Petition for librarians’ redundancy
The Greek Government’s decision on the administrative staff redundancy/mobility scheme has an enormous impact on the Greek Librarians working in the academic libraries. Ninety-four (94) of them, coming from the biggest (eight in total) academic institutions have been affected. A substantial number of administrative staff working in academic libraries, including the already limited staff supporting the horizontal electronic services offered by HEAL-Link (negotiation/handling of e-resources, Union Catalog of the Hellenic Academic Libraries, Hellenic Interlibrary Loan Network), has also been affected. Consequently, HEAL-Link sadly realizes that is unable to provide its well-respected services to the Greek academic and research community.
Moreover, HEAL-Link realizes that the academic libraries affected by the staff redundancy scheme, will be forced to minimize or even cut many of the services they provide, like electronic and in-library services, services offered to external users. Branch Libraries will seize to operate due to the total lack of staff.
It should be pointed out that the sustainability of the many of new services already in progress to be provided via the National Strategic Development Plan (ESPA), the Digital Convergence Plan and the Education and Life Long Learning Plan, is at high risk. Upon completion of the horizontal services, like ILSaS (Integrated Library System as a Service), Institutional Repositories, Greek e-books (Kallipos project), there will be no staff to continue to provide such services due to the staff redundancy scheme.
Last, but not least, HEAL-Link would like to express its support to those colleagues, who have worked closely with HEAL-Link over the years, and are immediately affected by being made redundant and thus unemployed.