The Safe Library - Service, Safety, & Security with Dr. Steve Albrecht

By Dr. Steve Albrecht.

When I teach my workplace violence prevention program for my range of public or private-sector clients, one of the things we discuss is the value and importance of paying better attention to who comes into our buildings and why. If real estate is all about location, location, location, then keeping employees safe at work is all about access control, access control, access control.

One of the examples I use in training to illustrate how things aren't always what they seem when it comes to vendors is a slide featuring a photo of a brown UPS uniform shirt, pants, and socks. The group identifies the uniform as belonging to and worn by every UPS driver they've ever seen. I then tell them I took that picture because I bought that same uniform at a thrift store. The training participants are quite surprised to hear there is no national restriction on buying any kind of uniform. You can buy medical scrubs, military camos, and even patches for a police uniform.

I complicate the UPS uniform scenario even more by asking, "Do you think I could wear this uniform and walk into almost any business pushing a hand truck and breeze right past the receptionist or security guard? Could I get into almost any business dressed this way and no one would ever think to ask me to show my UPS employee ID card? Have you ever even seen a UPS driver wearing an ID card? I've seen FedEx drivers wearing them around their necks, but I can't recall ever having seen a UPS ID."

One of my gym partners works as a UPS driver and he has no specific route. Because he has only been with them for a few years, he doesn't have much seniority and still works as a relief driver. That means he covers for other drivers who are on vacation or sick. He drives a different route nearly every day or the same one for only a week or two at a time. I asked him, since he is not the usual driver for businesses who are used to seeing their same driver nearly every day, does anyone ever ask him to identify himself? No, not once ever, he says. Everyone just waves and goes about their business as he goes about his. He rolls his hand truck into their back rooms and does his pick up and delivery thing.

Could someone wearing an "official-looking uniform" walk into your library, go back into the employees-only area, and gain access to expensive, valuable, financial, proprietary, or protected items? As a Security Guy, this is the kind of thing that keeps me up all night, worrying.

There are certain people we invite to use the public entrance side of our library, mainly patrons. Certain people also use the private entrance side of our library, mainly employees. Then there are those who we permit to come from the public side to the private side. This includes regular vendors - book deliveries, copy machine repairs, the good folks who refill the soda and snack machines in our break room, FedEx/UPS drivers, janitorial services, and the like. We may have irregular vendors, like maintenance or repair workers, plumbers, electricians, carpet cleaners, etc. And we may have visitors who are employees of our city or county, if we are connected to a city or town and not an independent, stand-alone library system. This could include everyone from Public Works employees, Facilities employees, IT employees, couriers from our Finance Office, and regularly-scheduled delivery people who work for the same entity as we do.

We could have visits from elected or appointed officials from our own community or neighboring cities or towns; our city attorneys, county counsels, town attorneys, district attorneys, and similar legal people; and we could have visitors from our Friends of the Library or Library Board members.

On the public side, it's quite common for Library Directors or their deputies or department heads to have meetings with patrons. Most of these meetings are cordial and problem-free; some are hostile and volatile, based on the high degree of emotionality the patron brings into the meeting room. During one of these confrontational meetings, where the patron starts shouting and won't lower his or her voice or end the meeting and leave the room, I'm certain every director has had that sinking feeling inside where he or she thinks, "I should have met this person out in the library, not here on the second floor, way back in the back of the building, where what's happening in my office right now is not heard by anyone."

All this speaks to the need for a Vendor/Visitor Control Policy. We don't need to have every person sign a Visitor Log, but we do need to quickly and effectively screen everyone who comes in wanting to do work, have a meeting, or otherwise go "behind the curtain," from the frontstage part of our business and building to the backstage parts.

Here are our Vendor/Visitor Rules of Thumb:

• Ask all City/County employees (including all library employees) to wear their visible photo ID while inside your building. This helps to tell employees and patrons who is who.
• All regular delivery people need to be acknowledged and recognized by at least one library employee, who knows them from frequent contact and can send them into the back. In other words, someone should quickly vouch for them with a hello or a head nod. No vendor should breeze right past and go into our back areas without being seen by at least one library employee.
• No one-time vendors or vendors who come to the facility on an irregular basis should be allowed to enter the back offices or be left alone in those areas without an employee escort. If they need to wait before they can do their work, ask them to wait on the public side of the facility. (Some "salespeople" are not always who they seem, so better safe than sorry.)
• Any visitors - including other City/County employees, patrons, elected/appointed officials - should be asked, in a polite and matter of fact way, to sign our Visitors Clipboard. This clipboard should include their name, title, the person they want to see, and when they arrived and left. Since it has been nearly 20 years since the 9-11 attacks, this should not be a burden to most people, since it is done routinely at many other professional and governmental buildings.
• All visitors need to be walked back to inner office appointments by a reception staff member, library staffer, or met at the transition door (between our public side and our private side) by the person who has the appointment with them.
• Train and remind all library staffers not to bring angry or unstable patrons back to meet with senior leaders. Have them either call the back office to have the supervisors, managers, deputies or assistant directors, or director come out and meet the person, or preferably, to set an appointment to meet the next day. Time heals a lot of anger and the patron who is irrational and unreasonable today might be much more agreeable 24 hours from now.
• Staff members should brief their bosses as to the issue that the patron wants to meet about and give an assessment of his or her levels of anger and cooperation. Any concerns about volatility, now or the next day, should mean that the library leader meets with the patron on the public side of the library and not in his or her office, or even only over the phone.
• When meeting with really angry patrons, have a colleague participate in the meeting as well, for "safety in numbers" reasons, and to witness the discussion.
• The time to think about creating or updating your Vendor/Visitor Policy is before you have an incident that tells you what you should have done.