I told this story five years ago about an event that happened nearly 15 years ago. What I didn’t mention is now included at the end of the story.
We have a private library in San Francisco: the Mechanics Institute Library. The Mechanics was started five years after the leading wave of the 1849 gold rush by the technically minded men of that era....most of whom called themselves mechanics. I have been a library member for over 50 years.
I have a horror story to tell you about the Mechanics which always held a fond place in my heart because it was such a comforting place to go....big leather chairs, clean bathrooms and open stacks to browse.
In the mid-1990s a couple of the top staff members came to me and asked for my help. Why the staff picked me, I don't know. They were after-all librarians and must have done their homework.
The story they told was horrific. The executive director of the Mechanics Library was stealing money on a large scale and the staff was distraught. The executive director had three ways to steal money. First she would invite the three antiquarian booksellers in San Francisco to search through the stored books to find the valuable ones. The valuable stored books they found were taken to sell with Louise, the executive director, getting a large cut. Louise would mark the books as sold out of outmoded
inventory for trivial amounts of money. Second she would sequester donated collections in boxes in her office and invite the same antiquarian booksellers to scour the books for choice items that were marketable and split the profits with her. The remainder of the donated collections would be recorded as donated books. Lastly Louise would skim 25% off the daily cash box of fines and copier fees. The last was small but was immediately noticeable in the recorded data when Louise was on vacation.
I proposed to the staff that I go with the lead staff member to a prominent and respected attorney who had previously been on the Board of the Mechanics Library and explain the situation to him. He listened carefully, understood the situation and agreed to go to the Board and ask for a confidential personnel meeting. The lawyer proposed that staff members be allowed to testify secretly to a personnel committee of the Board..
The Board heard the proposal and rejected it. The Board was totally controlled by Louise.
That left me one option, to run a group of Library members for the Board. With the staff giving me surreptitious access to the membership lists, which were not otherwise available, I was able to run a solid campaign of proposed new board members for the Board.
The Board fought back with a well financed mail and phone campaign and my slate lost. Nearly all the staff left for other library jobs. Louise continued her embezzlement for several more years until she retired early from illness and died shortly there after.
The Mechanics Library Board has never publicly acknowledged its sleazy role in the theft of valuable library property and public irresponsibility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could have won the election easily if I have brought the fraud issue to the press and media at the time. One journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle was interested in the story.
I did not make the issue public because I wanted to protect the Library. The Library at the time was in precarious financial straits because of the incompetent Board and the fraud of the librarian. It could not have survived a scandal.