Berkeley's new library leader pledges to listen to staff - California News Beep

Rebecca Alcalá-Veraflor got her first library card on a kindergarten class field trip. As she grew up around the East Bay, with stops in San Leandro, San Lorenzo and Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, Alcalá-Veraflor was a self-described “library kid” who relished spending time at her local branches.

A portrait photo of a woman standing in front of a shelf lined with books Rebecca Alcalá-Veraflor is Berkeley’s new director of library services. Credit: Berkeley Public Library

Now Alcalá-Veraflor is Berkeley’s new director of library services, overseeing a library system that serves the city where she used to come visit family members — she learned to swim with her cousins at King Pool — and later attended UC Berkeley. There are about 150 employees in the Berkeley Public Library system, which is made up of downtown’s Central Library and four branches.

The former chief of branches for the San Francisco Public Library, Alcalá-Veraflor was tapped to lead this city’s libraries at a delicate moment.

The largest union representing library staff called last spring for the firing of Deputy Director Henry Bankhead, who at the time was filling the top job on an interim basis during the search that would end in Alcalá-Veraflor’s appointment. The union accused Bankhead of cultivating a toxic environment that tanked employee morale, a sign of renewed turmoil in a system where two consecutive library directors left their jobs after less than a year amid conflicts between management and labor in the mid-2010s. Other workers defended Bankhead; he remains a deputy director.

Berkeleyside sat down with Alcalá-Veraflor to discuss what she had learned in the first days of her tenure, which began in August, and how she plans to navigate what has been a fraught relationship with library workers.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Why were you interested in leading Berkeley’s libraries?

I never thought I would become a library director. There are a lot of reasons for that that have to do with, as a Latina, seeing myself in those roles — there wasn’t always a lot of representation. When I became a branch manager in San Francisco and then progressively started to increase my role in leadership, [I started] seeing the impact I could have, not just within the staff but also within the community.

Being from the Bay Area, having gone to Cal but also having family roots here in Berkeley, there was a connection. Also knowing what my skill set is in terms of bringing equity to the forefront, building community [and] building teams — I felt that I could deliver and I could offer something to Berkeley.

What have libraries meant to you?

I’m a library kid. I grew up in them. Yes, I’m a voracious reader, I read all types of different things — but it was more about the access to information that a library provides. If I had a question, I knew I could find it there. It was also a place where I could go after school with my friends and just be.

As I became older, it was clear to me that libraries are our great equalizer. I’m an ethnic studies major at Cal, and social justice has always been part of my life; it’s part of the reason I went to Cal. Libraries, to me, are where we can do that work. This is where we can make sure that the folks who have been marginalized, not been seen — this is where we can say, “You belong here. This is your space.”

You spent your early days on the job traveling around to Berkeley’s library branches — what did you hear and learn from that experience?

The commitment that everyone has to public service is evident to me — that they have this passion, they want to serve, they want to do the right thing, they want to be there for their communities. I’m not surprised by that, I had a sense of that already, but to hear that from them is heartwarming.

The teams have been incredibly generous with answering a lot of my questions as I try to understand more about Berkeley’s public library. It’s Berkeley, and much like San Francisco and Oakland, people have opinions and thoughts they want to share — that’s what we’re about.

Library staff complained earlier this year about low staff morale. What’s your sense of morale among workers, and how do you plan to address it?

I assume I’ll hear more about it. I did spend my time listening and reading — I went into this position eyes wide open. I’m from the Bay Area, so I definitely have heard what’s been going on in Berkeley over the years. And I think that there is an opportunity to work with the staff to figure out: How do we make it so that staff feel good coming to work if they’re not right now?

About a dozen people, many of them in matching purple shirts, stand at the front of a room while one person reads from a sheet of paper. Members of the SEIU chapter that represents more than 100 Berkeley Public Library workers read from a petition calling for the firing of Interim Director Henry Bankhead at an April 15 meeting of the Board of Library Trustees. Credit: Nico Savidge/Berkeleyside

As you alluded to, Berkeley has had a history of conflicts between library management and staff. How will you handle those relationships?

Given that I’m still learning about many things, it’s hard for me to diagnose or provide a, for lack of a better word, prescription for what to do. But I will say that when I took the leadership role as chief of branches in San Francisco, a lot of it was talking to staff, holding some informal focus groups with key members of the team.

We were coming out of the pandemic when I took it over. There was a lot of anger, a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, and all of the other feelings of having just been through a pandemic. That’s why I did those meetings to begin. It was: “Tell me more about why you want to come to work? What do you want to do at work? What do you want to see at work?”

That process of engagement, and transparency about what’s realistic and what’s unrealistic in terms of how we work together, really changed things in San Francisco. Things settled, and people were able to do the work that they wanted to do — that was the most important to me. I hope to do something similar here once I’ve learned more about the organization.

Berkeley’s new library leader pledges to listen to staff

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