The Chicago Library Board Tuesday voted to delay paying $1.4 million to the accounting firm hired to oversee installation of a computerized circulation system that remains behind schedule and incomplete.
Library board members also revealed plans to name a chief librarian within a month, an appointment that would come a year after Library Commissioner John B. Duff said that filling the post would be his first task as commissioner.
Duff, in his first annual report to the board, said he believed the controversial circulation system was 85 percent complete. The system, which calls for the addition of 125 new terminals to track the approximately 4.1 million volumes at Chicago`s central library and 88 branches, was supposed to have been operational by November, under the $1.8 million contract awarded last year to Arthur Andersen & Co., the accounting firm. The November deadline followed many previous lengthy delays.
After an hour-long closed discussion on the system, the board postponed a vote to pay Andersen $1,425,000 for work done so far. The remainder of the contract amount is to be paid when the system is complete.
Board president Cannutte Russell said Andersen would be given two weeks to assure the board`s finance committee that the system overhaul, which is more than $2 million over budget, is reliable.
”It`s always been `from 50 percent to 85 percent complete,”`
complained one board member, who asked not to be named. ”The issue . . . was, does the damn thing work? We`re not going to pay them if there are glitches.” Following Tuesday`s meeting, Russell said that two ”finalists” for the new post of chief librarian have yet to be interviewed for the job, which one member estimated would pay ”$60,000 to $90,000.” Duff`s base salary is $95,000.
Five other finalists have been interviewed, including an unsuccessful Atlanta-based candidate for commissioner, the job Duff assumed in December, 1985, a source said. Three candidates reportedly work for the Chicago Public Library, and four are from elsewhere.
The board also voted to seek a consultant, who for a three-month maximum fee of $40,000 would oversee development of the new central library site, and a consultant who would develop the outline of programs at the new library.
In summarizing his first year in the post, Duff said he had inherited a maelstrom of controversy over where to put the new central library that dated back to 1922.
”No one can complain that they did not get a chance to present their case–I don`t think there was a possible site for the central library of the city of Chicago that was not discussed,” Duff told the board.
Board members voted Dec. 9 to build the new central library on the southern block of a two-block parcel owned by the city in the South Loop, on the west side of State Street between Jackson Boulevard and Congress Parkway. A plaza is planned for the southern two-thirds of the other block. Construction is expected to begin next year.
The central library is now located in a cramped former warehouse at 425 N. Michigan Ave.
The December vote abruptly replaced a 1982 plan to renovate for a library the former Goldblatt Bros. department store across the street.
