Hi everyone, I know some of you have been following what happened at Westland with interest, and I wanted to give you all a quick and happy update. For those who were unaware, five librarians were suddenly terminated just two days after turning in union intention papers on March 3rd. They were told their positions were eliminated to increase "efficiencies" despite the fact that these librarians were budgeted for in a dedicated 10 year millage that passed by 71% in 2012. As a former librarian from Westland myself, I personally made all of the campaign literature at the time, and our message was definitely about bringing back hours, programming, and staffing after the economic downturn--not removing professional staff. Westland also has a $2.5 million budget surplus, so framing these terminations in terms of "fiscal responsibility" never made sense, especially when you consider that their new "restructuring plan" meant that they now had significantly less librarians per capita and per operating budget compared to the majority of other Class VI libraries in Michigan. Anyways, several other librarians, along with many Westland community members, organized and we relentlessly kept up the pressure on the city to do something about the library's administration. Our efforts paid off, and on June 12th, it was announced that the rest of the library's board had resigned, quickly followed by the director. Then, the following day, the mayor announced that all five of the librarians were offered their jobs back. Three of them are coming back (one is changing careers and another already got snatched up by another library because she's awesome). Currently the library does not have a board, but the mayor is working with TLN to appoint new board members who will hopefully understand that an important part of library board membership is also advocating for the library's services, patrons, and staff, not just budgetary oversight. As it is, there are currently no professional mechanisms to support librarians, or libraries in these kinds of situations. Believe me, I sought them out. We had to experiment with many different methods to finally figure out what worked before we were able to finally make it clear enough that the people of Westland would not accept mass librarian removal at their well-funded library. If anything like this ever happens at your library, I will be happy to help you organize the public resistance necessary to prevent or undo threats like this to your library in the future. Also, let me know if you are interested in a discussion about creating a somewhat more formal organization in preparation for the next time something like this happens, so we can respond faster and more efficiently. In solidarity, -- Kristy Cooper Save the Westland Library campaign https://www.facebook.com/westlandlibrarians