Pros
BPL is full of wonderful and supportive staff members who are all drawn to libraries as a means of helping their community. In my short time here, I've received overwhelming support from employees as I attempt to bring the best service possible to my branch library. Compared to other large-scale library systems, I think we also get a lot of intellectual and creative autonomy in our work.
Cons
No one gets paid enough. That's especially true for our clerical staff, who are disproportionately black and brown folk. The public is, at times, unsafe. BPL does this fun thing where its policies are purposefully vague to allow for branch staff to use their judgment. This means that there's a lot of contradictory information. For instance, we are generally discouraged from calling the cops, but also told that we have to call the cops if we find ourselves with unruly patrons. Our security officers are also forced to go through training from NYPD, but they don't get weapons and are not paid anywhere near what NYPD is paid. When it comes to large scale trainings on topics like sexual harassment, responding to patrons through a trauma-informed lens, or even neurodivergence. The trainings are watered down and appropriate information is not effectively retained by the majority of staff. I'm a supervisor, and we are in the same union as our direct reports. This means that the union will not file grievances against us. There are a lot of abusive supervisors in the system. While I believe we still deserve to be unionized, BPL also needs an accountability process for branch supervisors.
