Staffing Crunch Prompts Library To Close Mondays

HARWICH – It happens to retail stores and restaurants, so why wouldn’t the shortage of available workers touch Brooks Free Library? As of Monday, it has.

 Starting this week, and hopefully only for a few weeks, the library will be closed on Mondays because of the staffing crunch. The decision came from the board of library trustees last Wednesday, Library Director Ginny Hewitt said. But even if the trustees hadn’t voted to do so, Brooks Library wouldn’t have been able to open on Sept. 9 because of short-staffing.

 The library’s other hours will not change, and patrons who have items due on Mondays can check them in a day late without penalty.

 The decision to close Mondays was a deliberate one, she said. “Every other day has programs and activities going on,” she noted. The trustees considered reducing hours on several other days, but decided that doing so would be more confusing to patrons. They also thought about eliminating the evening hours, which are offered expressly for people who work during the day. Cutting these times “would disproportionately impact them,” Hewitt said.

 The staffing problem is not a fiscal one, Hewitt said, but a symptom of the library’s reliance on part-time employees.

 “The library’s really been the only town department that relied heavily on part-time positions for year-round staffing, and it worked for a long time,” she said. The arrangement provided flexibility and saved taxpayers money. But the library has been short-staffed by nearly 25 percent all summer, with one vacant full-time position and five part-time slots available.

 “Through the years, sadly, we always had people working two to three jobs trying to cobble together a living on the Cape,” Hewitt said. Part-timers often are young retirees or people who don’t necessarily have to work, “and therefore they have other interests, or they volunteer,” she said. Some part-timers simply say they’re not available to work during a particular month. “That’s the nature of that kind of employment,” Hewitt said.

 Brooks Free Library has 27 positions, nine of which are full-time workers; the permanent full-time employees and some part-timers are unionized. Hewitt praised the staff of the library for adjusting to sudden shift changes, working split shifts and filling difficult shifts in the evenings and on weekends.

 “They have gone above and beyond to maintain our open hours,” she said, but the scramble has come with a cost. “We have prioritized public services, covering the public service desk over everything else,” she noted. That means that behind-the-scenes jobs — reviewing new releases, selecting materials, placing orders, cataloging, and maintaining computers — have been set aside. “You can do that for a short time, but those functions are necessary,” Hewitt said.

 The decision to close temporarily on Mondays was made in part to ensure a high level of service so that patrons have a quality experience when they visit. But it also aims to make sure that there are sufficient staff in the library when it’s open. “We’re very concerned about safety and security,” she said.

 In the short term, the library hopes to close the staffing gaps by filling a few of the available part-time positions; there are two vacant senior library technician vacancies and three for library assistants. But eventually, the library will need to decrease its reliance on part-time workers, offering full-time positions with benefits to maintain essential staffing levels. It’s something that many other area employers have had to do, “or they don’t have a workforce. We’ve been lagging behind with that,” Hewitt said.

 With luck, the Monday closures will only last two or three weeks. 

 “It’s been stressful, but I hope we’re about to get there,” Hewitt said. “It’s hard when the working-age population is dropping on the Cape.”