Bookpocalypse Later: Fairfax Library Plans Postponed, Not Yet Tossed in Dumpster Like So Many Unused Books

It took the spectacle of as many as a quarter-million library books being tossed into dumpsters making national headlines for it to happen, but the county's fun plans to use the Reston library as a guinea pig for its plans to downscale and downgrade library staff have been put on hold.

At a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting to discuss the outcry over proposed changes to the county library system, the vice-chair of the Fairfax library Board of Trustees said Tuesday night that “the entire matter of these changes will be put on hold” until the library board can get more input from library staff and customers.

The plans, which involve eliminating the requirement that library staff have masters' degrees, cutting children and reference positions, and reducing overall headcount, were to be tested in Reston and Burke. Taken to the extreme, they could create a situation familiar to those who have read fished a discarded copy of Catch-22 out of a dumpster:

Legally, in the state of Virginia, if you do not have a MLIS degree, you can not call yourself a librarian. So, Fairfax County Public Library could become a library system without librarians.

Of course, all it takes is a sassy barista to run an Internet cafe, so it's all good.

The Reston Citizens Association issued a statement saying it opposed the plan. But it took a county supervisor fishing around in a dumpster to draw broader attention to the proposed changes.

Hearing complaints that the Fairfax County Public Library was throwing away tons of books, County Supervisor Linda Q. Smyth (D-Providence) decided to peer into a Dumpster.

Twice, she found stacks and stacks of high-quality books, bought by the taxpayers, piled in the trash. The second time, she filled a box.

“If I didn’t pick up some of these books,” Smyth said, “no one would believe it.”

A petition opposing the changes continues to circulate, a public hearing scheduled for tonight is expected to draw a crowd, and library director Sam Clay has come under fire for the changes. But, to be fair, it's the county supervisors who, when they're not busy crawling around in dumpsters, have cut the library budget repeatedly in recent years.

Clay, who has been head of the Fairfax library system for 31 years, defended his plan as necessary to deal with declining budgets and to remake libraries in the digital age. The strategic plan lists the first part of its “future direction” as transitioning from “a print environment to a digital environment.”

“We’ve got to turn that around. . . . We’ve got to get the library in the community, to bring people to the table,” Clay said. “I want to be the table.”

Right now, he's too busy being pushed under that table by the same people who've cut his budget, the end.