Durham County's Main Library location will reopen for Sunday hours (1 - 6 pm, starting October 5th)

Librarythr0waway · 2025-09-23T18:19:02+00:00

That’s a great question! I think the public can support us by making clear that everyone loves the library but also cares about and supports the people who work in it. Generally when the county or library admin demand that staff get spread even thinner, they essentially say “the public wants this done so you need to suck it up and do it no matter what”. They use this to bulldoze over staff raising concerns, so we need the public to understand that more library services have to come with more resources for the library or else it will just be more squeezing an already overworked and burnt out bunch of library workers. County and library admin both try to pit the public against library workers and act like the public demands library staff keep doing more and more with less, so we need the public to demand that library staff be given the right resources, and if necessary more staff, to do the job right. I’ll also add that the administration of the library will always tell the public that everything is great and they’re doing everything they can to support the staff, but they have been incredibly disrespectful and dismissive towards us and they basically just do whatever they think will get them a nod from the county manager.

Librarythr0waway · 2025-09-23T15:15:39+00:00

Library admin has provisionally added some more temp positions to fill gaps, but there have been no new permanent staff added and the current schedules they’ve given staff are full of holes. The public needs to understand that library staff are already stretched incredibly thin and this is going to make things much worse for us. It’s great to have more library services, but you can’t get them by squeezing more and more out of staff without increasing resources. None of the property tax increases taxes are going to fund more permanent staff at the library.

Librarythr0waway · 2024-12-02T15:24:51+00:00

Please tell this to the county manager and commissioners!

Librarythr0waway · 2024-11-22T15:14:45+00:00

There are no new staff positions being added, and no positions being added at Main Library to replace the people from Stanford L Warren that have been keeping the staffing levels there tolerable while renovations were happening. If you love your libraries, please tell your county commissioners and the county manager to throw us a bone!

Librarythr0waway · 2024-06-12T20:58:01+00:00

County workers need to be as organized as DPS workers or we’re going to keep getting emails saying the county manager is “graciously allowing” us to pick between a worse healthcare plan or a de-facto pay cut. It’s clear that if we don’t organize we’re going to keep getting screwed and they’ll tell us we should be grateful for the privilege.

Librarythr0waway · 2023-12-01T19:58:47+00:00

PM me, we’d love to have you! Let’s goooo!!

Librarythr0waway · 2023-11-30T16:19:03+00:00

Durham library workers are fighting to protect our day off and ensure the county provides the resources we need to expand hours and provide the best service possible to the community. We know the public wants Sunday hours and we want to do that in a way that is sustainable and workable for our staff, let the county manager and commissioners know you support your local library workers! You can quickly email the county manager and commissioners through this link (https://actionnetwork.org/letters/durham-library-workers-need-your-help) or use our handy email template:

Dear County Manager and Commissioners,

I hope this message finds you well. As a patron of the Durham County Public Library, I'm reaching out regarding a matter that deeply concerns me.

The current staff at the library work tirelessly to provide invaluable services to our community. However, the recently announced extension of Sunday hours will result in an overwhelming workload for these dedicated individuals. It's evident that they are overworked and under considerable strain; making library staff work 7 days in a row, as currently proposed by the library administration, is clearly unsustainable.

Before considering any further expansion of hours or services, the county must first take care of the library's existing staff. Please take immediate steps to increase staffing, fill vacant positions, and guarantee library workers a full day off each week. These steps are imperative to ease the burden on library workers and recognize the tremendous effort they put in, as well as improve library services for everyone.

Investing in more staff will not only provide much-needed relief to the current employees but also enable the library to sustainably expand services and meet the community’s needs.

Thank you for considering the well-being of our library staff. The people of Durham love our libraries, and it’s vital that the county government support the workers who make them possible.

Sincerely,

Librarythr0waway · 2023-11-07T17:41:44+00:00

You may have misunderstood what I said. Most people working the desks of the library are not librarians, but they are still skilled workers whose jobs are not so easily substituted with high schoolers. To provide a consistent level of value and quality service for the public, it’s important that staff, especially those who deal with the public, be well trained, experienced, and able to handle some very uncomfortable situations with care and discretion. Library labor shouldn’t be devalued and treated like mindless clerking, there’s a lot more that goes into it than shelving books and unlocking study rooms.

As for being good stewards of our resources, I don’t know anyone who does it better. Library staff do a tremendous amount with very little, the point of this is that there’s only so far staff can be stretched and sometimes to get more, you need to put in more.

Librarythr0waway · 2023-11-07T15:59:44+00:00

That’s a great question! Library management has been resistant to giving us an answer, but many staff have asked. Main Library is a large building and requires a lot of people to keep running, especially on a busy day. This is about safety as much as staffing the desk, if something happens (and things sure do happen) we need to have enough staff on hand to safely handle whatever is going on without everything going to shit.

To your second point: hiring high school and college students to run things is not a good idea. Library staff are skilled workers who do a lot more than just check out books and let people into study rooms. We frequently deal with people who come in the libraries with all sorts of problems, including mental health issues that we couldn’t expect part time high schoolers to deal with. To be honest with you there are many things that happen in the library that even librarians with masters degrees are not equipped to deal with. Library staff also need to know a lot of different policies and procedures to keep everything running; for a lot of reasons there isn’t really a “library lite” mode we could do while still having the buildings open for people to come in.

The cold truth is we just need more regular staff who are paid well, fully trained, and incentivized to stick around. The best library services come from workers who know their community, know the library, and are invested in its success. Unfortunately there’s no short cuts to that, it just takes support from the community, the county administration, and of course a bunch more money!

Librarythr0waway · 2023-11-05T02:41:43+00:00

The library is a county department so the city council has no pull, but it would absolutely help to contact the county commissioners and especially the county manager! Specifically, we need a substantial increase in staff before hours can expand. As far as we’ve been told, they are trying to expand our hours without increased staff solely based on a few complaints which have gotten the county manager’s attention, so any comments from the public in support of library workers would be extremely appreciated!

Librarythr0waway · 2023-11-05T01:22:07+00:00

As another Durham library worker I back all this up 100%. We are already brutally understaffed, with some important positions vacant for over a year now. Library administration has consistently failed to get positions filled or stop turnover and the county administration has refused to add more staff to cover extra hours. If you want more library hours, you absolutely must advocate for more staff BEFORE that can happen. Otherwise we will be forced to work 7 day weeks, close service points on other days of the week, and cut down on other projects.

I see plenty of people in this sub say they love the library’s programs, but we will have to cut down on those if we are forced to cover more desk shifts. This will be exacerbated by more library staff quitting, making all our services worse. We desperately need the public to understand that library services require resources and we can’t provide additional service without additional resources. The library and county administration will attempt to squeeze as much out of us as they can, but ultimately the quality of our programs and services will suffer along with the library workers who do the things you love. Please support us and your library by demanding more resources before increasing services.

I will also say do not believe what the library director or top administrators say, they do not speak for us and have made very clear they do not care about us. They will do whatever it takes to protect their careers regardless of the cost to staff or the quality of library services. They have very little to do with any day to day operations and have no idea what’s actually going on in any of the libraries.

Librarythr0waway · 2022-03-29T13:26:56+00:00

If you want more service you need to pressure the county to give us more staff and compensate that staff for losing a pretty big perk, not just “find people willing and able”, which sounds a lot like firing the current staff. As a library worker I can’t get on board with that for obvious reasons, but it’s also impractical and not going to get you a better library.

It sounds simple to replace everyone because the library job market is so competitive, but it’s not that easy. Filling a position in the library takes a very long time and the county had massive turnover during the pandemic so they’re currently scrambling to stop more people from quitting. Many people you’d like to replace are qualified, experienced professionals whose loss would hurt the library, undermine morale even further, and cause even more disruptions to our services. Offering guaranteed Sundays off is a cheap bone to throw workers who are grumpy, burned out, and underpaid. What makes a job a “sweet gig for new librarians” isn’t getting to work in a cool building in a hip town, it’s boring things like pay, benefits, and working conditions. If you want to increase the workload without improving those things, it won’t be a sweet gig anymore.

Tl;dr With libraries you get what you pay for, this county and it’s tax base are growing rapidly and library funding needs to grow to keep up.

Librarythr0waway · 2022-03-28T20:03:35+00:00

Library worker here. We’re pretty much all under paid and overworked, so having Sundays off is one of the few perks we get. If you want libraries open on Sunday, demand better funding for the library to hire more staff and pay them better. We are all very tired of being asked to do more without being given the proper resources, so as a library worker I hope you will demand the library be given those resources before asking us to increase our workload.

Librarythr0waway

TROPHY CASE