Once I really had to complain to the management and had a meeting with the deputy head then.

To my surprise, at least one permanent library worker was just colour-coding who are permanent and who are temps. I found that out when I asked her what was the temp worker’s name. Her answer: “a non-permanent….” and that was it. It was like one of them foreigners, not one of us at all.

Volunteers sounds nice.

Queed up citizens to secure “study spaces,” not necessary to read books or referencd materials looks nice and well-appreciated.

In between the perment city-employed librairans and die-hard library-goers, libraries in Japan are typically suppoerted by workers who have to take non-permanent, insecure short-term, if not time-limited, contract workers.

I know someone who works for a prefectural library in the greater Tokyo area.

He admits such short-term contract works, typically speaking, are more dedicated and knowledgable, if not more up-to-dated. He knows often times he knows less about certain things, calling himself turning into a “dinosaur.”

The library you visited in Urayasu is not bad at all for its citizens including myself, having precious out-of-print books and CDs to conspiracy-theory, dooms day books, along with non-academic/scientific periodicals.

Still, Uraysu is relatively new city, which used to be a town per Japan’s citizen-population-based municipality law, so books and reference materials hardly goes back to 1980.

It is not my intention to put smear on your innocent sugar-coated impression and explanation you received in Urayasu, but mixed labour structures is increasingly important to keep public library management at given municipality/prefecture budget.

The City of Urayasu has made efforts to expand its services and has made extra book check-out/return outlets all over the small city. Sounds nice now, but it took a while to erradicate inequality depending on where you live within the city.

So when you are back in Urayasu, see how the workers look like. Here’s the tip.

Expressionless men: permanent
Smiling women: short-term contract

Easy, eh?