Connecting Librarian

Its Day 30 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I tried very hard to resist, I really did. But it’s the last day, so I have succumbed.

Here’s my one and only meme post in the 30 days challenge – the 30 things meme, with an extension. Mine is 30 things I did, as well as 30 things I didn’t do in the challenge period.

So as you can see, another quiet month.

Its been a challenge in a number of ways, but I have really enjoyed coming up with something every day. I hope you were able to get something out of them too. For me, I hope it will help me to blog more often, although the plan is closer to once a week, rather than the once a month it was before the challenge.

Thanks for following during this challenge. Your reading and comments have made it easier and much more enjoyable. I really appreciate it.

Its Day 29 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and after something that happened today, I was wondering about serendipitous discoveries that have been made in libraries.

We went to Mt Baw Baw in the Victorian Alps, taking the kids for their first visit to the snow. Left early, made sure we had all the gear, etc and got there at a not unreasonable time, only to discover that we had selected the correct chains for our car, but they did not fit.  So we had to turn around, go back down the mountain and collect a new set. All up, it added an extra hour to our travel.

Pretty upsetting really, with kids being so excited and having to deal with car sickness on all those windy roads. Turned out that having to do that and put up with all that was serendipitous indeed.

On our second trip back up to the mountain, we came around a tight corner and I watched in amazement as a pair of lyrebirds came floating down from some treetops on the right and landed on the road ahead of us. I drew the family’s attention to them as I slowed the car. They briefly walked down the road away from us, displaying their beautiful lyre tails and then raced across the road and disappeared up and left, back into the forest.

We couldn’t believe it and just wow’ed for almost the rest of the way back up the mountain. Even my daughter realised that we wouldn’t have seen them if it hadn’t been for the problem with the chains.  We all felt immediately better about the problem and it was pushed back further into the ‘not to worry’ category after having a great time at the snow.

That was our little moment, what of  other discoveries? I know that there have been a number of chemical discoveries which came about by accident, including gelignite, silly putty, teflon, scotchguard and artificial sweeteners. In the medical realm, important serendipitous discoveries have included penicillin, nitrous oxide, viagra, anti-pscyhotic drugs and some cancer treatments. (great write up in Wikipedia)

Serendipity in the library, happens pretty much every day. You are looking for some information for a patron and find some for another one, a borrower browses looking for a particular author/title/genre and finds something they weren’t looking for, but are delighted to find.

But have there been serendipitous discoveries that have changed projects or libraries, or even affected the profession in some way? I am sure there are, but I can’t think of any.  Hopefully you’ll be able to think of some – if so, please let me know through comments.

Its Day 28 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I’m inspired today by another quote.

I have just started a Quote of the Week in our staffroom at work – picking up on the groundbreaking Word of the Week started by my predecessor.  I was inspired by a quote forwarded to me by my husband, who has a blog – Quote for the Day.

Anyway, the quote is as follows:

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”  Jo Godwin.

The staff have delighted in this quote, its one they can relate to quite easily as we have enough complaints about someone being offended about something in the library.

The more common complaints are about (at least in recent years):

• Having games consoles to play on (used to be the Internet computers)
• Having graphic novels that are too graphic (same was said for romances a decade ago)
• Having pictures of human bodies in anatomy type books that kids can access (that one has been consistent since forever)
• Too noisy
  
• Not given enough time on the computers – just to finish ……
• Not trusted to do x without x (eg. borrow without their card, or borrow if they promise that they will return their long overdue item the next day, etc, etc)

What sort of things does your library do/offer or not, that causes offense to some?

Its Day 27 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and today’s post is inspired by a TED talk by Chip Conley – Measuring what makes life worthwhile (which is worthwhile checking out) and in particular the following quote he used in his talk:

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. ” Albert Einstein.

The world is so fixed on statistics, in libraries as well as in life.  We seem to be caught up in the cycle of needing numbers to justify everything, yet not being happy to be relying on only the numbers that those tangibles give us to justify what we do.

3D Bar Graph Meeting, uploaded to Flickr on December 25, 2007 by lumaxart

We report our numbers to our governing bodies, who use those numbers to report back to their stakeholders and to justify the money they spend on their libraries. Are they any happier with only having tangible numbers to work from?

I’m not saying that numbers are bad – they are valuable and do give a view of how our libraries are being used. As we have been using those numbers for so long, they are also giving us a picture of how libraries and their use are changing. But those numbers have never been able to give the whole picture.

How do we count the value of the interactions we have, such as those I described in my blog post, The importance of librarians.

I know I am far from the first person to ask these questions and I won’t be the last. But until we find a way to measure these things and to break away from the cycle we are locked into regarding the tangibles we count and report, nothing is going to change.

Libraries are valuable above and beyond that we can currently count. So I’ll throw these questions out to the universe – How do we count the intangibles in libraries? How do we report these to our governing bodies? How do we get everyone to accept these counts as legitimate expressions of what libraries do and how they contribute to our society?

I hope that the work that Chip Conley and others are doing with the GNH will be able to answer those questions and we will see some different counts coming out of our libraries and being accepted by our governing bodies,  in the not too distant future.

Its Day 26 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge, making it long past time for a story. So here we go.

Once upon a time, there was a twittering, blogging, librarian mum, who was up early on a Saturday morning, pondering those things that twittering, blogging, librarian mums ponder when they have had not had a full night’s sleep and the house is still quiet.

She was pondering how being online has changed a particular aspect of her life. In particular how most of her venting seems to happen on twitter or on her blog, more than in her physical life. How she usually listens to other people vent in her physical life and seemingly as a result, there never seems to be time or opportunity for her to vent there. That the online gives her an opportunity to vent and release frustrations etc, without expecting any response in return. (And how a very few sometimes, she secretly wishes there was a response.)

Time moves along and the pondering is put on hold as the children arise and although its Saturday, there are places to be and now. As she watches her children at Auskick, in particular her son, who occasionally sulks after being slightly hurt or if things don’t go the way he wants (although nowhere near as much as he used to), she sighs in mild frustration. How can she help him to pull himself out of those moods?

Cue harp music and wavy picture as we hark back to earlier in the week, when her daughter hurt her foot at school and was ‘woe is me’ for a time. There were no physical symptoms of the hurt, although twittering, blogging, librarian mum was sure it did hurt, but the symptoms seem to continue longer than they should. Who knew that a foot spa could be beneficial both psychologically as well as physically, to children as well as adults?

Return to present time and all three are in the car, heading home after Auskick and discussing son’s behaviour. The twittering, blogging, librarian mum gives her most sage advice for the day. “You just have to get over it.” Son agrees, daughter pipes up that it applies to her and her foot too.

And at that point, twittering, blogging, librarian mum realises it also applies to her, with her morning’s pondering about venting. And admits as much to her children.

Life lessons learned in the car with children. Brought to you by a twittering, blogging, librarian mum.

The End.

Its Day 25 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I was reminded of what good poker faces librarians have when it comes to some days of dealing with our users.

One of our staff was at work, but feeling a little under the weather today and when she made a request of one of our users and received a snarky reply, she was snarky in response. This staff member is very genial normally, so it was out of character for her. When I caught up with her soon after, she said she knew as soon as she opened her mouth that it was the wrong thing, but it was too late.

The user didn’t make a complaint, but you wonder what impression she went away with.

On the other hand, when wearing our poker faces, we quite often manage to turn grumpy users into satisfied ones, just by remaining calm and working towards a mutually acceptable outcome.

Normally we can be ourselves, which is friendly, polite, open. Sometimes however, you just don’t feel like it, but its required for your job. We all have our ways of making the public face work when its so far from how we are feeling.

George Burns said “Sincerity – If you can fake that, you‘ve got it made.” I think he must have been thinking of people whose work involves serving others, like librarians. If we are to be successful, we really need to find the way to be sincere, when all we want to do is try to knock some sense into the very rude library user in front of us or curl up in a corner and leave the world behind.

For me, its a case of biting the bullet, putting the face into place, with maybe a bit more formality than usual and just getting down to it. Then taking a break when I need it, before it all gets too much.

So how do you copy with dealing with the public, when you just don’t feel like it?

Its Day 24 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I have discovered something about myself in my new role.

When I first started as Branch Manager, I thought it would be good, but I knew I was going to miss all the IT and social network stuff that I had been working on.  Turns out, not so much.

I still keep an eye on our website and our other web presences and do little things. I’m still a little possessive – probably because I was one of the people who built them.

But on the whole I have found it much easier to move away from that and into the on-the-ground, dealing with staff, hands-on type work, including the minutia and details that come with being a branch manager.

I am exercising skills that have mostly remained dormant since I was last a branch manager over ten years ago and am enjoying the differences that have come in the role, both over time and with working in a bigger library.

I tried to figure out today why I was enjoying it so much and there are probably a few reasons:

• I’m a list type person and can be very task focused, so am enjoying having plenty of work today and ticking them off on the list as they are done
• I am enjoying the wide variety of work that is involved, as well as utilising my administration skills, which are one of my strengths
• I am working with staff that I have known for a long time, with whom I share a mutual respect and from whom I have acceptance and support in this new role
• And I still get to play with the website and social networking stuff – just to keep my hand in.

Still adjusting to working full time, but adapting to that too.

I knew that human beings were adaptable, but didn’t realise how much and how quickly it could happen.

What is your story of adaptability?

Its Day 23 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and this week we have another work experience student.

Year 10 students in Victoria do work experience to discover whether their career interests are what they expect they might be. I did my work experience at a public library, which put me off working in a public library, but not in libraries in general. Cue the ironic music, that later this year I will be celebrating 25 years of working in public libraries.

We take work experience students at our library to hopefully inspire future library staff. Unfortunately we get many more requests for work experience than we can handle, so it usually comes down to first in, first served. Also unfortunately we are often not the first or sometimes anywhere near first choice of the students approaching us.

So we end up with the dilemma of trying to give those students a good experience of libraries, against their desire (or lack thereof) to be there.

Being in an area with lots of kids, our students tend to do a lot of work with our Children’s Librarians, who are incredibly patient and understanding. There is, as you would expect, a lot of what I call – desk support.

We also would love to take the opportunity to utilise their presence to work on project type stuff, but it tends to be repetitive and not so exciting. So trying to get work done, using their presence, when they take us away from doing work by their presence, whilst also giving them a good impression of library work is an interesting conundrum.

Finding the balance can be a real challenge.

Would love to hear how you deal with work experience students and what you do with them once you have them?

Its Day 22 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I was wondering why is it always……?  It is nearly 10pm after a late shift, so I think I’m entitled to have a wondering/wandering mind at this time of night, lol.

So, why is it always:

• That you just served the last of what seems like hundreds of people and waved them goodbye and the next person comes in commenting how quiet it is
• That you spend a good half hour catching up and cleaning up after a rush and the next person to come across the desk comments on how quiet it is
• That the person who comes in to pick up a last minute loan/print a file/copy a document before you close, always takes three times as long as they expect and keep you beyond closing/knock-off time
• That when looking through one of the browsing collections, the item you seek is the very last one
• That the quick job that you take a timeout to do, takes twice as long as you expect and you have to finish/redo it again later anyway
• That people DON’T READ SIGNS, regardless of how clear, obvious and really helpful they are

BTW, all these did happen to me at my library today and I know that these things don’t ALWAYS happen, but they do happen often enough to make them annoying, time consuming, frustrating etc.

What are your “Why is it always…….”

Its Day 21 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and its been one of those days.

You know the ones, where one thing after another keeps happening, just building on top of the last disaster/issue/event/happening.  Yep, one of those.

And it was on top of similar things that happened each on Saturday and Sunday, and some of those with staff who worked in the branch today.

So how do you deal with that sort of situation? When everything seems to be working against you all, when you can’t get on top of things, when it only seems to be getting on top of you?  When you don’t feel like you are making much progress at all?

Uploaded on October 19, 2006 to Flickr by Balaji Dutt

First you support each other in any way you can. You encourage each other, really listen, make sure everyone is OK.  And then to top it all off, you bring in cheesecake for afternoon tea.

Cheesecake makes all the difference in staff morale, when everything seems to be working against you.

What do you do to perk yourself and your staff up that little bit more when everything seems to be going wrong?