Connecting Librarian

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s hoping that 2012 is better than 2011, regardless of whether it was good or bad.

I just finished reading a post by Andy Burkhardt at Information Tyrannosaur which got me pondering. I’m only new to Andy’s blog, but I highly recommend you check it out, if you haven’t already.  Entitled Creating Meaning for Library Users, it took some great ideas from a TED talk by Experience Designer Nathan Shedroff.

What caught my attention however, was his closing paragraph.

“We are not simply delivering access to e-books or databases. We are not only conducting reference interviews or doing information literacy. We are doing something much more important than that.”

He’s referring to all the things that libraries do for their users, that is meaningful to their users. The things that keep them coming back for more, that leave them satisfied each time they leave our buildings.

It’s not new. We all know the future of libraries is not just tied up in our collections or our roles as information intermediaries.

But what are those things we do, that address the ‘meaning’ that our users are seeking. And what are the things we want to do that we aren’t doing yet and why aren’t we?

At my library, we have had an amazing increase in the number of people wanting to use the space for study this year. Not necessarily the collection, but definitely the wi-fi, the tables and in a lot of instances, some quiet. Unfortunately, we are not too well set up for the latter, with every inch of floorspace being used and being a public library, more often than not, its far from quiet. Plans are being made to fix this, but it all takes time and money. In the meantime, we do what we can. So one of the things we would like to do, is to be able to provide that ‘quiet’ study space, whilst not becoming the ‘shhh’ police that we all abhor (and don’t have the time for).

I want our users to know and remember the services we have that suit their needs, so that they can access them when they need or want them. Unfortunately, we can only tell them about those services when they join and when they ask, otherwise we can’t make them remember. Its very frustrating too, I can tell you.

I want more people from our community to come in and discover the treasures that we offer, in facilities, programs, collections and more. Our communities are great supporters of libraries, but nowhere near enough of them are members.  Our marketing programs are great, but somehow people still don’t actually make it into our buildings or onto our websites, to learn more and make use of the great things we have on offer. If only there was a way to make a library card the latest hip trend, one that never goes out of fashion……

What do you want for your users? What can you do to make it happen? I don’t know what I can do to make my wishes reality, but I am going to work on finding out.

Happy New Year!

Its amazing how you can view your work processes differently, when fresh eyes asks you to examine it.Recently, we had a librarianship student come to our library to learn more about the reference inquiries we receive.  Myself, my local history colleague (Heather) and the student (Liz) ended having a great chat and exploration of reference in the here and now. Thanks to both Heather and Liz for an interesting and eye-opening exploration.

So what did we decide were beyond the basics?  To start with, a comprehensive knowledge of your collection. Is the item being requested, something that your library would hold? I know that we don’t collect tertiary textbooks, so save both myself and the library user time when I can say that straight away. Having said that, there have been times when I was sure we wouldn’t have something, but the enquirer pushed and I searched and we did have it. So being aware that I am not omnipotent about everything our library has, I usually take a moment to do at least a quick search just to confirm. That search can also help me to determine if we have something else, which although not asked for, could be useful.

What’s the difference, if I’m going to search anyway? If I am reasonably sure we won’t have something, my search will be relatively quick and cursory (but thorough). If I think we may have something, I’ll spend more time trying to find it.

Leading on from that, is knowing where to refer people to when you can’t help them with their inquiry. On one day at our library, I referred different library users to a university library, local historical society, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the local community information centre and their local Council.  That day combined two sets of knowledge, that come with experience.

The first is particularly important in public libraries, that being local knowledge. Who are the information/service providers in your area, where are things located etc. If you don’t know, you should at least need to know where you can find out – eg. Council Community Directories are an invaluable source, or who on your staff  to ask, as they have that knowledge.

The second comes with experience. One of the questions asked that day related to data about a particular health condition and its prevalence in Australia. Having worked with Australian Bureau of Statistics data for many years, I was able to match the enquirer with this resource, for which he was extremely grateful.  Our experience, both within libraries and outside them, is invaluable in our roles as information seekers on our own behalf, or for others.

It also helps to have a bit of general knowledge about absolutely everything!  I know it seems like a bit much, but if you have a general idea that C is a computer programming language and not just a letter of the alphabet or that flashing is to do with building and not just a criminal offence, it can make finding the information your enquirer seeks, much quicker and more accurate. And if you don’t know or are vague about what they are talking about, do a quick background search for context (Wikipedia is often great for this), so that you are least looking in the right area when you do go searching.

Unfortunately, the enquirer does not always know what they are seeking, or know how to best articulate it.  So although the basic reference interview is requisite, a few more savvy questions that get down to the nitty gritty (with skills again picked up from experience – both life and library), can make all the difference in getting to a successful result.

And finally, refine, recheck and refine, recheck. Really ask the questions about whether the enquiry has been satisfied. Or at least, use your people skills to figure out if they have had enough of you and would you please go away, lol.

Today is the last day of Blog Every Day of  June, so I thought it appropriate to talk about when a project should finish in a library.

The quick answer is never.

Let me clarify. Any new service, equipment, initiative, procedure etc being started in a library has an implementation program. The implementation part has a finish date, but the new ‘whatever’ it is, shouldn’t.

For every new thing that comes into our libraries, there should be a monitoring and assessment program that is ongoing, either until the day it dies or is replaced, or otherwise forever. Not only does this help you to assess whether it’s being used and whether its an effective use of your staffing hours and resources, but only it gives you useful data for demonstrating your library’s worth.

On a side note, the same goes for professional development. It also does not end when you have finished your qualification. It goes on and on and on and on and on……

This question also has a second answer.  It is also no. But it should sometimes be yes.

If we had these ongoing monitoring programs (and in some instances, even when we do), we need to determine when the point is reached that running such a program/equipment/service is no longer justified, in whatever terms have been set. So when we start, we need to determine what will be considered a success and what will be required to write off the project as completed once and for all.

We are good at starting things in libraries, not always so good at finishing them. And there are many things we do that require no finishing, but do need to be demonstrated as having worth and ongoing assessment will give us that. In fact, we need to be shouting out about them from the rooftops, but that’s another issues altogether.

But there are things we do, that do need to end and we need to let them go.  That can be hard, so work out what it will need to look like for that to happen and we might just find it easier to do it when the time comes.

Thanks everyone for following patiently during the last 30 days of blogging. Looking back, I never thought I could have so much to say in this forum. Not all of it was good, I freely acknowledge.

Surprisingly, I find that there are a couple of things I had planned on, but didn’t blog about in this month, so there will be more to come, just not every day, (sigh of relief for everyone!) and probably not even this week.

But I thank you for joining me on this ride and for your comments, they are both truly appeciated.

Michelle

My kids have just got their half yearly reports and have both done well, so as a reward, we took them to the movies.

We can’t take our staff to the movies every time they have a success, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be celebrating our successes. Some sort of acknowledgement is great for morale and for confidence.

I have been known to celebrate success at work with cheesecake, which always goes down a treat. And it works wonders for morale.

Its easier to celebrate big successes and we should, but they only come along every now and then. We aren’t necessarily working on a big project every day. Do we need to celebrate the little ones too?

I believe we do, but not necessarily with cheesecake, lol. (and yes, I can hear the sighs of disappointment from here). There does need to be some acknowledgement, just to recognise the work put in, the  achievements made, the improvements completed, the new service introduced. Recognition of the small things can lead to inspiration, innovation and even just happy staff. And happy staff make for happy library users. Its a win all around.

So what do you do to celebrate the small successes? I occasionally bring in some chocolates or flowers for someone who has done something difficult or noteworthy, but more often than not, I just tell them. I know from a personal viewpoint that I do like to hear that I am doing or have done a good job – its just nice to get the confirmation and acknowledgement that your hard work is recognised and is having an impact. (and doing it at appraisal time is not enough).

How do you recognise the little successes at your library?  How about the big successes?

Very interesting word discretion. It gives me the image of someone tapping the side of their nose, saying nudge, nudge, wink, wink. But in the library world, its about giving the staff the opportunity to ‘bend’ the rules, where they deem there is a situation where they should be bent.

Rules are important. They aim to guarantee that the world doesn’t dissolve into chaos and that everyone has equal opportunity and treatment, that we are kept safe and our privacy protected and much more. But if rules are always followed without discretion, they we have gone too far the other way.

Unfortunately, some staff mistakenly believe its  just about bending the rules. Its also about the situation and the people involved.

It may be appropriate to do so where a recipient is deemed worthy, or a situation where not to do so would be detrimental. Sometimes its just good PR.

And there are some rules which are easier to bend than others.

But all this requires, not only good judgement on whether the rules should be bent, but also on whether they should be bent in that particular situation and for that particular person.

Too often, a rule has been bent for a library user and despite being told that it was a one off and that they must abide by them next time, every single time they come in, they try to bend them again with the whole – “but they let me do it last time!”  Saying this is a virtual guarantee to never having any leeway on any situation in the library every again!

Making that sort of judgement call can be very difficult and is probably why staff will often refer to more senior staff to confirm it is the right option (or not) to take. (it also helps that they won’t get the flack if there is any problems resulting from the decision).

There are some rules I will bend more easily than others and some that I refuse to bend for anyone. Again it comes back to a judgement call on both the rule and the people involved in the situation. You want to help people, but you don’t want to make things difficult for other library staff if it all backfires.

The good news is that no-one is damaged irretrievably if using staff discretion leads to a difficult situation. And sometimes it doesn’t matter which way you go, you lose. But if nothing else, our managers will always support us if we stick to the rules, so if unsure, we are told to do that.

Have you had an instances where staff discretion backfired on you?  Are there rules you would bend more easily and others you wouldn’t bend at all?

We learned an interesting lesson yesterday at our library, which also resulted in unexpected promotion of the library.

We are introducing pre-overdue notifications via email, so sent out an introductory notice to all our users with email addresses on their accounts, to let them know it was coming and to give them the option to opt out.

This is the bit where people don’t read.

We had so many people call or visit, because they thought that possibly something had gone dreadfully wrong with our records and they thought, we had overdue items against their records.

This raised a few interesting points:

• That if library users had properly read their email, they would have known that it was a notice to let them know the service was starting and this was their opportunity to opt out if they wished
• That we needed to be more blunt with the start of the message, to let them know this was for a forthcoming service – not an existing one and hence avoiding some concern and lots of phone calls and visits
• That it did result in phone calls and visits from library users who hadn’t been in for a while and who had not seen the pre-publicity we had already had in the library for weeks
• That it resulted in awareness again for those library users, who also now were able to add tech savvy and good customer service to their view of the library (once we explained it to them) and those who attended with their concerns often left the library with borrowed items
• That not many people opted out – more people will receive these pre-overdue notices now, than if we had made it opt-in instead

So what began as a notification at a new service and was, for some, translated as something else, has ended up being good PR for the library (if frustrating for library staff).

The irony is, that we had a gentleman come to the desk in the midst of all this chaos and in his broken English, request to sign up for the service.  The one person who struggled to read English, understood what was going on, when those whose language it is, didn’t.

Have you had a similar situation in your library? Did it work out well for you? How?

I was at a meeting in the city today, walking up the Paris end of Collins Street back to catch my train, when I realised my whole viewpoint of that area had changed. I used to be reticent about having to be in that area, as I didn’t know it. However, after having had to venture there on a regular basis, I found I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore, I just did it.

So I got to thinking about how we keep doing things that we have been doing for a while in our libraries, because that’s what we do, without necessarily thinking about whether its appropriate to do so anymore.  We get so set in our ways, that we don’t always think about whether our ways could be improved by changing, tweaking or removing all together.

So imagine my amazement, when I got back to work later in the afternoon and whilst talking about various things to some of my colleagues, I asked if there was a better way of dealing with a process we have in place ( the query triggered by a comment in passing from a library user) – which is currently putting blocks in the way of our users accessing our self-help services (such as self-check, renewals, holds etc) and one of my wise colleagues suggested we get rid of it altogether!

I was delighted! The suggestion was well received by other staff we polled, but it will have to go to the managers for consideration and approval, because its quite possible there are implications we haven’t thought of.

Which makes me wonder and will probably get me to looking a bit more closely, about what other things we are doing, which we may not have to do anymore. I will deliberately try to look at things through our library users’ eyes and maybe query our new library staff about their other library experiences more closely to discover what they are (and there will be more, I’m sure).

Have you had these moments of revelation? What happened?  Love to hear your stories, as they might give me some inspiration and direction.

We are moving towards roving reference at our library. This is a very new concept for us, as we have always been tied to a desk. However, with the introduction of RFID, we have the potential to move out from our desk.  The potential is not yet fully realised, so until it is, we will start taking baby steps in this journey.

So what will roving reference look like at our library?

At the moment, it looks like it usually does – we are away from the desk, doing some admin type work, like shelving holds (they are self-serve), find items to fulfill holds or emptying trolleys to the appropriate collection areas. And as we do, people grab us as we go by and ask questions. And whenever we go to do a shelf check or help a user find a particular area in the library, we are always waylaid with further queries.

So what will be different? Hopefully, we will be able to spend more time with these people when they ask questions and not feel the need to complete it and get back to the crush that is our typical desk traffic, as soon as humanly possible. We will be more observant about library users around us and actively seek to help them where they are at – daunting as the prospect might seem.

And we will get our staff trained up a bit more so that its not just the librarians doing this. We will develop scenarios to give confidence to those who don’t like to stray from the desk and we will buddy up with these newly trained staff, to help them ‘get their feet wet’.

But we will do so only where it is not to the detriment of those we serve at our desk. They will remain our first priority, but our customer service will expand to those who don’t approach the desk. Customer service is one of strengths and we plan to capitalise on this opportunity and improve it – whether its deliberately seeking out those to help, or its incidental on our way to doing other things.

What does roving reference look like in your library?

There’s been a lot of talk about the future of libraries, but it is mostly coming from librarians and naysayers predicting the end of the book. I am looking forward to the results of research our library is conducting on the topic, which will include input from our library users.

But in the meantime, they are already having their say about what they want. With their hands and feet and voices.  Pretty much as they have always done, lol.

They are saying with their loans, that CDs are maybe now just starting to go out of lending fashion – with our loans starting to go down in the Rock and Pop genres (but not in the other genres). What’s next is yet to be determined. Finding a workable library model for music is a challenge in itself.

They are saying it with their queries and feedback forms about scanning. We don’t. Yet. We are getting new photocopiers shortly which will scan to USB as well as copy though.

They are saying with their feet, that they need space to study and work.  We are a single floor building – so no quiet study areas. We have usually been busy with studying students at exam time, but this year, as never before, its been all term round, for quiet study and group work. Wandering through the collections at various times, you would think it was empty, but you get to the seating areas and there are people as far as the eye can see – double and tripled up and even sitting at kids tables and on the floor, when there are no other options.

We also know that there are mature aged learners and business owners who use the library for the space and free wifi even more than the students do. And that we have run out of tables and chairs too often to ignore. Fortunately, we are getting more of those as well and eventually a new building which should accommodate the growing demand for quiet study space. In the meantime, we have more furniture coming, just need to figure out where it will go!

So although its important for us to think about what libraries will be, do and have in future and we need to ask our users this question as well as our staff, its even more important that we are listening to what they are telling us about their needs now in other ways – through their hands, feet and mouths.

How do you ensure that everyone you serve gets equal service, as well as good service?

This comes to mind as I was dealing with a library user the other day, who was also a former neighbour. We got to catching up (as you do), but the catch-up went longer than the transaction that was being conducted. Normally not a problem, but I was very aware that there was  a queue of people waiting to be served and that there were no other staff available to do so.

I know as a customer, the frustration of waiting in line to be served and having to wait longer because the staff member and customer are having a chat. So I am always aware of this, when I am on the other side of the counter.

But I also know that for many library users, the contact with staff is just as important, if not more so, than the transaction being conducted.  So how do you find the balance?

I have known staff who will give exemplary customer service to a library user, but in doing so, many others have to wait longer at their turn and ultimately have less customer service, as the demand far exceeds the supply. One person may walk away happy, but many others won’t.

Ideally we would love to be able to give this level of service to every library user, but it is far from being realistically possible.

Having to find this balance pretty much every hour of every day in the library, means that I have become quite expert at the wind up – making sure that the transaction is completed in a timely manner, but also to the satisfaction (as far as possible) to the user.

It has helped that now with RFID in place we sometimes have a staff member who can get out from behind the desk and to the queue, to see if there is any way they can be helped without having to wait at circulation. This has helped both our queue management and our customer service immensely, but is not always possible in peak times (which somehow seems like most of the time, lol).

Do you have any policies regarding this or any practices you have found particularly helpful in achieving this balance?