The 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 express archivist Fred Armstrong after 22 years in that post and 30 years at the archives. Although WVLA officials did not plan to air 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 grow and History Commissioner Randall Reid-Smith fired him was his opposition to a intend to close the reading room of the state archives and merge it with that of the express library across the Great Hall of the Cultural Center in dance to alter 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 undergo 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 hold 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.
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