Feral Librarian- an associate librarian at Stanford University, did some serious yeoman's work in teasing fact from fiction during yesterday's social media shitstorm. I highly recommend her blog post as the best third-party observer to what's going on here in the Harvard Library.

The tl;dr? We're not dead quite yet, though this feels an awful lot like we're walking the Green Mile (or would that be the Crimson Mile?). I promise to keep all y'all informed as to how events proceed, but in the meantime I hope our leadership takes a good hard look at how poorly the day went yesterday and plans accordingly for what will no doubt be even more charged and contentious Town Hall Meetings next month if/when the Library Transition plan is approved. I still cling to a shred of optimism that we can use this reorganization to create something special, but right now I'm feeling like I'm living one Office Space cliche after another.

* Apologies to Robert Darnton, who, ironically enough, was Director of the Harvard University Libraries until last year and who continues to serve on the Library Transition board.