The following is written by a homeschool mom who has been doing battle with the Gwinnett Co. Public Libraries. This is her report on last night's board meeting which she attended:

I just returned from the Library Board meeting and I'm sad to report that the Library Board has backtracked on its promise to forge a partnership with the homeschool community and has made several decisions in an effort to bust our chops (my opinion).

While Lloyd Breck is still very supportive of responding to the needs of the homeschool community, he has limited power to see things through. It turns out that although Lloyd Breck requested that I compile lists of books, audio books, and music CDs that the homeschool community wants added to the collection, and agreed to forward these to Mable Anne Kinchencloe,
director of materials management, to ensure that our requests are processed, Mable Anne (at the direction of Jo Ann Pinder) has refused to process our requests, despite initially agreeing to this arrangement after the last
Board meeting.

I argued the point strenuously at tonight's meeting, since many of you have sent me requests, which I have sent to Lloyd and he has forwarded to
Mable Anne, and I've just been waiting to hear that the requests are filled. I have spent countless hours compiling these lists and cross-checking them with the library's catalog to make sure they aren't already available.

Lloyd backed me up on this at the meeting, and agreed that he had asked me to follow this procedure, but in the end it was up to Dan English to direct Mable Anne to honor the requests in their current form, and Dan refused to do this, stating, "Do you not understand, did you not hear,
Denise, that this was a misunderstanding?" To which I replied, "Please do not patronize me. There was no misunderstanding between Lloyd and myself, and there is no law preventing Mable Anne from processing these requests, is there?" Believe me, this was no misunderstanding. Jo Ann Pinder decided to stick it to the homeschool community by throwing this roadblock the way of our getting the books we want on the shelves.

But, I'm sorry to say that the end result is this:

You must make all of your book requests again, this time via the library's website, or at your local branch. On the library's home page there is a drop-down list titled "How Do I." Scroll down to "request a book" and follow the procedure, one book at a time.

Please, I implore you, for the sake of all of us in the community who rely on the library and desire a better selection of wholesome materials and rich literature, please take the time to request the books, audio books, and children's CDs you want the library to purchase.

Mable Anne gave me a very insulting explanation as to why she wasn't going to fill many books I had requested, which boiled down to, "We are the experts in choosing reading material and we are under no obligation to take
book orders from the public."

You and I pay $20 million dollars a year for a library that is supposed to serve the community, not the egos of the "professional book selectors."

Also, if you want the library to budget for educational software in the future, please e-mail the board at gcplboard [at] gwinnettpl [dot] org The only reason they don't have a collection of educational software for check-out is
because Jo Ann Pinder doesn't want it- period.

In addition to that, the library is still miffed that they had to put the videos and DVDs back in circulation and have decided to stop inspecting videos for damage and "weeding" the defective ones out of the collection as
they used to. Instead, they voted tonight to institute a policy protecting themselves from financial responsibility if the videos damage anyone's VCR (and I'm sure they're hoping the videos lodge in our VCRs permanently as
payback). So, check your videos carefully for rattling and damaged, twisted tape before playing them.

In summary, Jo Ann Pinder runs the Library Board through her right hand man, Dan English, Chairman of the Board.

Now for the good news: Dan English will not serve on the Board after the end of this year- hooray! We can only hope and pray that the next Chairman gives more consideration to the wishes of the community.

Head's up: the Board voted to decrease the number of items one patron can check out at a time to 75 (down from 250, and the original number of 999).

They will spend the next 90 days advertising this change so that no one is shocked when it takes effect April 3rd.

By the way, Dan English made a public display of emphasizing the fact that I am not an official representative of the homeschool community and therefore, the information I present from the e-mails and other feedback I receive really holds no special weight. He stated that the board receives little if any input from any other homeschoolers requesting improvements at the library, with the implication being that everyone else is perfectly happy with how everything is run, and I'm a squeaky wheel and chronic malcontent.

So, by all means, if you have suggestions about library policy, e-mail them to the board. Otherwise, they'll consider homeschoolers successfully ignored.

Warm Regards,

Denise Varenhorst