Posted on 12/16/2003 8:08:40 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
Are you tough enough to be a Santa Cruz librarian? Think twice before you answer. For the past six years, 76 workers' compensation claims in the city-county library system amount to about $460,000 in medical bills, lost work time and other costs. There were 17 claims last year alone. That's a far higher injury rate than other systems report. • With four times the workforce at about 400 employees, Santa Clara County's library system reported 18 worker claims in 2003. Los Gatos' public library, with a staff of 32, had one injury claim in 2003. • A San Jose Public Library official said injury is always a threat in that line of work, but the San Jose system has few to report in recent years. • The directors of the California and national library associations report no trend in injuries. The research director for the national group, the American Library Association, says there has not been any research on the problem. So what's the problem in Santa Cruz? Probably a cartful of small factors, rather than a brutal system or uncaring management. Higher circulation, more workers, heightened awareness, the city's insistence that workers report pain rather than tough it out -- these are some of the factors library workers and officials mention. No plastic mat to make chairs roll easier. A circulation counter 27 inches wide -- three inches wider than an industry ergonomic study recommends. Little things like that. ``We feel we've responded as positively as we could,'' said Santa Cruz Public Library Director Anne Turner. New employees The injuries may even be an unintended consequence of the quarter-cent sales tax voters in Santa Cruz County approved in 1996 to support the library system. The extra money allowed the library to extend its hours and hire more workers. ``New employees are more prone to workers' comp injuries,'' said Richard Eberle, the circulation director. Perhaps only in public libraries will you find the combination of tight repetitive movements with heavy lifting. ``The library's unique because they're lifting books -- picking up and moving things, over and over again,'' said Dee Schabot, principal analyst in the city of Santa Cruz human relations department. For the past four years, when circulation clerks at the Santa Cruz Central Library check out a book, they turn it around, grasp it, open the cover, lift it, hold it under a bar-code reader, reach for a date-due card, insert it into the book's pocket, close the cover and repeat, thousands of times a day. The Santa Cruz libraries circulated 1.6 million items last year. A similar system is used to check books back into the libraries. The system could be taking its toll on clerks. Turner says it's a big improvement over the old system, where a clerk waved an electronic wand over the bar code. But Los Gatos library director Peggy Conway swears by the wand, if used with a stiff wrist. Librarians agree that there are two excellent ways of almost eliminating repetitive motion injuries on their circulation desks. One is ``self-checkout'' -- various systems in which the patron scans his or her own card and books or videos. At the new San Jose Main Library, about 85 percent of the checkouts are done by patrons. ``We're really working on trying to not have staff do a lot of the repetitive stuff,'' said the library's assistant director, Ned Himmel. One trick: The bar codes go on the outside of the book, not on the inside, as in Santa Cruz. The other perceived panacea is called RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification, and it takes the self-checkout concept several steps further: the books practically check themselves out. RFID is similar to the toll-road gadgets that read and charge a car's transponder as it zips by. A tiny chip or tag is installed in each book or video, and in the library card as well. ``Older products also used radio frequency but just emitted the frequency,'' said Maureen Roll, circulation supervisor in Los Gatos. ``The new tags actually hold item information. It really cuts down on handling, especially on check-in, which is probably the most labor-intensive portion of the job.'' As patrons leave the library, they wave their books and card at a machine. Simple as that. The machine generates the date-due ``receipt.'' Patrons may not even have to wave. The transmitters and receivers can be made powerful enough so that, as Gay Strand, administrative services manager for the Santa Clara County Library System, puts it, ``On the way out, you don't even stop at the desk.'' The device reads the chip in the book and the card in the patron's wallet. On the way in, ``The antenna talks to the receiver and says, `I'm back.' '' However, in practice, Strand said, it feels a little, well, Big Brother-ish. ``We're not going to track you walking down the street,'' she said. Costly to go high-tech Turner, the Santa Cruz director, drools over RFID but says it would cost about $750,000 to implement in a system already struggling to make ends meet despite the sales tax. Anyway, Eberle said, no technical system does it all. ``Somehow the book has to get back on the shelf,'' he pointed out. It was shelving books that laid Stuart Smith low. Smith, 41, a three-year veteran of the Santa Cruz library, was moving ``some very heavy coffee-table-type art books, hundreds of them,'' from shelf to shelf one day in August 2002. ``For some reason I did that mostly with my left hand.'' At the end of the day his left wrist was sore, and it got worse. He told Eberle about it, as the system requires, and filled out the state and city paperwork. Since then he's seen a doctor of the city's choice and chiropractors and acupuncturists of his own choice. The wrist still bothers him, but he hasn't missed any work. Although he can pick up his guitar again, he still doesn't ride his bicycle. ``The system worked for me,'' he said. ``I'm not in agony all the time.'' Under the guidance of an ergonomics consultant, Santa Cruz library workers are now urged to stretch frequently. The consultant is budgeted at less than $5,000 a year, which is far cheaper than paying medical claims. ``We've been given the training,'' Eberle said. ``It's kind of up to us to take care of ourselves.'' --------------------------------------------------------- Contact David L. Beck at dbeck@mercurynews.com or at (831) 423-0960.
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
It's time for auto-checkouts at the library!!
But then who will say "Shhhhhhhhh" to the patrons?
For a **real** treat, canvass the opinions of one Margie Schellberg, who is the proprietess of the store ''Nearly New'' in that misbegotten city.
Talk about preying, indeed, thriving, on misery -- S.C. must be WELL up on the list, for any rational American.
A little later, after engaging the librarian, she accidently returned to a normal voice and I said "shhhhhh". She laughed and apologized.
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