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

We have all seen the stories of older people doing amazing things – skydiving, completing university courses etc in their 90s. I really admire them – they are grabbing every bit of life and draining it for all its worth. That’s what I want to be like when I get to that age. I want to leave this world, kicking and screaming, because I have more to learn before I go.

But it doesn’t just happen overnight. You don’t just suddenly want to stop learning, (barring exceptional circumstances) I think its more of a change of attitude and a gradual transition. Which means that if I want to be a true life-long learner, I need to be laying the foundation for it now.

We have two streams of focus in our library – reader development and lifelong learning. They both go right through the life cycle and I plan to make the most of both.

So what are my plans? I learn something new pretty much everyday, through my work, through my family, through everyday life. But I think lifelong learning needs to be more than incidental learning. So every now and then I plan to learn something new. My next learning project is going to be Drupal 7 – the most recent and very changed content management system. We are using Drupal 6 for our library website and a community group site I administer, but I know enough to get by with the day to day. With Drupal 7, I hope to learn more about how the thing works properly, so I can get our websites updated to it and be able to do more with them.

That should take the rest of the year at least, lol. After that, I’m sure I’ll find something else to keep my mind well and truly focused and engaged.

What about you, what are you planning in your lifelong learning journey?

What I am struggling with and not just for myself, is saying no away from work. Particularly when it comes to the community organisations side of things.  I have had to learn to say no all over again. I am currently heavily involved with three organisations outside of work (thank goodness for being part-time), but have had to say no to some others, because there is only so  much time outside of work.

At least with commitments in work time, it is only done in work time – there is a defined limit (although I know many of us take work home to finish it off). But community work time is anytime you are not at work and it can quickly eat up any spare time you have.

The difficulty I have with this, is that there is so much need and there doesn’t seem to be the people, the time or the expertise to meet every one of those needs. I know Australia has a great volunteering community – with so many people giving of themselves – time, money, expertise etc, week after week.  But I know there are organisations crying out for more help and wonder if just a few more people could just give a little time, that the needs would be better met.

Is it a case though of, if the demand is met, a new supply will arise which will need more demand? Is it the skills required by these organisations are not as freely available as we would like? Or is it that people have greater priorities than these organisations (who do such awesome work) and so can’t find the time to give?

I acknowledge that the community work I do has a benefit (slight or indirect as it may be), to me. Is it that volunteers mainly work with organisations with that vested interest in mind, however slight it may be?

All I know, as I say no to one organisation and work hard to help another get their resource library into shape, is that by doing this work outside my library, I know more about my community, have a broader network than just librarians and can bring a better outlook and more experiences to my work in the library.

Have you had trouble saying no outside your library? Are you volunteering in an area in which you have some sort of vested interest, or not? Or is it all too much to even think about?  I am not judging, I really just want to understand where people are coming from in this whole arena.

Thanks!

Which means I look to other librarians for interesting information, new ideas and to support and find support from others in the profession.

But for most of my colleagues, Twitter has been a waste of time, due to the bad PR it has received in the media, which has focused mainly on how many followers any given celebrity has.  They could not see that Twitter could have any value and the fact that I was on it and had been for some time was probably attributed more to my interest in the technology, than any value I might have been getting from it.

However, in the past few days, I have had two colleagues reconsider that line of thought. One had tried Twitter before and given up on it. But after hearing from a respected Melbourne library speaker, decided to give it another go. She has been more careful about who she chooses to follow and is finding her way slowly. But she is already finding value and will persist.

The other colleague is also seeing its value as a professional tool, so hopefully we will see her on Twitter soon.

And that’s where I think this nth (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc – whichever it may be) wave of Twitter may come from. People who have a sincere interest in professional development are beginning to recognise what a wonderful tool it can be to aid them in that endeavour. What we may find is that at least initially, they will be followers, rather than participants (which raises all sorts of interesting scenarios, lol), which is very much the blogging model we have seen, where few blog, some more comment and many just read.

The next wave, might well then be those who finally realise the importance of personal professional development and look for something to help them with that process.

Where do you fit in my supposed waves? Are you finding the same situation amongst your colleagues, or is this just a localised phenomena.

I’ve been working in public libraries for over 25 years. I came into libraries having an idea what my strengths were. I was very task oriented – tell me something needs doing and its done ahead of time. As I mentioned in an earlier #blogjune post, I was a born reference librarian and now I had the skills to go about answering all those questions professionally.  So I knew my strengths, but how did they translate into the working world?

I also very quickly had to acknowledge my weaknesses. I liked people, I liked working with people but I didn’t always work well with people, particular when they got in the way of the tasks. I also have a very fast thought process and a very quick tongue to go with it, which makes many people feel like a cyclone has just been through when I was at full pelt.

Its amazing how my work has helped with both sides.  Turns out my task orientation has led to a very good handle on administrative work and management. And I am a good reference librarian. And with the support of wonderful colleagues and managers, my people skills have definitely improved, with a good lot of practice with raising kids and the added maturity of extra years helping with that.

The point of this all? If you don’t know where you going, look at what you’re good at – hopefully its also what you enjoy. But also look at what you’re not so good it – because somewhere along the line it will be part of what you have to do for work. But don’t worry too much about it – some time, training, patience and experience can help turn that weakness into a strength.

Well, most of the time anyway.  I still talk too fast…… 

Then I started thinking, only four years until I turn 50. Which in turn made me think about what I have achieved so far in life. Well, to begin with I was only thinking about my working life.

I had wanted to be a librarian since I was in Grade 6.  And I did it, went straight through school, into uni and started my first job the week after classes finished.  When I first started work, I was happy to be working as a librarian, so didn’t think too much about career directions, but then I got some experience and decided I did want to climb the tree and get into senior management. And I was on the track, until I got married and had kids, when priorities changed.

And here I am approaching the big 5 0 and it hasn’t happened and because of other things in my life, I don’t know that I will see it happen before I get there. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. The disappointment mainly. I have a lot to give in terms of knowledge, experience, ideas, enthusiasm and more. I felt I was missing out on the opportunity to do something significant, at that higher level and that was hard to accept. What was even harder, was realising that its nobody’s fault.

That was hard to accept as well, knowing that its not my work place’s fault, nor my family’s, or even mine. Its just the way life is working out for me. There are bigger priorities in my life that preclude me from pursuing that dream at this time.

I was talking to a workmate about it and she reminded me that the dream wasn’t dead, it was just the timeline needed adapting. And then amazingly, another workmate, whose birthday is close to mine and is of a similar mind, said something that really settled it for me. It was along the lines of, even though I’m not in the place I expected to be in my career, I have the most amazing family in the world. And even if my career never gets to where I dream it could be, I would not change it for the world, because of them.

But in the meantime, while the dream may be late, or may even be dead, that doesn’t mean I need to be the same in my profession. So I’ll continue my learning journey and I will continue with sharing my craft with those who are interested, from informal situations at work to conference presentations, articles and of course, this blog. I still have a lot to give, even if the giving is not where I dreamed it would be at this stage of my life.

And you never know, life has a way of surprising you……………………..

It was taken up almost entirely by taking on the Acting Branch Manager (ABM) role at our largest library. The plans for doing so went into place in April for a start in August, but I picked up the role instead in May.

I loved it!

Its not something that was new to me, I had been Branch Manager for 8 years at one of our other branches (before kids came along) and had been Acting Branch Manager at a few other branches along the way. It had been a long time though. My last such role was ABM at the same library, just before our old library service dissolved due to Council amalgamations and this new library service was formed – in 1996!

I didn’t stop working, the roles that I had just stopped having responsibility for staff and having the buck stop with me more often than not.

So 14 years, 4 senior managers and a lot of life ago, I did the same job. Well it wasn’t really. Things have changed a lot and yet have stayed very much the same.

The way things are managed is so much electronic now. Time-sheets, pays, maintenance requests, stock requests, communication etc are all done electronically. Lots of email.  But people are still people and that part of the job hasn’t changed in 14 years.

I was very fortunate to take over (temporarily) from a wonderfully organised Branch Manager who was still accessible to me to ask all the questions and for all advice I could ever need. I was also wonderfully supported by our senior management team and by the fantastic team of branch staff. If I could make up an ideal staff complement for a public library, it would look very much like the team we have already.

So what did I learn?

I am very much a task person rather than a people person per se, but age and experience have made all the difference. I first managed a branch at the tender age of 22 and had a lot of problems, which I was wisely assisted and managed through. Those issues were still with me as I took on this challenge, but have been erased. I was able to quickly pick up and take advantage of the strengths of my team and deal with issues when they arose – dealing with them head on as required. I was particularly proud of that achievement, because as with most people, I hate confrontation. But that’s why they were paying me the ‘big bucks’, lol.

On the task side however, I was also fortunate to have a large task to be undertaken during my tenure. We went live with RFID (which I LOVE!), with all tasks managed in-house.  We tagged our 94,000 items and quite a few thousand for our other library branches, rebuilt our circulation desk and removed our old information desk, installed all new equipment and went live – all without having to close the library at any stage. (I love a challenge!)

And that’s besides doing other things like major collection management, replacing all our public Internet PCs, changing our database offerings, changing to self-publishing our reading recommendations newsletters, beginning to offer downloadable audio books and all the day to day stuff that happens in a busy library.

I completed some great training to help me with my job, worked alongside some wonderful branch managers dealing with the same sorts of highs and lows as I was and who were always happy to help and was generally well supported and encouraged and left alone to do my job.

So the frustration?

I want to do more of it, but family circumstances dictate that now is not the time.  I am back to part-time work, but am looking to add some more hours to that in the short term. I have also been asked and responded enthusiastically yes,  to doing a similar role in future as the opportunity arises.

I have been on holidays over Christmas and will be ABM again for a few weeks – but part-time this time and then I will be trying to rediscover my old job and how I fit in with that and our Information Services structure – which has also changed since I have been away.  A new challenge!

Happy New Year everyone. May it bring you all the challenges you like and can handle.

Then nearly 11 years ago my daughter was born and my career took a side-step.  I went from full-time to exactly half-time and stepped down out of management.

I have never regretted that decision. It kept me in touch with my profession, gave me an opportunity to develop professionally in ways that working full-time may not have, gave me time with my family and helped keep me sane. (I’m not the stay at home type).

Not that the time was quiet, as I also enjoyed an 18 month period in there, job-sharing the Information Services role with a colleague I admire and respect.

In those ten years my part-time job also changed, from reference librarian through to virtual services – from being branch focused to having a broader regional role and taking on much responsibility for our library’s online presence.

After Aurora last year, I decided that it was time for my career to ramp up a bit again.  It has in the professional development realm, as I have presented at conferences and seminars and had some journal articles published etc.

Image by Jason McHuff on Flickr

Now the work side is going to catch up. After a 10 year absence, I am going to be Acting Branch Manager in a large public library again. Its only for four months, but with training in the lead up time and covering the Branch Manager who is moving up into a more senior Acting role for the same period, it will be longer.

Its got a lot of positives going for it and multiple challenges.

On the positives, I have a lot of branch management experience that  I will bring to the role, both formal (but from over 10 years ago) and informal, as I have worked at the branch as OIC on night and weekend shifts for many years. It will, more importantly, give me the opportunity to refresh and strengthen those much underutilised skills and I am sure that I will find out fast how much things have changed in that time.

There will be the challenge of my family adjusting to me work full-time, let alone the challenge of me adjusting to working full-time after 10 years away. Fortunately one concern has already been eliminated, we recently had our home cleaning outsourced (loved that part of the change process!)

I am hoping that the preparations I have worked through with the kids will help them adjust to the change, but we will see how it goes.

One of the big challenges that will come with those role will be what is also happening during that time. We are moving to RFID. The tagging and launch process will mostly occur whilst I am in training/transition, but I think just as big a challenge will be the adjustment to potentially different demands from our users as they adjust to the new technology.

It is going to be an interesting time and I am both excited and anxious. I want to do this well, not just for myself, but for the library staff and the Branch Manager who will be coming back to her job.

And the detour part?  I never thought I’d go back to being a Branch Manager.  But after being away from a staff/resources management role for so long, I fully acknowledge that it is a great opportunity to update and exercise those long dormant skills, but also an opportunity to share my wealth of knowledge and experience with my staff, from a new direction. I also expect that I will learn a lot and that is something else to look forward to. (I’m the not sitting still type)  I look forward to being able to share, update and learn and am very grateful for the opportunity being given to me.

Fortunately, I will still be able to keep my hand in the virtual side of our library, in supporting my current Manager who will take a larger slice of that responsibility. I am certain that I would miss it if I couldn’t keep my hand in.

So the detour is taking me where I had never expected to be going not so long ago, but I am looking forward to the journey and all the places it will take me. So you may see some new perspectives here, as my work focus broadens out. I hope you stick around to share the detour with me.

Ada Lovelace

March 24th means its Ada Lovelace Day and I am taking the opportunity to blog about a woman in technology in libraries that I have great admiration for.

Before I do, if you want to read more about Ada Lovelace Day, check out the website and all the other great entries that will appear there, recognising great women in science and technology. You can also check out my blog entry celebrating the day last year, where I honoured the amazing Helene Blowers.

This year, I have the great delight of acknowledging my friend, colleague, co-presenter (next week) and co-blogger (Libraries Interact), Kathryn Greenhill.

Kathryn is an amazing whirlwind of a person, but if you get caught in her circle, you are happy to be there.

Kathryn Greenhill

She is a dedicated, passionate, intelligent, thoughtful and forward thinking librarian and I wish there were a lot more librarians like her.

She was the first librarian in Australia to recognise the importance of virtual worlds and has been able to successfully expand from that and into other areas of technology. She is a sought after speaker right around Australia and when she speaks she always has something to say that is well worth listening to and following up on.

She is a past Auroran, won the VALA Travel Scholarship and traveled to the USA to study Open Source systems and is working on her Ph.D. Masters’ Thesis. She works in a new public library and is excitedly pursuing options for her local community as well as investigating and offering ideas for the broader Australian and world library communities.

And she has a family, to whom she is dedicated.

I really admire women who can do all this and more, love what they do, share what they love and do so without losing in their family life. For me, Kathryn tops the list.

So Happy Ada Lovelace Day to Kathryn and to all those women in science and technology – but particularly in library science and technology. From one practictioner to many others – your efforts, your passion and all your hard work are so very much appreciated.

Since I attended the Aurora Leadership Institute in February this year, I have been thinking more seriously about my profession and where I want to go with it. I absolutely love being a librarian and love my job. I also love my family with all my being. I have been able to balance these two passions quite successfully by working part-time for the past ten years – since my eldest was born.

But now I find I want to do more with my profession. Not that I have been quiet or anything (lol). I have presented at lots of seminars, a few conferences and am starting to get a few things published and I’m enjoying all that immensely and have made a lot of professional contacts and good friends out of that. But that’s feeling like its not enough anymore. I want to do more as a librarian, see if I can make more of an impact on our profession and in a library service and I can’t do that as well as I would like, working part-time at a lower middle-management level position. So that means going back to full-time work and all the impacts that would have on me and my family.

I love what I do, let’s make that clear. So I guess it seems a bit selfish to want more. Maybe that’s one of my struggles.

The other is my family, in particular my kids. I made a decision after Aurora that I would start looking for full-time employment, at a more senior level in 2010. That would give my husband and I time to adjust to the idea and for me to help get the kids ready for the change. The problem is that they’re already keen for the change (although I’m sure they don’t understand all the implications), its me that’s struggling with the concept.

We have been getting the kids ready by letting them take some more responsibility – in the main, in getting to and from school by themselves.  When I don’t work, I had been dropping them and collecting them from school – they in now doing that for themselves (with a lot of checks and balances in place of course – I’m still a neurotic mother ).  They are loving it. They keep asking me when they can go to the next step.

I’m the one who is holding back, because I’m going to miss this so much.  I know its going to change anyway as they grow older and become more independent, but I find that I am trying to hold onto this moment in their lives as long as possible. Again, what you would expect from a mother, but not what I would have expected of myself.

Although I have the greatest respect for stay-at-home mum’s, I knew early on that it wasn’t something I could do. By the time I had been home 6 months with my newborns, I was going stir crazy.  Working part-time has given me the best of both worlds and allowed me to be a better mother as a result. For that I am truly grateful, to both my husband  and my workplace for giving me the opportunity to do this.

So 10 years on, its time for a change and time to deal with all the struggles it entails. I know I can make a difference in my profession and I know there will be differences at home, I just hope that we can all adapt to it as we have done in other situations before.

Anyway, as ever, this blog has been a place to help me get my thoughts straight on something I have been mulling over.  If you have gone through a similar process, I would love to hear how you have managed it and whether it has worked out for you and your family – both personally and professionally. An encouragement or a caution if you please – either way they would be much appreciated.