Changing of the guard at Chicago Public Library system

At first blush, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s choice of career librarian Andrea Telli as Chicago’s new library commissioner would seem to be a resounding rebuke of her predecessor’s stewardship of the library system.

After all, former Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, whose 2011 resignation protested Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s draconian cuts to library hours and services, is a close friend, former co-worker, campaign advisor and contributor to Lightfoot.

And Lightfoot’s wife, Amy Eshleman, served as an assistant library commissioner under Dempsey. Eshleman is credited with helping to develop YOUmedia, a digital center tailor-made for teenagers.

Adding fuel to the fire was a recent follow-up audit by Inspector General Joe Ferguson, which concluded that staffing at Chicago’s 80 public libraries was still not aligned with community needs a year after he recommended a “systemwide workload analysis” to better serve patrons.

“By not supporting its staff and not engaging with its communities, CPL is failing in its mission to support the people of Chicago. I hope a turn of administration brings a fresh re-examination of the issues,” Ferguson wrote earlier this month.

But outgoing Library Commissioner Brian Bannon insisted Wednesday the decision to leave Chicago — to become the first Merryl and James Tisch Director of the New York Public Library — was his and his alone.

Dempsey and Eshleman didn’t force him out. In fact, he considers Dempsey a mentor, has the utmost respect for Eshleman and both promoted and recommended Telli to succeed him.

“Andrea is a fantastic choice. She’s been with the organization for 30 years. She’s worked her way up through the ranks. She’s a rock star. She’s beloved by the organization. She’s a career librarian. She will bring the operational know-how to lead the organization to the next level. In terms of continuity, you couldn’t find a better person,” he said.

Bannon said he intended to move on, no matter who was elected mayor. Lightfoot’s press secretary Anel Ruiz confirmed Bannon “notified the transition team early on” of his intention to leave Chicago.

As for Ferguson’s follow-up audit on staffing, Bannon said it was just unfortunate timing — the audit was released the same day he was announced as the new director of the New York Public Library’s 88 neighborhood branches and as the system’s chief of educational strategy.

Bannon also acknowledged staffing remains an issue at Chicago’s 80 libraries — but only because the city hiring process, controlled by the Department of Human Resources, is painfully slow.

“It takes time in any city — and Chicago is not unique — to back-fill and hire positions. At any given time, we have vacancies across the city that we’re working to fill. And those vacancies add to the challenge” of fully staffing all locations, Bannon said.

“I would love hiring to be faster. I would love to be able to have our vacancies filled more quickly. And even though we’ve added a lot of positions over time, it would be great to get more pages. ... [But] it was a little disappointing that the inspector general decided to just throw the hammer down on CPL as opposed to looking at the entire system of which we are a part.”

In his first city budget, Emanuel proposed reducing library hours and imposing draconian job cuts that would have affected library services at all hours.

The plan to reduce corporate fund support for libraries by $10 million was modified only after aldermen from across the city took a stand during City Council budget hearings to the applause of library employees faced with losing their jobs.

Dempsey resigned, unwilling to preside over the dismantling of a library system she helped build.

Even after the compromise, the library system was hit with a 26 percent reduction. It included eliminating 146 library pages, who sort and shelve books and other materials and perform other routine clerical tasks.

Although some of those positions were restored, Ferguson concluded last year that staffing remained “below 2011 levels.”

On Wednesday, Bannon noted the city built or renovated 30 libraries during Emanuel’s tenure.

“As we’ve added these new libraries, we’ve added teen services positions. When I started seven years ago, we had zero teen librarians. Now, we have north of 50. We now have 23 digital YouMedia sites. We’ve built an entire teen services department to support that programming,” Bannon said.

“In addition to adding teen service librarians, we’ve added clerks. We’ve added pages. When I started, there had been a significant cut to library services. We added all those positions back. We hired back all 400 pages. And we’ve continued to add positions. We’re moving in the right direction.”