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Librarians Object to Abrupt Firing of West Virginia ArchivistThe board of the West Virginia Library Association is considering whether to voice the association’s concern to Gov. Joe Manchin about the abrupt firing November 1 of state archivist Fred Armstrong after 22 years in that post and 30 years at the archives. Although WVLA officials did not plan to issue any statement before their December 4–5 meeting, other librarians and archives patrons across the state are speaking out forcefully about the sudden termination of Armstrong, an at-will employee who was given no reason for his dismissal, which was effective immediately. “I realize that he’s an at-will employee, but it just seems that overall, in everybody’s perspective that I’ve talked to, he’s done a wonderful job,” Betty Gunnoe of the Martinsburg Public Library said in the November 14 Charleston Gazette. “If someone’s done a good job for 30 years, it makes you wonder,” Cabell County Public Library Director Judy Rule told American Libraries. Characterizing the nature of Armstrong’s departure as “appalling and a major catastrophe,” 1997–98 West Virginia Library Association President Judith A. Duncan called for “this travesty [to] be thoroughly investigated and corrected” in a November 15 letter to the Gazette. Armstrong speculated to the newspaper November 2 that the underlying reason why Culture and History Commissioner Randall Reid-Smith fired him was his opposition to a plan to close the reading room of the state archives and merge it with that of the state library across the Great Hall of the Cultural Center in Charleston to make way for a cafeteria and gift shop, but that, until his termination, “I’ve never discussed that with the media.” He went on to say that the Archives and History Commission has expressed “exasperation . . . about the inability to get any information” about the proposal. Explaining that government officials “are very careful not to give a reason [for at-will firings] because then they would have to justify that reason,” Rule also cited rumors linking the termination to the plan. “I’m not saying that [the merger] can’t be done,” Rule asserted, “but the archives exist to preserve and the library exists to make use of the materials.” She added that combining the operations would require extensive and careful planning. “With Fred’s firing, historians and genealogists realize now they better step to the plate and do something,” Mining Your History Foundation board member Kellis Gillespie said in the November 15 Gazette, explaining that the local history group was holding an anti-merger rally November 16 outside the Cultural Center. Rule told AL that she didn’t know whether any librarians planned to participate. Posted November 16, 2007. |
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