Linda Hall Library Reviews

Under the leadership of the current president and his leadership team, the Linda Hall has a pervasive environment of fear, reprisal, pettiness, and harassment. The direct result of this is that since his arrival, there has been a 36% turnover rate (18 of 50 FTE) through firings, resignations, and early retirements, all of which can be tied to the working environment. There are four key areas that create this environment: fear, untruthfulness, favoritism and workplace relationships, and financial questions. Fear (not reward, not connection to the mission) is the primary motivation behind staff’s work. When criticism of leadership is shared, even in confidence, this criticism is used to punish both the subject of the criticism as well as the critic themselves. Workplace conversations (Teams or email) are regularly monitored and are used against workers when they express remarks that are counter to the desires of the leadership team. Punishment and reprisals regularly mean performance improvement plans for staff and abrupt firings. Staff will not answer questions or provide feedback out of fear and knowledge that speaking up will be punished and ignored, so why should they undertake that risk? Libraries have a focus on statistics, and are known for accuracy and truthful statistics. Unfortunately, only half of this is true at the Linda Hall as attendance, use, and user counts are routinely inflated above numbers reported by staff. This environment of untruthfulness is modeled by leadership, many times pronouncements are made that things will or will not happen, only to discover later that these were lies. As a result, motivations of leadership are always in question and there is a complete lack of trust between staff and leadership. The LH underwent strategic planning, but it was a performance, as the leadership already had decided the future and wanted to make sure that staff was “heard” (and subsequently ignored) so leadership could do as they pleased. Members of the leadership team are involved in inappropriate workplace relationships that lead to favoritism and exploitation. Some are promoted while others are ignored and excluded from promotion, development, and feedback opportunities. Favored individuals have bad behaviors excused or ignored, while unfavored individuals are sidelined and punished. This favoritism is capricious but is most evident in relationships that are outside the workplace and seem to be motivated by romantic desires. Favor is also given to those willing to carry out questionable directives without criticism. There are many questions about the financial expenditures of the institution made by leadership. They gave cut budgets across the institution and has undertaken an extravagant renovation of the president’s office suite (a complex of six rooms now) and has travelled in great luxury using funds cut from elsewhere. This in light of multiple very large pay raises for him. While other staff are denied promotion or meaningful raises, and the maintenance of the building and collections suffer.

This place is run by people who do not care about libraries, education, scholarly work, or the importance of this collection. They want to (and have already taken steps to) turn it into a museum/ event space where the library collection is a backdrop, rather than the focus. The President and his yes men go unchecked as they blow through budgets on remodeling projects for non-public spaces, private trips disguised as work trips, and gaudy exhibitions. Instead, they slash budgets from all other departments, but especially the collections budget. A collection that is rapidly deteriorating and running out of physical room, by the way. Anyone who dissents about how things are being managed is either forced out, demoted, or otherwise silenced by administration. Recently, as staff has continued to rapidly turn over, they have begun siloing areas of the library from one another and they have discontinued all elective committees where staff could potentially mix and form relationships. Information only seems to make it's way to the rest of the staff via the rumor mill because ELT only speaks to us with vague corporate lingo instead of truthful, transparent communication. And you might as well not even bother holding leadership to their word as they often back track, rewrite, or fully deny previously shared information. This place is incredibly reactionary - only creating guidelines and policies after something happens to staff or if staff complain long enough for a solution. They have even gone as far as flagging truthful reviews here to avoid accountability for how unhappy staff is here. I'm sure this review will also get flagged too but I'm tired of staying silent.